Personally, I believe that the Pentagon City mall has the right idea by offering its patrons full access to Wi-Fi throughout the mall’s common areas. It shows that more and more consumer stops are finally getting a clue.

People like to be where the Wi-Fi is. Not just for their notebook PCs, but also for their Wi-Fi enabled PDAs as well. For me, it would be for the notebook side of things. Still, I know that my mall is just too noisy for me to actually get any work done whatsoever.

The Fashion Centre at Pentagon City has installed a wi-fi network, which will let shoppers connect via their laptops anywhere throughout common areas at the mall.

“Given the high concentration of office buildings around The Fashion Centre — including the Pentagon — we thought wi-fi service would be very useful to the many people who conduct informal off-site meetings in our food court,” says the mall’s general manager, Suzette Timme.