Travelling and connecting notebook to internet

I have just purchased NOKIA data suite so that I can plug my mobil diret to laptop ,I have an older Nokia 5110 the cable and CDrom cost me $99 at the Nokia shop , Allphones Perth ph 94815555 you can also use it to send SMS mesages from the laptop hope this helpsBorn to drive a 4x4 , not a keyboard
Peter York 4x4

Andrew

that is possibly the most cost effective option. You could always leave the home computer on and have a modem hooked up to it and just dial into it (this is the setup I have - use an old crappy machine that runs 24/7 with a modem hooked up to it. The machine also acts as the internet gateway for the home network, allows me to dial into home, access the net and also any files etc), but by the time you add up all the long distance calls, a monthly subscription to bigpond might be the cheaper option.

How long will you be away for and how often to you think you will need to dialup?

cheers,
Sam.

Hi Andrew,

There is a Telstra service called GPRS. It allows you to use your mobile phone to connect to the internet - and therefore your laptop. Unlike older services, with this new service you only get charged for data transfer, as opposed to on-line time. Therefore, if all you're doing is checking emails, paying bills etc... it is quite cost effective. The only catch is that you need a GPRS capable mobile. If you already have this then it is a quick call to Telstra (if there is such a thing!) to have this service turned on for your phone.

If you go to the telstra website you'll be able to track down more info there.

Cheers.

We have tried avery option available including asking every van park and place we stay if we can use the phone line. It is difficult but can be done. These days we use a Nokia and dial up at the crap rate of 9600 and use the systems this way. When we are really out there in the bush we don't really care however when we hit town the mobile makes some very long calls to the Internet. We bank up all our work and let it go when we are in a town with service. Usually start at 7PM for the off peak rates and sometimes the calls take a few hours to complete however it does not cost all that much. Telstra has a service for it's mobile phone customers that does not cost you anthing addtional to the call charges to access the Internet so you only need to dial from a Telstra mobile to the number provided and you are directly connected to the Internet.

I cannot remember the name of the service however there is some information on the Telstra site. The number to call is - 0418 707 638 - You do not need to register or setup anything with Telstra just be a MobileNet user and use your mobile to make the connection and presto you are up and connected to the Internet. It is fund via the call costs which I cannot remember but they are good when you consider you do not have to setup another ISP account.

Hope this helps - this is what we use and we publish large chunks of the site, Internet banking and heaps of other stuff in this fashion.Regards
ExplorOz Team - David
--------------------------
Always working, not enough travelling ;-)

CDMA phones using Telstra Mobile Internet have a higher download speed than GSM, and in the cities you can use CDMA 1x (which is apparently 3-4 times fatser than dial up)

Depending on how often you want to check your email box, an other alternative way, and the most ecconomical, is to call into an Iternet Cafe and dail direct to your email provider.
This is also a lot !!! faster than mobile a phone connection @ 9600 bps.
Also a lot quicker when you want to send a long email

Cheers Just made it, King Edward River

I was in the Telstra shop the other day and saw an "AirCard" (memory's shot - it was something like that). Plugs into PCMCIA slot and connects you through the CDMA network at a very respectable speed. I don't know if this service is available wherever CDMA is available, and there would be large coverage gaps in FNQ. Cost $990.

Andrew with all that to do is it worth leaving home will you have time to
see anything.
All the best
Eric
www.capeyorkconnections.com.au
Eric 02 4294 3496
Pete 07 4094 1745Cape York Connections

Your basic options for travelling are:

1. GPRS
2. GSM dialup
3. Normal phoneline.

GPRS is a new technology. It is quicker than a normal GSM phone dialup, but not a quick as the marketing would have you believe. The connection is also established very quickly, much quicker than a normal modem dialup. GPRS means you pay for the data you transmit, much like a broadband (cable, ADSL) connection, as opposed to the duration of the call.

However, for use in the bush, I wouldn't recommend GPRS. It is very expensive, $20+ per Mb. The additional speed isn't really worth it, and who cares if a connection takes 30 or 3 seconds to establish.

The best answer is to use a normal GSM phone for dialup, and a cheapie Internet access account. I have a $10/month account with Optus which I use on the road. It's slower than GPRS, but it still works for Internet banking and email checking. You wouldn't want to be sending large amounts of data though.

There are several options to connect a phone to a laptop; infrared, cable and Bluetooth. I would stay away from infrared as it doesn't work too well in the sun, is slow and you need to ensure the phone points at the laptop's IR port. If you can get it, use Bluetooth (eg Nokia 6310i), or buy a cable to connect the phone to the laptop. An alternative is a special PC Card with a GSM phone built in, but I think that's a needless expense.

Best of all is to wait till a normal phoneline can be found. That'll be the quickest, and cheapest option.

It is possible to access your home PC, connected to a broadband connection, at home. However, this is not straightforward. There are some security and networking concerns, and unless you're au fait with both it is best avoided. Without going into details you'll need to deal with a changing IP address, and have some form of secured link.

hth

--
Robert
http://www.gpsvehiclenavigation.com/

Andrew

Ther is another option available from Tesltra now. It is called Blackberry and I believe it uses GSM. It is small unit similar to a PDA, the main advantage is that you do not dial-up. Email get's sent to it directly, and has other features such as calendars, to-do list, etc. The company I work work will be demoing a few units in a couple of months. You can get more details from

http://www.telstra.com.au/mobile/business/plans/hardware.htm

Wow

It's just phenomenal how great this forum is and how lucky we are to be able to access everyones collective advice. Thanks to everyone who has posted. I am sure that eveyone will have a solution that works best for them given the variables of destination, amount of data, depth of pockets etc. In the Cape it looks like there is no GSM service so for up there I would have to either get a CDMA phone or 'air thingo' or sweet talk someone into letting me use their phone line. Maybe a door knock with a slab under one arm and my notebook under the other..

Thanks to everyone for sharing their experience.

Andrew