Hi Lutz,
You wrote "For example, with the GoBananas card, a call from any private telephone in Germany to the UK costs less than 1 cent per minute."
How does the card work? You write "private phone" so presumably that precludes call-boxes etc. Or is there a surcharge when using a call-box/public phone? I note that the 'Card4Anywhere' site quotes a surcharge of 18.5p/minute for using a public phone (which is still considerably cheaper than using my UK mobile).
With regard to security, First Direct have a similar log-in methodology as your bank, Mike P and we came to the same conclusion i.e. as a one-off event in any one particular internet cafe, it should be OK (ignoring paranoia). Under normal circumstances we should not need to log-on to the bank as everything including credit card statements will be paid by (variable) direct debit. So as long as we accurately track expenditure on my Dell Axim, backed up to my laptop and don't overspend........
So really that leaves us with keeping in contact with relatives/friends in the UK, Europe and Australia which will be mainly via email. I might just have talked myself out of getting a fancy new 3G whizzo phone - damn
Keith M