Tech takes a holiday
Ahh, the travel email. That multi-page beast in which you inform every single person in your address book of every minute detail of your trip. If you've decided to travel with a laptop, and prefer a bit more control over your Internet access--typing in banking passwords at a public net café computer can feel a little dicey--there are a few options for accessing your home Internet account from abroad. Just be prepared to pay for the privilege. First option: Get a 3G/HSDPA data card for your laptop from a provider and then activate international roaming to get Internet access overseas. The downer is that the download speeds, cost and availability of roaming partners varies wildly. For example, with SingTel, you'd be paying S$13.69 (US$10.08) per megabyte of data downloaded when in the UK. It all depends on the roaming agreements that are in place with local network providers. Also, for providers like M1, there are few countries in which you can roam at 3G speeds--for the most part you're stuck with GPRS. Second option: Remote access to your home Internet account. Australia's BigPond offers global roaming at dial-up speeds using a roaming service called iPassConnect. Basically, you sign up to BigPond, install some software, and can then access the Internet via your Australian account when overseas. Cost is A$8 per hour. Of course, you'll need to plug your laptop into a phone line, so it's not exactly mobile. A third option is to rent a wireless card for your laptop that operates on one of the networks at your destination. This can be cheaper than global roaming if you're a Net addict. An Australian company called Wired Sky offers card rentals for trips to the US and New Zealand. Minimum rental period is one week, and cards can be shipped to Australia or your destination.
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