Updated Info on Free Taipei WiFi - Major Public Places in July, More in Oct

[Jaboney]

True, not much good on the MRT, but useful on buses that carry the signal along for the ride.

[adguy]

Hmmm. Don't think I've ever experienced one of those buses.

[PapaAzucar]

Updated info on the free public wifi is at
http://forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=105278#p1379141

[chanephraim]

does the bus station have TPE-free already or while riding the bus?

[PapaAzucar]

does the bus station have TPE-free already or while riding the bus?

I have yet to ride a public bus that has free wifi, even though this article says 800 to 1000 buses should have free wifi by the end of 2011. Then again, I usually try to ride the free shuttles to the MRT stations, and I doubt those shuttles will have free wifi.
I can't vouch for all the bus stations, but all the MRT stations that I've been to have TPE-free.
Has anyone rode one of the 800 to 1000 buses with the free wifi yet?

[Jaboney]

Yep. Pretty much daily.

[PapaAzucar]

New Taipei City seems to have a public wifi network now with the SSID "New Taipei".
http://wifi.ntpc.gov.tw/en/faq.php

Edit: Apparently, registration with with just one of the 3 (TPE-Free, iTaiwan, or "New Taipei") will allow you access to all 3 wifi networks.
http://itaiwan.gov.tw/en/faq.php
I have not tried or seen "New Taipei" show up on my device, so whoever can verify that they can access all 3 public wifi networks with one registration, that could help everyone.

[JimmyTheSaint]

TPE-Free has been all but useless for me. I've tried from several MRT locations, using cell phone and laptop, sometimes in a train, but mostly standing still. I always get a good signal, but it takes a long time to get an ip address so that I can even begin to load the login page. Sometimes I do eventually get the login page, and log in. Then it loads that government web site. After many tries, I was even able to get to the account management page and change my password. But I've never successfully loaded an actual web page outside the system.

[PapaAzucar]

TPE-Free has been all but useless for me.

TPE-Free max connection speed is designed to be 512kpbs. And given the number of people connecting to a particular access point, that number goes down.
I went ahead and bought the Wifly access. 1800/year for the tablet, and 1200/year for the smartphone.
http://www.wifly.com.tw/Wifly7/en/
Wifly is more accessible, but it isn't necessarily any more convenient than TPE-Free. Wifly doesn't have WPA/WPS password store, so you have to re-login every time you reach another access point.
If you have the cash, I'd recommend just getting 3G service.