I (Now) Heart WiGO

Late last year, I made a somewhat snarky post about WiGO and their free WiFi service. I admit, I was a little hard on them, after all they were just starting out and naturally they would not try to roll out features all at once. Now that they have enough time to settle in and get comfortable, maybe it’s time to give them a fair review.

Armed with my MacBook and iPhone, I went to the Power Plant Mall last weekend. WiGO blankets the whole mall and surrounding areas, which is awesome. I can be anywhere and still get a signal but I’ve decided to stay at my favorite coffee shop, find a comfortable spot and order a latte. I woke my MacBook from sleep, connected to the WiGO hotspot and launched the WigoBar application which I downloaded from their website. On the Mac, the application is a Java jar file which is really jenky but will do until they realize that it sucks and write a proper Cocoa application. So anyway, I launched my browser, logged-in on their customized welcome page and off I go, pretty much free to do anything I want.

Now there is a bit of a problem here, the WigoBar. Remember the bar that sits on top of all your windows and display ads? That bar and the business model behind it died during the dot-com bust. Now, WiGO dug it out from the grave and renewed its sole purpose of annoying the hell out of us.

Fear not, Mac users (sorry Windows), there is a solution. Despite their efforts of keeping the ad bar on top at all times, we can hide it the same way we hide all application windows—by hitting Command-H. If you’re using Leopard and have Spaces enabled, you can also just simply switch to another space and open your browser from there.

I’ve discovered something even cooler and that is WiGO Mobile. If you are using a mobile device with WiFi, such as iPhone, you can still connect to WiGo without installing any application. All you have to do is connect, launch your browser and login to their mobile-optimized page. If you don’t have an account yet, signing-up is fast and free and you can do it right there. One minor thing though, each WiGO hotspot at the Power Plant Mall has a different SSID. So, you can’t just roam from one hotspot to another automatically unless you’ve connected to each one and configured your device to remember it. I was expecting that each page that I visit will have a frame at the top that will display ads yet again (hope I’m not giving them any ideas). Luckily, there is none and it is just like connecting to any other WiFi hotspot, paid or not.

Fine, WiGO, you have managed to turn me around and actually use and like your service. This is because 1) I can hide the ad bar and 2) use it on my iPhone. And yes, your speeds are pretty decent too. Please keep it up and you will have lots of happy users like me who are loving the convenience of having a free and reliable WiFi service.