Notebooks

Rossinm

Thanks Cedar! I will look into it.

indiamike

From a hotel room you may have problems because most hotel phones are hard wired, by that I mean there are no jacks where you can just unplug the phone and stick a modem cable in them. There are some but it's rare.

More than likely you will probably have to use a cyber cafe or if the hotel has a computer plug in from there. Now convincing either of the two that you going to use their phone lines and that they won't be charged for it may be another story all together. M2 suggested plugging into the ethernet hub which is probably going to be your best bet.

Hope this helps some.

Mike

paan wallah

how about the new UMTS standard with handys?
in combination with a notebook it can/could work..
as far as I know you could combine your handy with a notebook with special adapters and have internet connection..
but this technolygy is still develeloping..
sorry can t give you more infos as I don t neither use handys nor notebooks..
just have a look at some pc sites as there are millions on the internet

-m2-

be sure and let us know how this program works out, cedar, and have a great trip!

cedar

It sounds like there might not be many hotel rooms where I'll be able to plug the phone line into the confuzer. So be it. Too, I don't know whether I can convince a cafe manager to let me plug my 'fuzer into his phone line. I've promised to send fresh pictures home thus letting the family (as it were) to know I'm OK. I've been assured the program installed on my laptop can dial up anywhere in the world using the company ISP. I hope to confirm this one way or the other and I shall let you know.

In fact, I hope to be letting you know in about a week and a half. This trip has been in the planning stages for 14 months and I'm about worn out from bouncing off the walls everytime someone asks me about it. Indeed, the anticipation is sweet and I'm ready to be assaulted again, assaulted with sensory overload, assaulted by the taxi wallahs and touts, ready to negotiate all the travel issues that will need to be dealt with. I've been ready for nearly a year now. You will be hearing back from me. Thanks for all your help with the notebook issue.

picklepak

Hi gang, I'm back in Canada. I'd like to say that it's nice to be back but... oh, the fact is I'd rather still be traveling in India.

I'm a writer and I wrote most of my book over the 8 months I spent in India last year (+ 4mths in Asia). I've now been through two computers and two hard drives. For the most part I was trouble-free except for my own mistakes. Here are my experiences.

(1) get the best, small surge protector you can get. My brother found one at Wal-Mart and shipped it to me, it has a world-wide travel plugs built into it as well. Often many places in India use florescent lights and so you don't see how incredibly much the voltage is fluctuating. It's really bad. When it gets that bad I unplug and run off batteries until things stabilize a bit.

(2) don't use "resume" mode on your laptop while traveling in the Himalayas. I took a bus trip up the Kulu Valley and my IBM Thinkpad somehow turned itself on... over the course of the next month I slowly lost nearly every file on my computer... but I saved my book!

(3) BACKUP! Whatever you have, back it up! I brought along a tiny SmartCard reader and 4x64Mb SmartCards, at first so I could download pictures from my digital camera into my computer. Well, it's a two-way street and I can backup my files back onto SmartMedia as well, in case my laptop gets stolen from my room.

(4) CD backups... If you really look, you'll find people who have CD-RW nowadays, I get emails telling me they're only 3100-/Rs now so people are starting to buy them. With the hard drive failure, I still lost some of my digital pictures that I took in Karnataka.

(5) get padded. I had sewn my own soft cloth covering for my laptop, added some foam sponges, and stuffed it into a courier bag. That way it's well protected and no one knows what you have. I traveled across very bumpy, terrible roads in Laos, Vietnam, Thailand and India for more than six months without a failure. It wasn't until I got home that the hard drive went.

(6) I carried a Pac-Safe with me, just for the laptop. I never, ever used it on the outside of my pack or when traveling. I always put my laptop into its case, put the case inside the Pac-Safe, but the Pac-Safe inside my rucksack, and locked it all up. That way, even through the window no one sees that you have anything valuable. Even on the beach in flimsy beach shacks I left my laptop for days without any problems.

Internet?

Okay, as for the internet I never got hooked up. I brought an ethernet card with me but I could never be bothered, it seems like such a waste considering how slow everything is. You could hook into someone's hub and probably get a DHCP address right away if you know what you're doing. If you don't, just reboot your computer with it plugged in.

What I did was write emails on my laptop, copy them to a floppy and take the floppy in with me. I also look my SmartMedia card reader & driver in with me several times as well, to send larger things like pictures or to download something off the web.

If you're staying for a long time in India, you should consider buying a cell-phone. They use GSM phones all across India and they're much more advanced than in North America. They're not *that* expensive and coverage is pretty good. With the right data cable and a subscription to Satyam you should be able to get a (slow) connection anytime, anywhere.

Incidentally, I now travel with a Sony Picturebook. It's extremely small. I bought it used on eBay for $770 from a guy in New York when I was in India, and had it shipped to me in Thailand. Cool. It's small enough that I carried it with me almost anywhere.

Cheers,
k

cedar

PicklePack, all good advice. Thanks much. Mine is a Sony Vaio. I'm not taking the case but will be keeping it in my bag (large enough to have clothes padding it all around) and won't leave it anywhere except in my locked room. Your idea of additonally placing it in a sack is a good one. That would provide firther protection from dust as well as prying eyes.

I've as much as resigned myself to not getting online with it since most phones won't be unplugged. Your idea of writing e-mails and saving them to a floppy is a good one.

The Sony came with its own surge protector, but protecting it from surges during questionable power supplies is good. Just which adaptor worked for the outlest over there? I acquired a selection but wonder if I can avoid taking them all.

Thanks again for sharing all your experience. Leaving in 6 days to spend a month, first in the north and then down south. The anticipation is sweet.