Down in Charlotte for a few days

Michael Gartenberg | May 05, 2005, 08:53 AM

I'm down in Charlotte for a few days. It was nice ten hour or so drive from NY with XM radio and my iPod keeping me company for the trip. A lot's been written about the shuffle feature but on the way down I had a lot of company from Bob Dylan and Harry Chapin and when I got into Virginia it started playing Grand Funk Railroad and Alabama. As I pulled up to the hotel, The Band's version of the Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down came on.... Coincidence? I think not. Connectivity here is spotty. Hotel has dial up that kicks me off every five minutes. There's broadband in the business center at .99 a minute. Yes, i said a minute :) Worse, my sidekick and phone (both of which are T-Mobile) stopped getting data when I got here. They showed ATT connections and yet no GRPS. That made no sense as a city like Charlotte had to at least have some wireless services. Checking a little more and using manual network selection buried deep in each device, I found there was a Cingular network AND an ATT network. Switching over the Cingular network worked so now I'm connecting to my SMT-5600 over Bluetooth and using that GPRS connection for my laptop. it's not faster than the hotel dial up but it's more reliable.