notebook emails via internet cafes

[briananddoreen]

As my wife and I will be in the med this year on our moody carbineer can any one advise me of a list of internet cafes or other places to plug in to send and receive emails from family & friends. I have just bought a laptop/notebook to run electronic charts and am hoping to use this for keeping in touch. I am also a complete dunce, thickhead and computer dummy, so please answer in simple terms that an oldster can understand.
We will be going to France, Corsica, Sardinia & Italy, then Greece via the Corinth Canal then over to Turkey for as long as it takes, so any advice from persons who have experience of this subject would be greatly apreciated.

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[scarlett]

There are internet cafes in most small harbour villages in the Ionian at least. Prices range from one Euro to five Euro per hour. As far as I know you can just use their computers. If I were an internet cafe, I would not let you put your media in my computer for fear of viruses.

With a modem equiped laptop and an ISP, there is no reason why you could not plug straight into the phone network at a lower price, if you can find a friendly socket.

On board I use a Psion Organiser with an Orange mobile phone. Back to the UK this costs about 60p a minute and takes about 1.5 to three minutes to send and receive, for example 4 short emails. The variable time I believe to be due to data taking second place to voice calls. But it is only a guess there could be many reasons. In the UK the service is much faster and more reliable.



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[jeanne]

Apart from using internet cafes, have you considered Pocketmail? The gadget may be bought over the internet from www.pocketmail.com and now works over the public telephone network in most, but not all, european countries. It costs around $100US, and the yearly charges are reasonable. The phone costs are a local call in most cases and we found it usefulbefore getting online here in Spain.

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[jerryat]

Hi, In my experience of several years in the Med and elsewhere, I have not yet found an Internet Cafe that will let you plug in your own computer, as has been mentioned earlier. You can't blame them really, what with virus's, establishment costs etc, can you?

You will find these 'cafes' everywhere, even on the remotest islands, and they are, by comparison to this country, much cheaper. We carried a laptop on board, but only managed to persuade one marina (while over-wintering) to let us connect to their 'phone line, and then only for test purposes. Frankly, I'd use the local I. cafes: meet the local people, not have to worry about carting your laptop ashore in a dinghy, making sure it's safe all the time and having to drag it round with you whilst there!

Final (sort of associated) thought. Have you arranged insurance for the laptop while aboard/away? We discovered that by notifying our home insurers prior to leaving, they were happy to cover it with no extra charge! Amazingly to us, they took the same view over our expensive (Brompton) folding bikes!! Well worth checking though, as both, bikes especially, are regular targets in the Med!

Hope this helps and you have a great time!




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[snowleopard]

i have seen people plugging in their computer to send email but it really is simpler to use a floppy disk to transfer files between your pc, left safely on the boat) and an internet cafe machine. we were able to do this everywhere.

we would simply cut-and-paste between a text file on the floppy and incoming or outgoing emails. we could then read our messages at leisure without feeling rushed when prices got up to 20p a minute!

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[davidbains]

I don't know of any list of internet cafes. They come and go so fast the best thing is to ask on arrival somewhere. You can compose your emails while logged on to Yahoo. It's easy to set up an address before you go or anytime in fact. You can write emails onboard on your laptop and save them to a floppy disc. Then take the disc to the cafe and paste the written emails into the webmail. However most people type short mails at the cafe.
David.

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[GAJ]

Internet Cafes are few and far between in Italy, unlike Greece and Spain, so be prepared to spend some considerable time looking, they are almost as hard to find as Camping Gas!

Good luck

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[jerryat]

Hi Snow Leopard

Yep! Agree with you re the floppies, exactly what we did and so much simpler!

Just remembered, we DID see a couple (of Americans) using a laptop in an Int. Cafe in Antigua, but they were apparently being charged the same as if they'd used the terminals they were sat in front of. They saw me using floppies and decided to go that way themselves thereafter.

Makes I lot more sense to me to keep an expensive chunk of electronics like a laptop well away from the risk of being doused with brine!!

Good sailing!

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