on holliday

SEVERA

hi,
just wondering if it is possible to take my laptop on holliday as we wont be home for 3 weeks and are going on a road trip from france to spain ? i was hoping to check and reply to emails and use the internet etc. i have 3 mobile broadband which plugs in at the side of the laptop. or can i buy one in france that i could use and top it up like phone credit or something?

baby and crumble

You can bring your laptop anywhere, so long as you get a compatible plug adapter for the country you're going to.

Getting net however is a different story. Your 3 dongle will cost a bomb on roaming, if it even works abroad... However so many places like coffee shops, hotels, etc have free or cheap wifi that you can use I can't imagine you'd have a major problem using local networks. I have no idea about comparable services in France and Spain I'm afraid.

SEVERA

zoegh wrote: »

You can bring your laptop anywhere, so long as you get a compatible plug adapter for the country you're going to.

Getting net however is a different story. Your 3 dongle will cost a bomb on roaming, if it even works abroad... However so many places like coffee shops, hotels, etc have free or cheap wifi that you can use I can't imagine you'd have a major problem using local networks. I have no idea about comparable services in France and Spain I'm afraid.

Thanks for that zoegh. guess i will be leaving my 3 broadband stick at home.sorry to be so ignorant, but what is wifi, i have heard the term but i don't know what it means, do you mean to use an Internet cafe and leave my laptop at home? because last time i did and tried the Internet facilities in a campsite we were using but no matter what i tried i couldn't access my yahoo email a/c

SEVERA

SEVERA wrote: »

hi,
just wondering if it is possible to take my laptop on holliday as we wont be home for 3 weeks and are going on a road trip from france to spain ? i was hoping to check and reply to emails and use the internet etc. i have 3 mobile broadband which plugs in at the side of the laptop. or can i buy one in france that i could use and top it up like phone credit or something?

you could get your dongle unlocked (ring 3) and ask them to unlock for you. if they say no there are services on the net for €1/2
for spain you could get a sim on ebay with prepay credit that offers 3g dongle access and put it in. I think that there are some ok spanish providers (research yourself) .
here is an example http://cgi.ebay.ie/SPANISH-3G-SIM-PAY-GO-CARD-15-CREDIT-SPAIN-/140535856897?pt=UK_Mobile_Home_Phones_Sim_Cards_CV&hash=item20b896ff01#ht_758wt_1139
it should connect through your existing software.

I looked at 3g dongle access in France recently and for some reason it's totally uncompetitive - i.e. a rip off.
with your three dongle and sim you get free roaming on existing allowance in Austria.

as othere poster said a lot of cafes/ bars have free wifi so grab a coffee and get access.

baby and crumble

Wifi is basically a wireless network. most laptops these days will have wifi access built into them, which means if you have that, you can connect your laptop wirelessly to the internet. If you see a symbol like this on any shop/bar/cafe/hotel doors or whatever, it means you can access the internet from your laptop on their network: (sorry for the massive pic I can't seem to resize it...)



Depending on your laptop there should be a little symbol in the bottom right of your screen or somewhere like that that looks like this:



if it does you click on that and it should give you a list of networks you can join. Ones with a lock next to them will need a password.

Cormic

zoegh wrote: »

If you see a symbol like this on any shop/bar/cafe/hotel doors or whatever, it means you can access the internet from your laptop on their network

Please be very careful when using free hotspots as you have no idea who is sitting on the network and looking at your traffic.

If you can, use HTTPS for your email, facebook etc., so that the traffic is encrypted.

I use the Firefox web browser and have added the "HTTPS everywhere" extension to automatically go to the HTTPS versions of popular websites. https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere

Stay safe and enjoy your holiday