internet access

[Guest jenny]

We read an article/letter in Triple MMM about connecting to the internet via a mobile phone and laptop. We have mislaid the article/letter. Has anyone info on this please?

[Guest martin]

Yes one word of advice "DON'T!" It is damnably slow and prohibitively expensive in my view. We've tried it and given up. The main reason was the frustration – you get half way through downloading a long email and it drops out. You spend 15 minutes with the cost racking up faster than a Tokyo taxi metre to discover it’s another offer of bodily part enlargement, or fake drugs, or an opportunity to meet someone’s sister who has already approved your new mortgage in Lagos. Our solution is to keep it simple – use the lap top for navigation, sorting and printing pictures/postcards and preparing emails. Open a free Hotmail account (and Hotmail seems very good at filtering spam) in the pet name for your van, and use an internet café which you can get for a euro a visit and just insert your memory stick to take stuff away! Send a round robin to tell your friends – don’t auto reply or you’ll advertise your address to spammers and folk you might not want to know you’re away! Mind you for over about 60 pounds a month and a four figure outlay and you can have a satellite dish that’ll give you 24 hour broadband connection throughout Europe.

[Guest Clive]

We do! Initially with simple Laptop & dial up with mobile phone at 9600 baud. Now phone is GPRS enabled so its 3 times as fast (like old home dial up speed). Use webmail to check your mailbox and only download what you want. With 9600 dial up its expensive because its charged on connect time. With GPRS you don,t hurry because you are only charged for the amount of data you up/download. On the continent the 9600 phone method is roughly 10 times the cost it is in the UK. But GPRS is not such a big mark up. But its all inside your van. Internet Cafe's are much cheaper if you want to put yourself out. I suspect that Martin has not tried either GPRS or accessing his email via webmail. He has given up to easilly! Convienience costs though! I allow up to £50 for my mobile phone costs over a 3 week period in France. This includes checking email every other night or so. If you intend to stay abroad longer then get a phone (or SIM card) locally, its a lot cheaper. Good luck

[Guest PeteC]

We hae a Vodafone 'Mobile Connect Card' Give grps conection from the laptop NO MOBILE involved Card came frome a computer shop at £95 (BT £199, Internet £45) Cost about £5 to £14 per Mb depending on where you are. but is about 7 times faster than dil up (slow to my home broadband 2Mb) You only pay for data transfer and not while you are on air 'reading things or typing) Comes with a set up CD and a sim card Go to the Vpone web site - doesnt make things clear though in my opinion

[Guest jenny]

Thanks for the useful info it should help to sort me out. Still can't find the article/letter!