Very dense and obvious question that I can't get my head around.
When we go to Brisbane in 11 sleeps (yay!), and I take my laptop so as to run my important and busy life whilst I'm away (ahem) - how do I do it?
I've got the built in wifi, but haven't experimented with it beyond my house. If I can find a wireless hotspot or whatever they're called, how do I connect?
And does my mail still arrive in my mail box?
I know it is terribly obvious to you clever people, but to me it is just bamboozling.
8 comments:
Well, that depends. If you have a Mac, life is easy and when you turn it on, it will just join any network that it finds. Very social they are. If it's a PC, send $1 million to Bill Gates and leave your laptop at home because it will just be easier that way. Are the kids coming on this trip? Will you be in Brisbane the whole time?
Ha! If I had the million dollars in the first place to buy the Mac I'd be holidaying in Rio de Janeiro.
Yes, we're taking the kids, and we're going to tour around a bit, checking out the sights and beaches. No swimming in the sea though. Crikey.
I'm on holiday at the mo' and I've got a PC and it's been very easy; cosying up to insecure hotel, cafe, house and university wifi networks all over the US.
If the network's not secure it just makes it up as it goes along and would happily download if I popped mail anymore but I don't so it doesn't, if the network's secure I need a key to log on and I need to be told what that is before I can log in.
Here most hotels (and cafes) have slow but free wifi, and two of them we could get it in our room but this hotel I have an ethernet cable (do take one along, it's the cable that looks kind of like the plug that plugs a receiver into a phone at both ends) to plug into the wall, if I want wifi I have to go down to the lobby.
But Susan, you're very clever, and have a lovely new laptop. We're kind of like floundering, well, flounders.
Talk to your ISP - whoever you connect to the Internet by - they will tell you what global roaming partners they have and how you connect to them in Brizzie. All the ISPs I know are in one of a small number of international reciprocal agreements, some or all of which include wifi in some places.
Alternatively the place you're staying in might give/rent you access.
Otherwise you'll need an unsecured wifi spot. I don't know how many unsecured wifi spots there are in Briz, perhaps some googling is in order too
(take me with you)
sorry, didn't finish
As for the email, it depends on the deal, and on how you collect your mail now. If you download it to your computer, you should be able to download OK once you have a connection, but you may or may not need to change some settings to send mail. If you use webmail, the email will carry on arriving in your online mailbox and you'll carry on using webmail just the same. A lot of people (eg, me) use webmail when travelling just to sidestep the whole where-is-my-mail-going bizzo, again most ISPs have some form of webmail tool you can use at no extra cost. It's slower in some ways, but you can get to it from any web-enabled computer anywhere in the world without having to do anything at all.
Cathi, why don't you come with us? You can open my emails for me, and get up with the kids at 4am as they adjust to the time difference.
Perfect.
If it's unsecured just watch out for some bugger sniffing your packets ;)
(packets of data you send back and forth whenever you access info)
Sniffing packets - it just sounds so delightfully crude.
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