I was surprised how difficult, relative to North America, it was to find places to connect a laptop in Australia. Here's some results of my accumulated experiences over the past month of travelling through Aus:

- Commercial wifi spots exist, but at rates of $12-20 per hour. This includes telcos like Optus and Telstra (the latter being installed at most Starbucks, although it seems pretty buggy), and a company called Azure.

- Most Internet cafes (oddly common at convenience stores in the central business districts) will reluctantly allow you to connect a laptop, at their standard rates of around $5 an hour. Good if you're in a pinch.

- The wifi hotspot directories that you will find by Googling are all out of date. I've visited various listings on Wifi Hotspotlist, Sydney Wireless, wifi freespot, wireless.org.au, and they all seem to be a waste of time -- several cafe owners complained to me that the directories have gone out of business and refuse to remove their listings!

- One exception is a tip I found on somebody's blog that the ramen chain "wagamama" will give you a login for 2 hours of free access if you eat there. Obviously, this should be done with some sensitivity to lunchtime crowds, but I can verify this info for the Sydney CBD store as of 10-Jan-07.

- The State Library of New South Wales has free wireless. You need to sign up for a library card and only ports 80 and 443 are allowed (so no VPN or email).

- If you have a 3G (UMTS@2100MHz) mobile phone, you can get decent access that way in the cities. This is what I eventually ended up doing -- $99 a month for the Vodafone 1-gig (formerly unlimited) data plan.

- Dialup access can be obtained via the Hello Internet Card, $10 for a month or so and available at convenience stores. A good option if your accomodation has free local calling.

If you have any other tips to share, please post em!