Aja Smith once needed the Internet for her schoolwork so urgently that she parked outside of the Days Inn in Auburn to connect her Dell laptop to the hotel's wireless network.

She expects to get wireless service in her home shortly, but for now she goes to the Seymour Public Library at least three times a week to utilize its wireless capacity.

Smith lived in Ithaca until recently, which has an abundance of wireless hot spots for its university-oriented residents. Now Smith lives in Auburn, teaching at a Montessori school and taking coursework at Cayuga Community College toward the completion of her teaching degree.

She likes using her laptop outside of her home because "the distractions at home are a trouble. I like coming to a library and having the resources available. I also like going to a coffee shop or bar and eating or drinking (while working) if I want to."

She has been disappointed in the tiny number of places offering wireless Internet in Cayuga County, but Smith's wireless options are improving.

Within the past year, the Fingerlakes Mall and Seymour Library have installed wireless networks. Days Inn and Holiday Inn in Auburn also have wireless service.

The UPS Store in Metcalf Plaza installed wireless Internet in August, and at the borders of the county, two coffee shops, Creekside Books and Coffee in Skaneateles and ZuZu Cafe in Seneca Falls, both opened up late last year with wireless service.

Auburn Mayor Tim Lattimore said he would like to see a coffeehouse and wireless Internet hub instituted at Hoopes Park.

At Auburn's two McDonald's, wireless networks were instituted when the stores switched over to a cashless system which accommodates credit card and debit card payments, said Craig Schwartz, the store manager at the Genesee Street McDonald's. The goal is to attract business travelers. Connections there cost $2.95 for two hours, which can be paid online with a credit card. Membership options are available in some states through McDonald's partner company, Wayport.

Both Schwartz and Mike Sheldon, the store manager of the Grant Avenue McDonald's, said the four-month-old wireless service has attracted a minimal number of customers so far, but they think most people don't know about it yet.

Erika Davis, the owner of Creekside Books and Coffee , said she sees about five to seven people a day using the wireless service. Over the summer, high school and college students and summer residents used it a lot, she said.

"I think it's worth it to offer it free of charge. It works out for us," Davis said.

At ZuZu Cafe, nighttime supervisor Connie Quinones said students from the New York Chiropractic College use the cafe's wireless service. The cafe also offers a wire connection that computers with ethernet cards can be plugged into, but that option isn't nearly as popular, she said.

"It's a very relaxing atmosphere," Quinones said. "They can come in and get a cup of coffee. We have nice leather couches."

Gina Speno, the Fingerlakes Mall's general manager, is not sure of the number of people who are using the mall's year-old, free wireless service, but she said, "when it's down everybody tells us."

The food court is the mall's hot spot, and plans are under way to install an area where people can plug their laptops into an electric socket and use the wireless for a longer time than their laptop's battery life allows for.

"We really geared it up to the tourist season," Speno said. "More and more people are traveling now and looking for that. Ironically, we get a lot of district managers who travel to their stores (located in the mall)."

Seymour Library added its wireless hub about a year ago. A total of 87 percent of the building is covered by the hub, said Stephen Erskine, the Seymour librarian.

"(Wireless) has been used so significantly in the last year that the speed of our Internet service was being affected," Erskine said.

In July, the library increased the bandwidth of its Internet service to allow for the increased wireless use, as well as the library's fixed station Internet use. The price to the library was only a $71 increase per month.

Jim Vivenzio, Seymour's electronic resources librarian, said wireless came to the library by happenstance because there was so much brick wall in the library's reference room that wireless - instead of a wire-based -network needed to be installed to place computer stations in the room.

The result has been a handful of students and travelers using the network, he said.

"PhDs from Syracuse and Ithaca come in just to find a nice quiet place to do some research and do their work. We've seen a variety of students come in to search the Internet for projects. We've seen people come out of town," Vivenzio said.

Vivenzio also is the coordinator for instructional technology at Cayuga Community College, and wireless has been available at the college since the 1999-2000 academic year. Vivenzio installed wireless Internet for the library's reference section, and a couple of laptops were available for students to check out and use there.

But the laptops weren't touched, "not like I thought they would. I thought we would have to buy more laptops," Vivenzio said.

The library unofficially stopped checking out the laptops, and the student body didn't seem to notice, he said.

But now students at the college are asking why there isn't wireless Internet at CCC.

Just this week, Vivenzio made the first call to get wireless installed in the college's student lounge/cafeteria.

The organizations and businesses in the area think the increase in demand seen at the Seymour Library and CCC for wireless access will grow because of the widening use of wireless devices.

"It's a pretty simple thing to do, and there's a lot of need in the community," said Creekside's Davis. "A lot of people are technologically aware these days and have that card in their laptop."

Five years ago, Vivenzio said, computer marketing was about cheap desktops, but now its about laptops.

"I think it's kind of neat to walk around a college campus that's wired and do what you need to do," Vivenzio said. "iPods, cell phones ... everybody's wireless. It's a portable society."

Staff writer Amaris Elliott-Engel can be reached at 253-5311 ext. 282 or at amaris.elliot-engel@lee.net