I have run across several towns that provide free wifi connect. One small town in Utah even has a sign on the out skirts that tells you it has free wireless connections available. I have also found that in a lot of places, I can connect just by plugging my card in (I use a belkin card and XP on my laptop). In fact just last Sunday, I was visiting a friend in Boise Id. and was showing him the card and plugged it in and found I had 3 signals avalible, and automatically connected to one. The other two were protected, one by encryption, and the other by SSID and possibly passwords.
Not knowing a connection is setup as a free connect, I usually don't connect to them, and usually I am in an area where I can connect to a service I do subscribe to.