Intel, Zagat offer WiFi guide

By Terril Yue Jones, Los Angeles Times, 9/21/2003

Tonight's menu: Appetizer. Check e-mail. Main course. Surf Web. Dessert. Log off.

Computer chip giant Intel Corp. and the leisure-class bible Zagat Survey have produced a guide to the best restaurants and hotels in America that offer wireless fidelity, or WiFi, Internet access.

The guide includes Zagat's signature, and sometimes snooty, comments on food and decor. It doesn't, however, rate the quality of WiFi hookups on Zagat's traditional 1-30 scale. Or on any scale.

And snagging a listing in the guide doesn't necessarily mean a WiFi hot spot knows it's hot.

"Nobody brings their computers in here," said Margot Kramer, manager of Breeze in the upscale Century Plaza Hotel & Spa in Los Angeles. "We get a lot of businessmen, lawyers and entertainment people, but they're too busy making deals to go online."

Intel and Zagat released the "2003 WiFi Hotspots" guide this week at the Intel Developers' Forum in San Jose, Calif.

It lists dozens of restaurants and hotels in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, and Chicago that offer WiFi service. The list also is in the current edition of the New Yorker magazine.

Businesses such as Borders Books, Starbucks coffee shops and McDonald's restaurants were among the first to offer WiFi to attract compulsively connected customers.