Isn't technology wonderful?

[Pauline]

Last night one of our sons was flying back from Tiawan, it was a 17 hour flight and he was bored, saw the in-flight phone and decided to call us for a chat.

We were in a field in Wiltshire on the mobile, he was 35,000 feet above Dubai!

Amazing!

[snobbyafghan]

I still find heavier-than-air flight amazing, never mind the extraordinary digital and communications stuff available these days. Even now I stare at the sky like a slack-jawed yokel when a plane goes over low (maybe because I am a slack-jawed yokel).

Doug

[niloc]

The twin problems of having to leave camp to drive round to find WiFi sites, or paying £5 to £6 for the rare campsites with WiFi MAY be open to a new solution. Up till now using mobile phone networks with a laptop has meant signing up to a monthly contract of at least £15, which is more than I would want to pay for using a couple of times a week whilst we are on holiday. The rest of the year would be wasted money as far as I am concerned.

However, the mobile company '3' has just brought out a Pay As You Go scheme. You buy the dongle that plugs into your laptop for about £50 then buy £10 (or more) top ups as you need them. A friend has just taken this on and can e mail me from any campsite they are on where there is a '3' mobile signal. The other companies will presumably be following this as they did with mobile phone PAYG years ago.

Looks like the way to go, sit on site with beverage in one hand and mouse in the other, no hassle of driving off site to find a MacDonalds!

If you want to know more try here: www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/mobile_broadband_/detail.omp

Colin

[fuzzy]

This is very interesting - do you need to be a 3 mobile phone customer or does it work with any network

[Pauline]

That's interesting Colin, have been reading about it but wasn't sure if it worked well or not.

Do you know how much they charge on the 'pay as you go' part for surfing the net as well as emailing? I was wondering if it is expensive then you might be better off with the £6 campsite fee for a full day of use, rather than paying that much for a few hours, if you get what I mean.

[Pauline]

Just read the website and £10 gets you 1 gb allowance

will have to work out which is best.

[glenw]

thats who we use, but we decided to go for the contract, £10 per month. The signal has been pretty good on the sites we've used, its obviosly not as fast as home broadband, but adequate. I do occasionally take the laptop to work etc so thats what made us decide to go contract, that and it saves the hassle of trying to 'top up'!!!! 1gb allowance a month has been more than enough to send occasional emails and surf for a few hours on wet days away! his link gives an idea of what 1gb allows

www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/mobile_broadband_/price_plans.omp

and this one is a usage calculator, you adjust the sliders to fit your usage and it tells you which plan they think is the best for you

www.three.co.uk/personal/products_services_/mobile_broadband_/usage_calculator.omp

[Pauline]

Thanks Glen, will take a look at those links later and see how it would suit us.

We are taking 3 under 5's to 'Conkers' today (not the campsite the centre!) so will have a look this evening.

[snobbyafghan]

I've got a dongle from Vodafone. It has worked very well everywhere I've tried it BUT nearly always at 2G speed. It only works at 3G when in towns or cities - probably the coverage will improve slowly. 2G is not bad (faster than an old dial-up connection) but pretty slow if you want to do a lot of surfing. I tend to just use it for emails.

We are off to France next month and it will be interesting to see how it works there. It is certainly expensive overseas - I think about £8 for 24 hours but you can't split the 24 hour allowance over a longer period - it has to used all at once. I intend to just fire it up once or twice a week to keep on top of the emails.

Doug

[niloc]

To answer Fuzzy first, yes you do have to use '3' mobile network although you do not need a separate phone contract.

In a way it is not 'true' Pay As You Go' because there is a time limit for using each top up of 30 days, but I looked at it this way. If I only need it when I am away for a week or more then I probably only need three top ups a year ie £30. This is the equivilent of five 24 hour periods purchased at Club sites, even if we were using those few sites with the facility. But with this system I could go on line virtualy every day, from any site with a signal, to check e mail and look at the news and weather forecast.

Hope this helps.

Colin

[fuzzy]

Thanks Colin

I expect that now it has taken off most other networks will soon follow.