My first computerized road-trip

[Beady]

I got rid of my old computer and have moved into my first notebook, a Toshiba Satellite M45, with wireless capability. The impetus for this was a three-month deployment at work (we're both being sent to Orlando for the winter). We'll probably be put up in anything from a nice hotel to corporate housing.

So, now that I'm mobily capable, how do I go about it? I've got a wireless antenna that, so far, has been perfectly useless (although I've had great fun turning it on and off). I also have a regular phone jack, and a data jack (the larger phone jack that my DSL normally plugs into).

Do I keep my normal email address? How do I plug into my account? My ISP has given me three dial-up phone numbers in the Orlando area, although I'm a little leery of dialup.

 

[kevin]

Do I keep my normal email address? How do I plug into my account? My ISP has given me three dial-up phone numbers in the Orlando area, although I'm a little leery of dialup.

Most hotels have free high-speed connections (either wireless, wired or both), try that first.

Find out if your ISP has SSL connections available for when you download/send e-mail, you don't want everyone on the wireless to be able to read your e-mail.

 

[Underemployed]

Scan for available wireless networks in the area and hope that there's an unencrypted one you can use for free.

Or, seeing as your employers are willing to spring for accomodation that sounds pretty expensive, they can set up a DSL connection + wireless router for your personal use.

 

[Beady]

Or, seeing as your employers are willing to spring for accomodation that sounds pretty expensive, they can set up a DSL connection + wireless router for your personal use.

My employers are downright generous since it's *your* money, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get special treatment; I'll have to be content with whatever the room has. I just don't know yet what that will be.

 

[kevin]

My employers are downright generous since it's *your* money, but that doesn't mean I'm going to get special treatment; I'll have to be content with whatever the room has. I just don't know yet what that will be.

If you know what hotel you'll be at, check the web site and see what they offer. The only Orlando hotel I've stayed at was Disney's Swan and Dolphin (for a business trip actually). They had decent wired service, but no wireless. Pretty sure it was free.

Hilton's hotels have pretty good wired/wireless for free. I usually stay at Hampton Inn or Hilton Garden Inn when I travel. But even Best Western's have had good high-speed connection. If you have problems connecting, look for the tech support number in the room, don't call the front desk. I've had good luck with tech support (usually router problems where they need to reboot something in the closet). They've even offered to move me to other rooms with better connections.

If you're at a hotel with a wired connection only and you want wireless, there are several travel hubs available that are pretty nice. Apple's Airport Express is the size of power adapter and works really well (this is what I have). Linksys has one too.

If you need to connect to a VPN some hotels do block VPN connections unless you pay a fee. You can actually frequently get around their blocks by using a travel router and have it assign your ip addresses.

Another option for keeping other hotel people from observing what you're doing is to use a for hire VPN service. Haven't used them myself, but they basically encrypt traffice from your machine to their servers. It's decrypted after that (so the VPN for hire people could see what you're doing, but I usually trust them more than hotel guests).

Article on VPN for hire:
http://www.mobilepipeline.com/160900266

 

[bruto]

As far as plugging in to your own account, with wifi you basically don't. You use the connection that the wifi network has. My ISP offers dialup roaming access through other providers as well, and for that, I log in using my email address with a coded prefix. Presumably this identifies me as a subscriber, and the time is billed to my ISP. You should get some kind of instructions for the dialup numbers you've been given, but if they actually belong to the same ISP as your usual one, you probably need only to log on as usual. I only just recently got a wireless card and haven't had too much experience with it, but found that with that or with dialup roaming , access to email accounts varies. I can almost always get my mail, but for reasons I'm not sure of, my ISP's SMTP server will not always accept outgoing mail from some locations, although it will from others. It's a good idea to establish some kind of web mail account, Yahoo or whatever, just for traveling, in case there are problems.

 

[Soapy Sam]

Laptops start small, but snowball. Have you added the external antenna extension yet? The 300 foot co-ax is best, especially for ULF communication. Then , obviously you'll need external speakers and a 19"CRT. Laptop keyboards are crap, so get an add-on 130 key job. Wifi, obviously . Then you really need a big (and I mean BIG) USB2 external hard drive. All of these have their own power supply natch, with transformer plug 3 X as big as a standard plug, so youll need at least three power strips. (Don't buy the power surge protected jobs- you have that 300 foot co ax outside as a lightning conductor anyway, just unplug it if it looks stormy). Actually, it's a shame you got rid of your pc, because it was probably easier to carry, especially once you find you need two spare batteries to get through the day.

Hey- you know the best bit about laptops? That BIG smoothing capacitor between the power supply and the motherboard. Useful during power cuts, too.

 

[kevin]

I can almost always get my mail, but for reasons I'm not sure of, my ISP's SMTP server will not always accept outgoing mail from some locations, although it will from others. It's a good idea to establish some kind of web mail account, Yahoo or whatever, just for traveling, in case there are problems.

Most ISP's either block attempts to send e-mail with their server which originate outside their own network, or require some type of SMTP Authentication. One type of SMTP Auth is based on your accessing your POP3 mailbox before sending mail. This means doing a check for new mail before sending. This is a fairly old type of authentication and isn't used as much.

The other type is called SMTP Auth and actually requires logging into the SMTP mail server before sending mail. Most modern mail clients support this feature. You'll need to check with your ISP about configuring your mail client for sending mail when away from their networks.