A Dozen Hints for Getting On-Line
Experience of a year getting a laptop
connected, anywhere.
Many of the uses that I've put my mac Powerbook
to this year require going on line. Some, like email, are data-light. Others,
like ordering a Photo Book, require uploads of dozens of megabytes. The
techniques of connectivity are well known and available on any new laptop:
dial-up, GPRS, wifi and wired ethernet. After virtually a whole year of using
all of these I've learned more about when to use what than I knew when I left
home. Here's the story...
The first blog that I posted after we left England was from Johannesburg airport, appropriately using the mac's Airport wifi capability. Later in the same month I managed to wifi email through from Maun airport in Botswana, then using an unprotected network run by one of the travel operators. Hint 1: buy one of those key-ring wifi network detectors. I didn't, and the only way I have of detecting unadvertised hot spots is to open my mac up and see if there's one there. Personally, I have no appetite for trying to guess passwords on protected networks and I only scam bandwidth when I don't think the owners would mind - I have no appetite for cruising around outside apartment blocks trying to steal coverage from private individuals who may have monthly usage limits.
Wireless networks, though, are patchy and I do (Hint 2) often use freeware (AP Grapher) for finding the best place to sit when I'm going online with wifi.
My disposition to favour wireless was further strengthened at a very early stage in our trip by stumbling unexpectedly across a cafe that offered free wifi in the HIgh Street of Livingstone, Zambia. The place was run by a South African who had set up a satellite dish and a wireless router for his own use and that he made available to anyone who cared to log on, at no cost and with no promise that it would work.
Throughout much of our month in Africa we were camping and had no electricity. I tended to write blogs, which I guess were probably relatively short, very quickly to conserve my battery and often by the light of our campfires. When we got to relatively major towns I'd (Hint 3) find the best hotel I could and ask if they could connect me. Surprisingly often, they could and until right at the end of our first month every hotel that had some sort of internet capability let me use it. My first rejection was by a young middle manager in a large hotel at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront complex. I knew before I asked him that he might refuse me: he had that officious look and I needed a shave.
I continued to find that large international airports often have hot spots, and often they are free, especially in the restricted lounges. Often as we get to the end of the month I try to get all of my heavy duty stuff (Photo Books, the girls' newsletters and our web photo albums) lined up so that I can dispatch them at the airport and not have to worry about them as we start our next month.
One surprise (Hint 4) was that connectivity was less easy to obtain at the places we went to in the USA than I had anticipated. Having left southern Africa, Morocco and Corsica behind I thought in the States we'd be slipping between wireless networks with barely a gap in coverage; I couldn't have been more wrong. Throughout most of Maine we had no phone signal, let alone wifi. On the plus side, some of the most congenial hot spots that we found were there (Hint 5): The Opera House cafe at Bar Harbour, a bookshop in Castine and the public library, which was very rich New England with comfy armchairs and sofas, in Blue Hill. Alaska was similar: even the Starbucks franchises didn't have wifi. Again, in Fairbanks I used the free wifi at the public library, although on the day before we left I also found a cafe that had the best coffee and that also offered wifi.
Elsewhere I've found numerous wifi spots, though (Hint 6) I soon gave up using a directory of hot spots (JWire in my case, I think) that I'd downloaded before I left home because while it may work well in Tokyo or San Francisco (I don't know) it was completely useless at the places we've visited.
Much as I might criticise global US chains, I've used Starbucks from time to time, most notably in Santiago. It seems that they franchise out their wifi to local providers with varying success (the Santiago service was far better than the Bangkok service, for example). The Starbucks I used in Santiago also had the nice feature that the extremely friendly staff often gave me free lattes. Even at its best, though, Starbucks is not as appealing as the best independents. One that I photographed in the blog entitled Forget Starbucks was at the island of Ko Libong off the coast of Thailand somewhere south of Phuket. HInt 7: it's one the world's hottest/coolest hot spots. Thoughtful readers will notice that the beach is not actually the best place from which to use your laptop, both because of the glare of the sun on the screen and the danger of getting sand in the gubbins; but you can log on under the covered veranda and enjoy a beer while gazing out over the sea.
In the places we've stayed where wireless spots were not conveniently available I have often used a bluetooth link to my phone to obtain a GPRS web link. This has the advantage that I can use it in many (but not all) countries where I can get a mobile phone signal, and I can do it at any time from wherever we happen to be. It was the only form of connectivity I used in Morocco and Corsica, and the main one that I used in Tasmania. I've also used it variously elsewhere, from Africa onwards and am also using it, between, wifi hits, here in Switzerland. Because what you're reading now is a simple entry with no photos I'll attempt to post it using GPRS. The disadvantages are (Hint 8) that it's very expensive (you pay be the Mb, not the minute), it's slow and it's very unreliable. Regular Out to Lunch readers will have experienced problems from time to time opening a blog or viewing an embedded image. These problems all arise from the fragility of the GPRS link. Worse, when my blog software craps out while I'm publishing it can lose the publish state and not then know how to do an incremental update, which has two or three times required me to re-publish the entire site.
During the year I anticipated that there would be times when we'd reach places, by choice, so remote that no web link from my mac was possible. This only happened twice: at the Black Sheep Inn in Ecuador, where guests can use a PC with a problematic dial-up link, and at Les Relais de Josephine on the atoll of Rangiroa. Both were otherwise excellent places for reasons directly related to their remoteness. Owners of establishments who really want to give you internet access can do so. This was illustrated well at Estancia Los Potreros, which is in a most remote region of Argentina. Electricity comes from wind turbines and Robin, the owner, is a discreet fan of computers and has signed up for satellite connectivity that he offers through wifi to the Estancia's patrons.
The only place where I've resorted to a dial-up link has been Bhutan, where outside of Thimphu, the capital, nothing else is available. None of the hotels are really set up to provide laptop access but (Hint 9) if you ask nicely they might give you their access credentials and let you connect over their phone line. At one hotel I was even allowed to disconnect the receptionist's PC to do this. The reason I haven't used dial-up elsewhere instead of GPRS is that it seemed expensive to pay all year for an internet account that I wouldn't be using much. Moreover, the countries where I was most likely to need dial-up are precisely those countries for which the ISP's don't seem to have access numbers.
One lesson that this year has brought home to me is (Hint 10) wired ethernet is best. Even where wireless is available I prefer to use wired if I can because it's much faster and far more reliable. Yesterday, for example, I tried to order my Bhutan Photo Book on line at a place down the road offering wifi, but after 45 minutes I was only a third of the way through and had to give up. I'm sure that that's a problem with the wireless network, not ADSL, and if I had been able to run my ethernet cable into the router it would have been done before I'd finished my vin chaud.
Until we reached Thailand I rarely went into an internet cafe, partly because I prefer to use my mac rather than someone else's terminal and partly because they're grim places - nothing to do with cafes in most instances - and often full of kids playing video games. When writing a blog you can, like my friend Kim, use software that you access on line and write your entries during your on-line session. This suits many people because you can nip into any internet cafe and get the thing done and posted in one hit. In my case, though, my blogs these days average, I'd guess, about 2,500 words (these Owl ones are shorties) and even though I write them very quickly my raw typing speed is such that they take an hour or more to get down. And since I'm spending that long on them I'd prefer to be arranging my own comfort. So if you're planning to write longish blogs, my advice (Hint 11) is to get some software with which you can compose them on your own machine.
My final recommendation is the one that I most wish I'd been aware of a year ago - then I wouldn't have used GPRS nearly so much. I discovered in Thailand (Hint 12) that if I go into an internet cafe with my mac I'll often be allowed to take the ethernet cable out of one of the PC's and plug it into my mac. Occasionally they don't like it but usually it's okay. Some places even have unattached ethernet cables that you can use. I dare say that it in the US, where many people are terrified of any unusual action, you might find yourself face down on the floor with a gun in your head if you go ahead and try the same thing. And in the UK, where people can often be obstreperous (or "up themselves", as the Aussies say), you might also get a frosty No. But the co-opted network line became my usual mode of access in Thailand and then in Laos, and it would have been the norm also in Morocco and Corsica too, if I'd thought to try it. If you can't find a nice access point, like The Opera House in Maine, where you're happy to hang out for a while the next best thing is to be wired into an ADSL network so that you can get your transaction done quickly and well.
The first blog that I posted after we left England was from Johannesburg airport, appropriately using the mac's Airport wifi capability. Later in the same month I managed to wifi email through from Maun airport in Botswana, then using an unprotected network run by one of the travel operators. Hint 1: buy one of those key-ring wifi network detectors. I didn't, and the only way I have of detecting unadvertised hot spots is to open my mac up and see if there's one there. Personally, I have no appetite for trying to guess passwords on protected networks and I only scam bandwidth when I don't think the owners would mind - I have no appetite for cruising around outside apartment blocks trying to steal coverage from private individuals who may have monthly usage limits.
Wireless networks, though, are patchy and I do (Hint 2) often use freeware (AP Grapher) for finding the best place to sit when I'm going online with wifi.
My disposition to favour wireless was further strengthened at a very early stage in our trip by stumbling unexpectedly across a cafe that offered free wifi in the HIgh Street of Livingstone, Zambia. The place was run by a South African who had set up a satellite dish and a wireless router for his own use and that he made available to anyone who cared to log on, at no cost and with no promise that it would work.
Throughout much of our month in Africa we were camping and had no electricity. I tended to write blogs, which I guess were probably relatively short, very quickly to conserve my battery and often by the light of our campfires. When we got to relatively major towns I'd (Hint 3) find the best hotel I could and ask if they could connect me. Surprisingly often, they could and until right at the end of our first month every hotel that had some sort of internet capability let me use it. My first rejection was by a young middle manager in a large hotel at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront complex. I knew before I asked him that he might refuse me: he had that officious look and I needed a shave.
I continued to find that large international airports often have hot spots, and often they are free, especially in the restricted lounges. Often as we get to the end of the month I try to get all of my heavy duty stuff (Photo Books, the girls' newsletters and our web photo albums) lined up so that I can dispatch them at the airport and not have to worry about them as we start our next month.
One surprise (Hint 4) was that connectivity was less easy to obtain at the places we went to in the USA than I had anticipated. Having left southern Africa, Morocco and Corsica behind I thought in the States we'd be slipping between wireless networks with barely a gap in coverage; I couldn't have been more wrong. Throughout most of Maine we had no phone signal, let alone wifi. On the plus side, some of the most congenial hot spots that we found were there (Hint 5): The Opera House cafe at Bar Harbour, a bookshop in Castine and the public library, which was very rich New England with comfy armchairs and sofas, in Blue Hill. Alaska was similar: even the Starbucks franchises didn't have wifi. Again, in Fairbanks I used the free wifi at the public library, although on the day before we left I also found a cafe that had the best coffee and that also offered wifi.
Elsewhere I've found numerous wifi spots, though (Hint 6) I soon gave up using a directory of hot spots (JWire in my case, I think) that I'd downloaded before I left home because while it may work well in Tokyo or San Francisco (I don't know) it was completely useless at the places we've visited.
Much as I might criticise global US chains, I've used Starbucks from time to time, most notably in Santiago. It seems that they franchise out their wifi to local providers with varying success (the Santiago service was far better than the Bangkok service, for example). The Starbucks I used in Santiago also had the nice feature that the extremely friendly staff often gave me free lattes. Even at its best, though, Starbucks is not as appealing as the best independents. One that I photographed in the blog entitled Forget Starbucks was at the island of Ko Libong off the coast of Thailand somewhere south of Phuket. HInt 7: it's one the world's hottest/coolest hot spots. Thoughtful readers will notice that the beach is not actually the best place from which to use your laptop, both because of the glare of the sun on the screen and the danger of getting sand in the gubbins; but you can log on under the covered veranda and enjoy a beer while gazing out over the sea.
In the places we've stayed where wireless spots were not conveniently available I have often used a bluetooth link to my phone to obtain a GPRS web link. This has the advantage that I can use it in many (but not all) countries where I can get a mobile phone signal, and I can do it at any time from wherever we happen to be. It was the only form of connectivity I used in Morocco and Corsica, and the main one that I used in Tasmania. I've also used it variously elsewhere, from Africa onwards and am also using it, between, wifi hits, here in Switzerland. Because what you're reading now is a simple entry with no photos I'll attempt to post it using GPRS. The disadvantages are (Hint 8) that it's very expensive (you pay be the Mb, not the minute), it's slow and it's very unreliable. Regular Out to Lunch readers will have experienced problems from time to time opening a blog or viewing an embedded image. These problems all arise from the fragility of the GPRS link. Worse, when my blog software craps out while I'm publishing it can lose the publish state and not then know how to do an incremental update, which has two or three times required me to re-publish the entire site.
During the year I anticipated that there would be times when we'd reach places, by choice, so remote that no web link from my mac was possible. This only happened twice: at the Black Sheep Inn in Ecuador, where guests can use a PC with a problematic dial-up link, and at Les Relais de Josephine on the atoll of Rangiroa. Both were otherwise excellent places for reasons directly related to their remoteness. Owners of establishments who really want to give you internet access can do so. This was illustrated well at Estancia Los Potreros, which is in a most remote region of Argentina. Electricity comes from wind turbines and Robin, the owner, is a discreet fan of computers and has signed up for satellite connectivity that he offers through wifi to the Estancia's patrons.
The only place where I've resorted to a dial-up link has been Bhutan, where outside of Thimphu, the capital, nothing else is available. None of the hotels are really set up to provide laptop access but (Hint 9) if you ask nicely they might give you their access credentials and let you connect over their phone line. At one hotel I was even allowed to disconnect the receptionist's PC to do this. The reason I haven't used dial-up elsewhere instead of GPRS is that it seemed expensive to pay all year for an internet account that I wouldn't be using much. Moreover, the countries where I was most likely to need dial-up are precisely those countries for which the ISP's don't seem to have access numbers.
One lesson that this year has brought home to me is (Hint 10) wired ethernet is best. Even where wireless is available I prefer to use wired if I can because it's much faster and far more reliable. Yesterday, for example, I tried to order my Bhutan Photo Book on line at a place down the road offering wifi, but after 45 minutes I was only a third of the way through and had to give up. I'm sure that that's a problem with the wireless network, not ADSL, and if I had been able to run my ethernet cable into the router it would have been done before I'd finished my vin chaud.
Until we reached Thailand I rarely went into an internet cafe, partly because I prefer to use my mac rather than someone else's terminal and partly because they're grim places - nothing to do with cafes in most instances - and often full of kids playing video games. When writing a blog you can, like my friend Kim, use software that you access on line and write your entries during your on-line session. This suits many people because you can nip into any internet cafe and get the thing done and posted in one hit. In my case, though, my blogs these days average, I'd guess, about 2,500 words (these Owl ones are shorties) and even though I write them very quickly my raw typing speed is such that they take an hour or more to get down. And since I'm spending that long on them I'd prefer to be arranging my own comfort. So if you're planning to write longish blogs, my advice (Hint 11) is to get some software with which you can compose them on your own machine.
My final recommendation is the one that I most wish I'd been aware of a year ago - then I wouldn't have used GPRS nearly so much. I discovered in Thailand (Hint 12) that if I go into an internet cafe with my mac I'll often be allowed to take the ethernet cable out of one of the PC's and plug it into my mac. Occasionally they don't like it but usually it's okay. Some places even have unattached ethernet cables that you can use. I dare say that it in the US, where many people are terrified of any unusual action, you might find yourself face down on the floor with a gun in your head if you go ahead and try the same thing. And in the UK, where people can often be obstreperous (or "up themselves", as the Aussies say), you might also get a frosty No. But the co-opted network line became my usual mode of access in Thailand and then in Laos, and it would have been the norm also in Morocco and Corsica too, if I'd thought to try it. If you can't find a nice access point, like The Opera House in Maine, where you're happy to hang out for a while the next best thing is to be wired into an ADSL network so that you can get your transaction done quickly and well.
Posted: Mon - March 20, 2006 at 04:47 PM
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Published On: Mar 20, 2006 05:17 PM
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Published On: Mar 20, 2006 05:17 PM