I was sitting in the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport on my way to Houston a few weeks ago. It was one of the rare times that I was quite a bit early for my flight and had about 45 minutes to kill. I flipped open my laptop and received a random alert from Skype saying that they’d picked up an Internet connection and I could log on using Skype Access.

Huh? What the font is Skype Access? (I was secretly excited because of my ongoing love affair with Skype.)

Turns out that Skype Access is a major win and the developers at Skype love me as much as I love them. How is this a win?

Well, let me walk you through what my attempts to log onto the Internet in the airport used to look like:

I’d flip open my laptop. Try to log onto somewhere for free. (Yeah, go ahead laugh.) After twenty minutes I’d come to the realization that free Internet in the airport really is over. Then I’d go through the painstaking process of reading about all of the different plans available from the different bloodsucking wireless network companies. (Oh, $9.99 for access all day…fuckers, do you really think I’m going to be sitting in the airport for the next 24 hours.) Eventually, I sign up work for the $4.99 plan. Now, I have to enter in my credit card information. After minutes of attempting to remember the numbers or trying to see if my computer will remember them for me, I realize that I’m in the middle of an epic fail. I decide to stop being lazy, pull out my wallet and fill in the info. And away I go…on the Internet for about 20 minutes for five dollars. Fail.

But now, with Skype Access:

I flip open my laptop. Skype tells me they’ve found a network. I agree to it. Now I’m cruising around using my Skype credit. Win! Win! Win!

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