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Where to Find Free Hotel WiFi in Vegas

We hope you brought your wireless card with you.

If you're headed to Vegas this weekend for CES or the Adult Entertainment Expo, chances are you're gonna need a WiFi connection for all your uploading, downloading, Twittering, Facebooking, blogging, and other, ahem, recreational activities.

The bad news is that in the privacy of your hotel room, expect to pay at least $10 a day to sign on. Sadly, there really no hotels where in-room WiFi is free. There are, however, plenty of public options. You just have to know where to look.

We've culled together a list of tried and true WiFi hotspots on the strip based on our own experience as well as the knowledge of Vegas expert @24K aka Chris Rauschnot, who is constantly up and down the Strip reporting on the scene--all from his cellphone.

So the next time you find yourself in Vegas for a conference or just some good old debauchery, here's where you can get connected.

Skip on over for VegasChatter for free WiFi that's not limited to hotels.

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Geeks and Porn Stars to Arrive in Vegas This Weekend

As VegasChatter put it, this first week of January is The Most Wonderful Time of The Year … For Techies and Porn Stars. That’s right, the Consumer Electronics Show and the Adult Entertainment Expo are in town! And Vegas hotel owners are happy because most of them are sold out for the duration of the events, from Wednesday Jan 6–Sunday, Jan 10.

Thursday and Friday nights are the most heavily booked—and all the big-name casinos on and off the Strip have very limited availability any night. All is not lost, though. Here are a few options we found for last-minute geeks and gawkers.

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Tags: Room Rate Drop Watch / CES Hotels / Viva Vegas / Geek Hotels / → All Tags

CES In Vegas Might Actually Be Affordable

Further proof that Sin City is not the city it once used to be? Room rates are not soaring during peak conventions. In fact, they may even be dropping. CNBC's TechCheck reports that the hotels in Las Vegas are not jacking the rates as much as they used to in previous years for CES (Computer Electronics Show). In a letter sent out the registered CES attendees, the convention told them:

Those who have attended CES over the years and are accustomed to peak rates...may be pleasantly surprised when they book rooms this year.

So how "pleasantly surprised" will they be? We went to Expedia.com to begin a broad search for the dates of CES, January 8-11. The Planet Hollywood was asking for $339 a night and the Wynn was going for $446 a night (The yet-to-be-opened Encore was asking for $496 a night.) Not much of a bargain although last year the Wynn was asking $699 a night and Planet Hollywood was at $319 a night.

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Geek Can't Get Hotel Check-In Kiosk to Work At CES

This morning we gave you our Geek's Hotel Guide to CES in Las Vegas where we ran down the hotel tech scene for CES attendees. In it, we mentioned a Luddite Hotel, the Roman Tower of Caesars Palace, because it's high tech bathroom TVs are only considered high tech in the past. Like 1985.

Now we can add another geek faux pas. Harry McCracken (any relation to Phil?) of PC World checked into the Sahara Hotel and Casino for CES and took a gamble on the hotel's check-in kiosk.

Whenever I see one, I try to use it--but I'm only able to leave with key in hand maybe 25 percent of the time. Otherwise, said kiosks are either out of order, or they give me an error message somewhere along the way.

Along with my PC World comrades, I'm in Las Vegas this week to attend the humongous Consumer Electronics Show. We're staying at the Sahara--which, despite being one of the last relics of Old Vegas on the Strip, is the first hotel here I've stayed in with kiosks. I ambled up to one and got most of the way through the check-in process before it choked and told me to see a real person.

Tsk, Tsk, Tsk. Sahara, of all times to have your check-in kiosks break down. Note to other Vegas hotels with cutting edge gadgetry: the geeks are blogging you.

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The Geek's Hotel Guide to CES in Las Vegas

CES actually began yesterday with Bill Gates (final?) CES keynote speech but the real show kicks off today.

Tech and gadget blogs across the internet, like Engadget and Gizmodo will be covering the actual tech products and news that come out of CES, and you know the Digg front door will be full of the latest and greatest CES stories, but we've put together a hotel guide that should help detail a snapshot of what these hotels have to offer the tech-guzzling crowds.

If you don't have your hotel by now, and don't want to stay at OJ's Palace, your best bet is to try and convince someone to let you crash in their room, but that begs the question, who to hit up for a sweet slab of floor?

So whether you are searching for a plethora of power outlets, the sweetest in-room HD, the hotel closest to the Mac store, or, god forbid, where you can partake in a late night viewing of Screech's sex tape -- we plot your CES hotel course here.

See our Geek's Guide to CES in Las Vegas

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