Seattle's Hotel 1000

I'm very, very impressed. Rarely does an experience at a hotel go as smooth as mine has at Seattle's Hotel 1000.

Here's why. The Internet in this hotel is PERFECT. I mean everything works. I have been able to make Truphone calls over my Apple iPhone and Nokia N95 without issue. I've set up my room with my Apple Airport Express travel router and have been working between my Mac Book Air and the new Acer Aspire One, an Asus eee PC 1000 and my Nokia N810. My wife has her Flybook V5 with her as well. All are connected and all work perfectly. And all are Working Anywhere Approved Road Warrior ready gear.

Yesterday I had a few video calls using SightSpeed, including two with their CEO and my client their, Peter Csathy. A video call or two with local wine pal and travel tech blogger Phil Baker worked too. While it seems Time Warner Cable which serves Peter and Phil's communities in San Diego County were having some issues, a quick video chat with Maurice in SightSpeed Support proved perfect. Same with my camera ready Account Executive Danielle who was back in the home office.

Skype audio calls worked well. So did calls made over Eyebeam from Counterpath.

I made the calls that Eyebeam handled using client Junction Networks OnSip Hosted PBX. It was like I was in my office.

This is the way a proper hotel Working Anywhere experience needs to be.

After you log on, you really don't have to do much more that think your connected by a wire that's not there. But let me go one step further. Beyond being included in the room rate, the Internet works ALL OVER THE HOTEL. The rooms offer both wired and unwired access. And that unwired access is also working in the two very cool restaurants and public areas...everywhere. Speeds rock and the latency is virtually non-existant. The speeds are so good I actually updated the Acer Aspire One with all the Windows XP updates that it needed.

The installation here at the Hotel 1000 was ironically done by a very close friend, Chris McKewon and his crew at Xceptional Networks when they had a boring name of Valcross, which was started by the brother of a former girlfriend of mine from the 90s. (Disclosure: I sit on their advisory board.) Talk about a small world.

McKewon and his team executed a flawless installation of Cisco hardware and software. And it shows. I actually called Chris over the Truphone application on my iPhone as I sat sipping three different Rose wines from France, including a very tast Hippolyte Reverdy Rose from the Loire Valley, which is always worth seeking out. The all Pinot Noir pink wine is tasty, especially with the Sugar Cane Crab Cakes served in Studio 1000 here at Hotel 1000. He was very impressed....as was I. Perfect call quality.

Bottom line. If I'm in Seattle, and need to work, as well as play, the Hotel 1000 is a 100 percent Working Anywhere Approved pick as the place to be.

Comments

[Zara Ward]

Hey Andy.

A great post and I picked up some useful tips. Thank you for sharing.

[MicroAngelo]

Hi Andy, Great blog!

As a fellow "technomad" I'm often frustrated by the backwards mentality of hotels that charge for internet access rather than taking the opportunity to encourage the custom of people such as us for a relatively small cost.

I know of one hotel chain here in the UK that offers guests free collection by private helicopter included with the cost of their room, but then charge an extra few pounds if they want the "luxury" of internet access! Complete madness.

You also appear to have a typo in your link to onsip.com