After spending a nice 3 hours in Baltimore's Inner Harbor, I decided to ride my TMAX to the Arundel Mills Mall in Hanover, Maryland. I wanted to put some more tokens on my Dave & Buster's power card only to find out once I got there, I'd forgotten the thing. :-( My 2nd objective there was to test the mall's FREE Wi-Fi. I found out from the mall's website www.simon.com/mall/arundel-mills that it offers free Wi-Fi though they warn you that you'll have to agree to their terms and conditions (standard for free Wi-Fi). As I didn't have a problem with their terms and conditions, I gamely tried to connect at the Arundel Mills Mall. On the list of Wi-Fi signals, you click on Simon WiFi. I did that, my Nook e-reader tried to find me an IP address and, I promptly started getting Wi-Fi errors. Uh oh! Shades of the Starbucks at the Trump Boardwalk Hotel. I decided to move around the mall to see if that would help and, it helped in that the log-in page came up. It asked for my first and last names and either an email address or cell phone number. It claimed this information was mandatory in order to hook up. The company that runs the mall would use your email address to send you emails telling you of specials at the mall as well as new stores. If you supplied your cell phone number, they'd text about such things. I filled in the information and tried to connect and repeatedly got errors where I had to go back and try sending the information AGAIN. After the 3rd try, I noticed a little further down was a box you could check that would get you out of the emails or text messages. I checked the box as I wasn't feeling generous with the mall after all the problems I was having connecting to their Wi-Fi.
Eventually, I did get the service to work though I suspect I spent at least 15 minutes or more repeatedly trying to connect. During the whole process, I would receive at least 2 more Wi-Fi errors. Once I did connect, the connection was sufficiently fast. I will give the mall at little slack as I wonder if part of the problem was a number of people using their free Wi-Fi. The mall was packed today I suspect because it being Martin Luther King Day. I'll have to test the mall's Wi-Fi another day when there aren't such large crowds.
For now, I can't rave about this mall's free Wi-Fi. I had a real job trying to get it to work. If you wanted an easier free Wi-Fi connection, the Arundel Mills Boulevard McDonald's I reviewed was close by. It was definitely easier to use than the mall's Wi-Fi. Still, you can put this mall on your list of places that do offer legitimate free Wi-Fi. Happy surfing all!
Update February 17, 2014: I tried connecting to the Arundel Mills Mall free Wi-Fi and, I had problems again. I definitely wouldn't recommend their Wi-Fi. Also, while I was at the mall, I tried the free Wi-Fi at their Books-a-Million store. Their Wi-Fi worked great. However, Books-a-Million has apparently instituted a policy where if you don't belong to their Millionaire's Club, you have to pay a small fee to use their Wi-Fi. Club members get to use their Wi-Fi for free. As I'm a member, this isn't a problem for me but, it could be for others.
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