It's 2 p.m. and you’ve been hard at work, sitting at the same desk since you got out of bed that morning. You’re starting to go stir crazy, and you're out of groceries. Wouldn’t it be nice to take your work down to your local licensed establishment or lunch spot and work there—for a change of scenery and maybe a pint of your favourite beer?
Yeah, we think it’s a good idea, too. But where, oh where, can you go in Halifax that offers free WiFi, good food and a decent pint?
Well, as it turns out, there are at least 60 restaurants and bars in the HRM that offer free WiFi to patrons.
So we listed and mapped them to help you figure out where to go the next time you feel the need to work while enjoying the comforts of a stiff drink.
It should be noted that some of these establishments have their WiFi password protected, but all you need to do is ask your server for the password and you should be good to start surfing after that.
View Bars and Restaurants in the HRM with free Wifi in a full screen map
Experiments are fun
For kicks, we used foursquare and Yelp to figure out which ones out of this list are your top 10 favourite watering-holes, and then set out to test their WiFi speed.
To do this, we used an online system that tests ping rate, download speed and upload speed. The results are provided as digits and as a letter grade. The letter grade shows how the connection stacks up with others in the country. So a B+ would be 77 per cent, and means that 23 per cent of the population have a faster connection.
Most of the establishments we tested had relatively good signal strength. But as Taylor Zinc, bartender at Your Father's Moustache, pointed out, strength will vary according to the number of people currently using the connection. He did add that there is usually no more than one or two people using their WiFi.
Similarly, WiFi speed is also relative to your physical proximity to the actual router. As Julie Streight, bartender at The Foggy Goggle, said, their router is in the office at the back of the restaurant, so some people have had trouble near the front of the restaurant.
Manners in a WiFi zone
Future restaurateur and Halifax food blogger Kathy Jollimore raises a good argument—try to not abuse the service being provided to you. She says, “I'd certainly like to offer free WiFi and allow folks to chill, but also want to ensure customers who may have been lingering over a coffee for a while are not occupying a seat when others are waiting.”
So if you are headed out to work, drink and eat, at a restaurant that offers you free WiFi, try not to linger. Or, at least, order another beer.
