Ideal Laptop combination

one addition is Bluetooth, a close range wireless connection between Mobile phone and laptop. Preferable to infra red, as you don't have to keep the infra red aligned (fairly critical for good comms between the two, and a bit of a pain on a moving boat), just have phone somewhere within 10m of laptop, but phone has to be bluetooth (common these days) and if laptop doesn't already have bluetooth, you can buy a bluetooth USB adaptor for about £10 or less on ebay or similar

The laptop then uses the phone to communicate as normal on the two tariffs that Woofy mentions. I'd go for GPRS everytime, though even faster is 3G connection which brings the phone data connection even faster, but coverage is quite limited as yet.
 
GPRS in France its very expensive costing anything from 3 euros a meg and way more infa red also flatens the phone battery really fast,as i found out when my bluetooth connection was out of order (dell replaced my pda i called in the afternoon next morning 9am a new one arrived!! amazing service!!)

Now tele2 is offering 30mins telephone for 9euros or 1hr for 14euro if you use the sim card (15euros) in your own phone extra time costs 0.30euros/min Its the clearest tarrif structure of any provider.

GPRS also very clear 1euro/meg so far so good but GRRS will only work if you accept a free phone and pay 14euros pm for 2years and gives 30mins calls pm then 0.30euro/min

Their site has said for the last 2 months "gprs download" to set up your own phone comming soon pity!!!!! But somthing for those of you in France to watch as you can stop the subscription at any time and the calls are charged per second without any connection fee plus the coverage is 99%!!

I use my PDA and a hobbs wi-fi detector which tells me not only that there is a connection but strength and open or secure, which lets me choose my cafe to have breakfast and or lunch while checking my emails,

sometimes i take my laptop thankfully a small IBM X40 which has 7hr+ battery life and a small 12inch screen and still manages a full size key board even so its only a "coffee at cafe table" machine as at lunch its still to big!!!

Being on a canal dose meen the boat is often near enough a wi-fi connection

I have a question: why dont telecoms use wimax?? in some parts of France you pay as little a 8euros pm and have a 512kbs connection and wimax provides up to 40megs/sec at extra cost!! and covers 20/30 square kilometers or more which meens you can be in a pleasant place even far away from town and still get online and have a good skype connection with it??
 
Because wimax is a broadband wifi technology, not a telco technology. THe equivalent of wimax on telecomms is 3G. No way can telcos provide wimax, it's completely different technology. Telcos have to provide coverage over miles and miles, while wifi is coverage over a 100m max unless you have directional antennae and repeaters etc. Can't see why you'd think telcos could provide this if you have any idea of the technology required to provide these things
 
yes! In France to have a wimax connection at 70megbits/sec costs 59euros including rental of the anntena box and monthly accsses charge the ONLY reason its not so widly used is becouse a slow ADSL costs from 9euros to 20 euros PM for 8megbits/sec connection

Both systems include unlimited telephone within France

France also has wi Bro for bussines and government which unlike the 802.16 only gives a 5kms coverage

3G is also being set up but has very limmited coverage and phones with very short battery life at the moment, for private use its very expensive! but for companies the rate can be negotiated and is very reasonable -i seem to remember voderphone charging 60eurosPM for unlimmited 3G but as i say out side Paris and even there, coverage is very limmited

At the moment 67 collectivtés territoriales have wi-max and in jan 06 the number will increase as d aititude telecom brings more annteners into service
 
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infa red also flatens the phone battery really fast

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I did not know that, the times I log on using the telephone I am almost using an egg timer. 5p per minute on my tariff, so log in, get mail, check weather, log out.

When we move aboard I will choose a tariff based more on data than what I have now.
 
I must admit that I find all of the available technologies fanastic, giving a wide range of options to access email the internet on the move.

The technology is there to do almost anything you want with perhaps the only bar or consideration being the relative cost. That to me is a better scenario than than limited options at low cost. Over time all of these costs will come down.

I'm about to order a 3G wireless router to see if I can get away without using my laptop on board and use my PSP instead.
 
3G is the latest mobile phone data standard, one up from GPRS. Current speeds are around 350kbps so faster than GPRS and landline and a bit slower than normal broadband and wifi, but to be honest not that noticably.

For a laptop all you need is a 3G card from any network and away you go, giving near broadband speeds. Upside is greater coverage than wifi, downside is much higher cost to use.

It appears that there are now also 3G wireless routers that act like broadband wireless routers so you can use any number of wifi enabled devices to access the internet wirelessly via the router using the mobile network. Again usage costs are naturally higher.

Apart from the cost 3G phones are quite cool, I can currently get Sky One, Sky Sports, Sky Movies, At The Races, Channel 4, MTV and about 10 other tv channels live on my phone.
 
One other thing that hasn't been mentioned so far, if you plan to use WiFi much it helps to have one small and light, since you will need to lug it about to hotspots as you travel around.

BTW on board away from marinas, recharge with a 12v DC converter rather than an inverter has it has much lower power consumption. However, converters may struggle with heavy power consumption, e.g. when viewing DVDs. Targus make a multi-voltage converter if you can't find one specifically for your PC.
 
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