Wireless Internet for my Laptop

[Claire_5039866]

Help - having been persuaded that a laptop was essential for our trips we've just attempted to use it only for the other half to remember that he thinks he saw an article in the cc magazine about a piece of kit to enable him to use the laptop through his phone (it's all a bit technical for me). Does anybody know what we need. For all the - but it's supposed to be a get away from it all break people out there - if the kids and the other half are happy then I can get away from it all!

Thanks Claire

 

[chelsea1]

Be warned -

We were like you and wanted to take our laptop on holiday, so decided to buy a connection thing which attaches to our mobile phone (from any phone shop)...we were on holiday and looking up stuff on the internet - all worked fine...but when we got home we had a HUGE mobile phone bill of

 

[Surfer]

Careful how you connect to the Internet as it can cost you big bucks. The best deal so far is the following link. http://www.airtimemanager.co.uk/Datacard/3G_CostEffective.aspx For us package B is the better option as we do not have a landline but for yourselves I would recommend package A which allows 250mb of data for

 

[cris_408518]

Following was posted by myself and lol in response to Scotch Lad.

I am connected via bluetooth to my Nokia smart phone and we are in Padova after a day in Venice. It can be costly and if you have a smart phone with basic "Opera" browser it is cheaper than using laptop but more basic ( I also use Opera ). But have a read and I hope it helps

"Scotch Lad, has your phone got internet access? If you have not tried it before you may find that your service provider hasn't enabled it for you, it usually comes as part of a package when you buy the phone. I can only go on what my son has done with his phone. He bought an internet ready phone, with this came a lead that connects his phone to his laptop. Included with the phone was an installation disk that installed a program onto the laptop to give it the ability of using the phones internet access. If you have these items it is a straight forward case of installation and following the instructions, my son (with a little help from his old man) was up and running within 30 mins. Connection speed is quite slow and can only be compared to dialup internet access despite claims that it is similar to broadband. As for costs, they can vary greatly depending on your package and usage. Connect through the gprs system and you may only be paying for items that you download, this mean you can surf to your hearts content without paying extra, my son has a package where he pays a small fee to do this each month. I myself have an XDA which gives me access to the internet and have never paid any extra to browse the net.

Your first port of call must be your service provider to see what if any internet access you can get on your phone, and then take it from there."

----------------------------

"Virgin buy airtime from the likes of Vodafone I think!

So all possibilities may not be available! Friends have found this!

You need WAP and GPRS enabled phone at least with roaming enabled! Normally you pay to download info by the kb.

You can connect as I do to phone by infra red or blue tooth if you phone has either option.

I use mobile for laptop prog from www.webtogo.de @ a cost of 29 euro per year + call charges. It is sligtly faster than dial up normaly if you degrade picture quality afeature of the prog to savemoney and speed up downloads!

Anywhere I can get phone signal I can use net and book hotels and do banking etc!

Some internet enabled phones let you surf and send and receive email but will not let you do secure things like banking!

If your laptop is not a "centrino" type I would go for a wi-fi plug in card so you can connect at free or pay wi-fi hotspots in europe and UK. You can buy Wi-fi card from about

 

[Claire_5039866]

Thanks everybody I'm checking out all those suggestions.

 

[JohnI.Stephen]

Hello Claire:

I deal with this sort of thing all the time (it's what I do, so to speak). Yes, you can use your mobile phone to access the Internet, and the latest '3G' (very fast speeds) will work well. However, you'll pay through the nose.

As a result of this I am waiting for some enterprising site manager to establish a wireless internet service on their site which is not only cheap and easy to do (for them), it is also terrible easy for us (the clients).

Until then, a trip to the local Internet caf

 

[Lutz]

While not very common yet, WLAN on campsites is nevertheless not unheard of. A few already mention this facility in their advertising.

 

[Alan_5063033]

While not very common yet, WLAN on campsites is nevertheless not unheard of. A few already mention this facility in their advertising.

Just come back from Javea Spain where the WiFi costs 10Euros for 2 hours any time. Works fine on Yahoo but not Virgin. Huh?

Alan