Using The Cloud

Ok, so after the mild trauma of trying to find out how to register for The Cloud‘s unlimited account (it looks like they’ve updated their sign-up pages now to make it much clearer), I finally have an account.

I’m pretty much delighted. £11.99 a month to use almost any wireless hotspot you’d care to mention, including their own huge 7,000 strong estate. That’s excellent. Particularly seeing as it’s 20p or 75p a minute on BT Openzone/T-Mobile Tzones. Yes they’ve got monthly rates, but none as good as The Cloud.

One mild issue — the connection here is a little slow. I reckon it’s on a 512k DSL system — either that or it’s throttling the wifi speed to only a few kilobytes a second – maybe 20k/sec maximum.

I’m not quite sure what to expect — although I’d have hoped to get nearer 100k/sec if I was downloading stuff. I’m downloading the Last.fm client at 24k/sec at the moment. Bit annoying. Not the end of the world though.

It’s a little strange sitting next to lots of old people. There are two pensioner chaps next to me — I kid ye not — talking about the good old days ‘of jellied eels’. They were discussing some old jellied eels bar in the East End. Er.

If you thought Wetherspoons were, in any way the bastion of cool, hip youth, think again. They’re all in here for the £1.99 lunch menu — so says one of the barmaids. One or two (glass?) eyes have been wandering over at me as I sit bashing stuff out the laptop.

I’ve put on my sold isolating headphones and fire up iTunes. Unfortunately the pitch that these chaps are talking at is geared, it seems, to break through any audio silencing device.

So The Cloud: Wicked.