Last night (this morning), Kelly [1], Mark [2], JeffK and I got together for yet another impromptu war driving session [3], only this time we all had laptops, and we all ran off batteries. Through the good graces of a friend, I was able to replace the defective battery [4] in my ThinkPad 600 with a not-so-defective battery and since I hadn't really tested the new battery, I figured this would be as good a test as any.
It was a Good Thing™ that I had just finished fully charging the battery.
Mark ended up driving, with JeffK, Kelly and I scanning the area for WAP (Wireless Access Point)s. We wasted about 15 minutes with JeffK trying to get his scanning software working, and Kelly attempting to get the GPS (Global Positioning System) hooked up to his laptop and talking to the WAP scanning software. It slowly became apparent that we wouldn't have GPS for this drive.
We ended up driving around residential neighborhoods, which seem to have a higher concentration of WAPs than the commercial zones. I'm not sure if it was the card I was using (a Cisco Airo 340), the software I was using (Linux running Kismet [5]) or that Kelly and JeffK were using the same type of card (and my system kept picking their cards up) but I had better luck in finding WAPs than they did. And the battery lasted the entire trip and then some (over two hours total).
We did, however, confirm that Mark's house [6] (and the homes around him) were not condusive to wireless network propagation, possibly due to their heavy concrete and steel construction (the neighborhood dates from the late 60s/early 70s and homes here in South Florida were solidly constructed).
[2] http://www.conman.org/people/myg/
[5] http://www.kismetwireless.net/