Wireless internet

Brian NZ

Another electronics question.
Sue and I are planning a trip from Denmark to Switzerland via, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourge, Austrai and France. We will also be spending time in the UK and Ireland..
What are the emailing optionspeople use and what are the chances of getting free wireless internet conections at cafes, camping grounds etc. and if we ahve to pay what sort of money are we talking? We want to send about 10kb and recieve about the same per day.
Thanks for any advice
Cheers Brian

Nick Hill

Hi Brian

When are you planning on coming over?

lots of coffe shops over here have free wifi not sure about some of the campsites they tend to be a little behind the times when in comes to internet etc.

Denmark is also easy for wifi (although I have only been to Aarhus)

lots of times in europe you can sit in the highstreet and pick up an unsecured connection

Nick

andymiller

Nick's right, but we are talking primarily an urban thing. A growing number of campsites/gîtes in France are offering free WiFi, ditto in the UK, but you couldn't rely on it if you wanted to keep in touch every day.

If you are planning on taking a laptop and need more then the ability to pick up emails every few days. then you might want to consider getting a Pay You Go USB modem from three or t-mobile. t-mobile has the advantage of free WiFi access from places like Starbucks but they charge by the day so probably not the most cost-effective option for you. three on the other hand charge £10 for a gigabyte and the credit lasts a month. You can also use the USB modem in other countries for £7/Mb - while that's still outrageous it should mean that you could have email access in most places for £17/month. I haven't actually tried this so better to double check.

You might want to have a look at sites like this one:

http://www.roamingsims.com/roaming-advice.php

There are also companies that offer travel SIMs eg:

http://www.callineurope.com/cgi-bin/cie ... index.html

these could be used with a Blackberry or Windows Mobile smartphone for emails.

EDIT: I don't know where I got the figure of £7/Mb looking again at the three site the charge seems to be £3/Mb

Brian NZ

Thanks for the info guys.
I fly into Geneva 2nd June bike to Lyon, back to London on the 22nd. We have weddings in Ireland and Wales then fly Copenhagen 9th July bike to Geneva fly home 17th Sept.
By going through so many countries make it harder to decide which way to go, sim and PDA which we have or a mini laptop which we would have to buy.
The mini laptop and USB modem looks not too bad. We'de be prepared to pay up to 30 pound a month to keep in touch. Sue has very elderly parents and needs to be able to mail them at least every other day and I keep a journal on crazyguyonabike.com.
Thanks again for your valuble input.
Cheers Brian

andymiller

Brian NZ wrote:

looks not too bad. We'de be prepared to pay up to 30 pound a month to keep in touch. Sue has very elderly parents and needs to be able to mail them at least every other day

What about texting as a back up?

NFMC

I may be being thick here but wouldn't a lap-top plus all the plugs and adaptors be rather heavy?

Why not 'just' a mobile phone and then use internet-cafes as and when you find them?

andymiller

NFMC wrote:

I may be being thick here but wouldn't a lap-top plus all the plugs and adaptors be rather heavy?

I wasn't suggesting that Brian bring a laptop - it wasn't clear from the original post whether he was planning on bringing one anyway. These days a fair number of people do travel with 'netbooks'.

NFMC wrote:

Why not 'just' a mobile phone and then use internet-cafes as and when you find them?

Again it wasn't clear from the original post whether Brian needed to keep in touch regularly or simply as and when. In places like rural France wifi access and internet cafés are around but you certainly can't rely on finding them every day outside of the towns.

Brian NZ

Sue has very elderly parents and needs to be in touch with them at least every other day. They aren't very good on the phone but can handle e-mail as they can take their time to read it and reply.
In the past we have only visited one main country so brought a local sim card and used the mobil phone as a modem for a Pision. This has been a reasonable cost option. But now going through 8 countries it has turned into a completely different ball game. I also keep a journal on www.crazyguyonabike.com, which I like to keep updated at least every 4 or 5 days. So friends and relations know where we are.
Data roaming from NZ is 10 pound every time you conect up to the first MB and then 10 pound for every MB after that. So if you conect once every day for 10 days it will cost 100 pound, even if you only send 10kb a time.
Buying a sim card for every country is also prohibitivly expensive as well.

A mini note book say the eees 701 weighs 920 grms and the charger weighs 180grms. Weighed them in town today. The 901 comes in at 1.36 plus the charger. Most of the extra weight is due to the fact it has a bigger battery. The operating systems are also a consideration.

We are slowly working through the options, with the help of you guys and google.

Cheers Brian & Sue

andymiller

Brian

You may have already seen this, but three are currently doing a promotion with cheaper roaming charges in countries where they have a sister network - this includes Ireland, Denmark and Austria. Details here:

http://www.three.co.uk/Help_Support/Int ... _As_You_Go

the promotion runs until the 30 June but I suspect they will replace it with something else beyond that.

Nick Hill

Hey Brian

Are you coming north in the UK?

I have an orange sim you could use whilst over here its on PAYG, It came with a phone but i never use it

would be nice to meet up before we ship out to NZ

Nick

ralex

The Pocketsurfer may be of interest to you?

http://www.pocketsurfer.co.uk/

I haven't used one but the purchase price includes 1 year online usage in the UK and it can be used on roaming in most other countries (5p/min in most of western europe)

Brian NZ

Nick
Our time in UK is limilted and we are with my brother and wife in a car driving from the Wales wedding to back to London. So we will have to wait till you are here to meet.
Cheers Brian

Brian NZ

I spent a long time onn the phone today with a Voadfone help person, who I could actualy understand and he would listen to me.
The main prblem with the comunication I have had trying to sort this, is they just don't think anyone would send less than 10kb so just say so much a MB. Because our Psion is only setup for email, and only text 10kb is quite a lot. It means we can contact our parents and update the journal and recieve a couple of mail back all under the 10kb which is the minimum amount for most companies for between $0.10 and $0.30 NZD or 3p to 10p. So much differnet from the MB charge.
I could've saved us all this time if Vodafone help staff spoke English that I could understand and listened to what I was saying.
Thanks for all your help guys.
PS All Blackberrydata is charged at $0.30 per 10kb
Cheers Brian