Laptops / Internet from hotels - motels ?

Depending on who your local ISP is, you may have 2 options

1)If you are with a big ISP, you may be able to either connect to their remote Points of Presence ( POP) nearest to your location, Telstra Bigpond wins here for most locations I think. Then the cost is your normal ISP charges, plus the cost of the ISD call if necessary to the nearest POP. ( plus any charges that the hotel may add on)

2)Otherwise many smaller ISP's have a roaming service using either IPASS or GRIC. These both amount to the same thing and allow you to connect to any participating ISP as if it was yours. There may be a fee to join this service on top of your normal ISP charges. In addition you will be charged for the phone call, and extra that the hotel charges as well as a per minute fee for roaming. Your ISP's home page should tell you about this service. There are POP's in just about any reasonable sized town and you should be able to get to one with a local call.

boobook

Just look out for the charges as some motels charge per minute and the connection speeds can be slow. There is also a small issue of wheter the motel has pulse dialing phone lines,which does not work with some laptops, or tone dialing which is no problem.

Adam
Tripping around Oz sounds great!

If you are wanting to access the net for email only - have you thought about setting up an email address with yahoo/hotmail and accessing it from internet cafes...a cheaper and easier alternative. Most larger towns have them (although some do vary in price!)...If for trading shares etc - you might have to stick with hotels - I can access stuff through mobile (blue tooth) but I have a hefty mobile bill if I do use it.

ENjoy your planning for next year.

SparkyLovin' life!

Some ISP's wont allow you to check mail from other ISP's.

I use bigpong and have had good experience with it while travelling, both with the mobile and connecting from hotel rooms. You just use the 0198308888 local call number for unlimited duration for the cost of a local call. OK some places charge 60 cents for a local call, but I can live with that. Sometimes you need to add a zero to gain access to the outside line. Last week in Noosa (sorry about the name drop) I was getting 15 kps over the hotel phone line.Bob

Have you talked with your existing ISP ? what options do they advise ?Carpe Diem

depending on the motels phone line setup either PABX or digital you may need to add several 0's to get the line once it took 11 0's to trick the old phone system into getting a outside line as modems dial very fast and this system was ancient.

happens at many places i have worked at.

cheers have fun1999 NISSAN NAVARA DUALCAB
DIESEL 3.2 & SPRINGY CARLTON TOY

The other option is to get a phone away card!

Im in the airline industry, so spen a lot of time in hotels. I got sck of paying very high rates when calling home. So I got one of these cards. You just dial the freecall numbe and then type in you card number and pin and follow the prompts. It costs about 50c to connect then normal rates after that. You can set up your computer to connect to the internet using the ame card. Its really easy and very convenient.

See you on our travels

H,K & A

Wow !
Thanks everyone for the information, it has helped alot ;)

dolfn,
What phone away card company do you use ?

If I was to dial up through a mobile when i get to major towns and cites.. What ISP would you guys recommend. Do i need to a special mobile phone connection ?