Internet Service Providers

USB drives which contain a small program to contain your email and internet settings are ideal for use in Internet Cafes. Keeps your data secure and safe and ideal for internet banking etc.
<A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.marinercomputers.co.uk/acatalog/usbstor.html>http://www.marinercomputers.co.uk/acatalog/usbstor.html</A>

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Just to add my bit.

I use AOL and Internet Cafe's when I'm out there. The costs have to be watched and there is no 'one size fits all' solution as each country (or even region) is different.

Costs are always an issue but IC's are usually the cheapest if you want to use e-mail and surf the web. The USB stick option mentioned elsewhre is OK - they are actually available up to 2Gb thats 2048Mb) but watchout for VIRUS infection and compatability issues.

As for mobile phones the situation is changing as we speak. When I'm not sailing I make my money in Computing and my wife from mobile phone 'software' so I think I know a bit about the technology.

Most of us are using a 'time on distance' billing systems for your phone calls where the phone company charges you related to the distance you call anf the time you are connected. this works pout very expensive for computer traffic where you want to be charged for bandwidth - ie the size of the e-mail you send etc. the mobile industry calls this many things but the most common in use right now is GPRS. 3G is comming as is a whole host of other things but expect the phone company to charge a lot for them. This whole area is a minefield and is constantly changing and some things work well in one place and not in another.

As someone who is in the industry I find it very hard to keep up and in order to minimise the costs as we travel we change systems and telecommunications providers so often I lose track. The only constant is that we keep AOL as my ISP - they give me my internet connection and e-mail address but have absoloutely nothing to do wiht the acutal comminucatgions or technicallties of connecting.

AOL are the best of a bas lot - each country has better (and worse) ISP services but at least AOL are consistant in every country. The charges mount up whatever way you do this it will cost.

IM me if you want any an explanation on any of the above.

Go0d luck.

<hr width=100% size=1>Temptress of Down
Southsea Marina
Hants
UK
 
My pennies worth too

"GPRS" is definitely not broadband as you are being missold by your phone shop

Internet speeds for the purposes of this post
Broadband; 512k upwards
Normal dial up; 56K
GPRS; 28-56K
Mobile data 9.6K

1p per email is fairly cheap in the country you buy your phone, but take it abroad and you are looking at £10 per megabyte, or £25 if you go to some asian regions.
I knocked up over £100 in my first month in France!
quoting orange spiel; "1 megabyte of GPRS use is equivalent to approximately 1200 wap pages or 20 web pages, 100 emails without attachments or 10 emails with a one-page attachment"
You can get pay as you go cards in countries you visit, but then GPRS is not usually available to pay as you go countries.

You can send email at any speed so you could use simple dial up on your pay as you go mobile and accept that email may take two or three minutes to send which is usually not too pricey
To get your internet access, you can use a company such as http://www.netaway.com who have a local ISP in most countries so you pay local calls wherever you are.
 
Re: My pennies worth too

Having researched this quite thoroughly now I can tell you that I believe O2 are the cheapest for GPRS at £6.50 per megabyte although you have a "daily one time connection charge" of £1.50. As far as speed is concerned the phones are all advertised as broadband by top shops such as "link" What the speed is I am not qualified to say. Your statement that you can get an ISP with a local phone call wherever you are is incorrect. They all, including AOL and the one you suggest have a premium rate regardless of giving you a local number to call. There is apparently an international agreement based on legal responsibility that stops ISPs giving you local connections wherever you are and the numbers they give you are either their own charged at a premium or someone elses that they have an agreement with also at a premium. All sounds like restrictive practice to me but there you are. My conclusion is that I will just keep our PAYG phones and tell everyone to text. FAR cheaper. A text can alert you to any emergency and then you can call back on either mobile or land line. Internet Cafes, as everyone has said are by far the best way to keep those at home abreast of where you are and exchange trivia on a weekly basis if you so choose. Now all I need to do is deal with her mother...... Perhaps there are local mafiosi over there who can help.....

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Thanks for that "Temptress" Very clear.
As you can see from my other posts I am coming to some kind of understanding now that it is indeed as big a "minefield" as you suggest! I'm glad it confuses the professionals as much as geriatric old farts like me. Perhaps it's not me after all! The whole issue is made much more complicated by the fact that none of the web sites of the ISP's seem to give costs of phoning from outside the country and talking to a human being who speaks plain English (or in some case English at all) is impossible. The OAL website is one of the few that gives you technical help before you sign up. If you phone them and ask what the weather is like where they are though you find you are talking to someone who sounds like Peter Sellers and lives in Mombai ..... When he actually said "Goodness me" I almost corpsed...Don't you just love call centres? And he did not answer the question either.
It seems they all want you to sign up before you find out the hard way how much it costs. Bit like a London clip joint really, get in free and pay to get out! Hence the horror stories on this link where people have run up big bills without realising it I suppose.
In the famous words of Ron Moody in "Oliver" "I think I'd better think it out again".....
Can't help thinking if the Laptop is NOT connected to the internet it won't get infected with a virus or "spyware" Main reason for having it is to run Nav programme after all and I don't want that corrupted. IC's are cheap by the minute and crew types a whole page in about 2 minutes so perhaps we will just do that....
Thinks........ Postcards sound good too and have a piccy on the front...... What an excellent idea!


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Re: Internet caffs

Sounds good to me old chap. Also limits "er inside" from verbal diahorrea if she has to type it all herself. Can see it now.... Heres €5 fill yer boots while I go for a cold beer next door...... YES!

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Re: Internet caffs

Sounds good to me old chap. Also limits "er inside" from verbal diahorrea if she has to type it all herself. Can see it now.... Heres 5 euros fill yer boots while I go for a cold beer next door...... YES!

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Not sure, other than it appears to have file synchronisation, what this offers over and above a memory stick. Currently purchasing a USB2 1Gb Pen drive for £49.95 plus VAT(as opposed to £33 for 128kb) from <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.aria.co.uk>http://www.aria.co.uk</A> - admittedly it's a special offer. You could put a lot of emails on that !

HWMBO has bigger plans for the drive which we will relay if successful !

<hr width=100% size=1>a pragmatist is an optimist with a boat in the UK - but serious about not being in the UK !
 
The internet cafe idea is pretty good, but you might sometimes be able to save yourself a hike and link your laptop to a local wifi network at/near the marina using a wifi card.

I bought a wifi (wirelesss lan) adaptor) yesterday and plugged it in and the number of access points near the boat is surprising. The marina does a £30 a month deal, but I managed to connect via another access point someone had set at no cost.

It might not alway work, but at £30 or £40 for the adaptor it is probably worth taking along.

More and more cafes --( eg Starbucks) have wifi hotspots available so its a workable supplement to the internet cafe option

Using mobile phones is expensive and slow, so I wouldn't really bother. The other option is satellite phone -- expensive too.

If you have problems setting up the WiFI your local pc shop can help or your kids/neighbours kids, will be able to do it.

Best regards,

Nick







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Re: Internet caffs

five euros eh? She will have to do some yabbering - i end up wondering what sort of ninny entrepreneur wd rent a citycentre shop, buy a load of computers and then wait patiently for me to turn up and pay under 5 euros an HOUR.

Note that some places have only a few qwerty keyboards whereas norm in mainland europe is stil azerty, which means the msge have to be even briefer.

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GPRS is worth looking in to as it is a bulk system which charges by the amount of data not the time on line.We used o2's gprs service for £7 per megabyte in France and Spain with some success.If gprs didn't work we used a local aol dial up number.

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Yes... Having looked in to it though it does not just cost £6.50-£7.00 per megabyte which sounds fine, it also costs £1.50 per day to "sign on". if you did that every day it would cost £45 month before you start to send data.... Plus £20 month for a contract..... Plus whatever you send say £15 per month = £80 per month X 6 months say = £480 ...... Thats an awful lot of internet cafe time! Naah... Send the buggers a postcard and spend it on booze instead!

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Have a look at 'Cruising in European Waters' on my website - Link below.

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.yachtretreat.com>http://www.yachtretreat.com</A>
 
WiFi and ISPs question.

I've been thinking about going down the WiFi route since many marinas worldwide seem to be installing it. I agree it sounds a whole lot cheaper than relying on a mobile phone, for anyone wanting a service on their own boat while travelling.

Do you also need to arrange your own ISP in order to use WiFi, or is that incorporated in the service as provided? If the latter, does one need an internet based mailer like Hotmail?

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Re: WiFi and ISPs question.

You don't need an ISP as the WiFi setup connects you to the Internet. The Marina company has a connection to the Internet via their own ISP which they make available to you, usually for a fee, via a WiFi link. It's really just the same as your neighbour having a broadband connection and making it available to you via WiFi.

However, you do need an email account you can use once you are on line. Hotmail, Yahoo or any other webmail service is one way. Many ISP's also offer web access to your normal POP mailbox which means you can continue to use that. Alternatively, you can use <A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.mail2web.com/> Mail2Web</A> which gives you access to the vast majority of POP boxes.

<hr width=100% size=1><A target="_blank" HREF=http://www.yachtretreat.com>http://www.yachtretreat.com</A>
 
Re: Internet caffs

And I thought sailing away was to get away from all of this. Am I an anacronistic romantic?

<hr width=100% size=1>"If you're too open minded your brains fall out"
 
Re: Internet caffs

Five Euro?
Far to expansive!

Here, in Spain you'll get a very good ADSL connection at 3 Euro/h, or even, shopping around 2Euros!

So why all the hassle of WiFi, G3, you name it?

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CDs etc

If I want to update my website via an internet cafe, can I create the file onboard and then store on a CD/DVD/USB memory stick and upload via an internet cafe?

I had heard that in some cases they don't allow other storage devices as a precaution against viri.

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