Cannot connect to "Public" Wifi

[jekyl]

Ok, this one has me stumped. A "public" wifi spot. Cannot connect with either mine or my wife's Macbooks running Lion. Can connect with no trouble at all with either iPod Touch 4G and iPad2. This hotspot incorporates its own screen that pops up when you connect asking you to agree to their terms. This pops up immediately in IOS Safari but never shows on the Macbooks using either Safari (which fails to open at all) and Chrome which just never loads the initial agreement page. I tried turning off "Enable phishing and malware protection" in Chrome but that didn't help. What am I doing wrong here?

 

[snberk103]

Make sure you are allowing pop-up windows. Also javascript.

Also, make sure the "public"wifi is legitimate. I'm starting to see hotspots called "freepublicwifi" (or similar) in places that I wouldn't expect. For instance inside a coffeeshop, where I am connected to the coffeeshop's wifi I may also see 'freepublicwifi'. I am a suspicious soul, and it occurs to me this would be a great way to harvest a bunch of signin credentials....

Luck.

 

[jekyl]

This is the public wifi on campus @ MSU so it is legitimate. It's just strange that iPads get online there so easily but MacBooks are all having trouble. Ironically enough this was at the Mac user group meeting.