| As I said earlier, you can choose an ISP with regional local access numbers to let you connect without toll charges wheresoever you roam in your home country. But what about when you travel overseas? Actually, you usually don't have to go far to find an Internet terminal. You can rent PCs with Internet connections for roughly $1 to $10 per hour almost anywhere. Listings of Internet cafés and computer parlors are now a required element in guide books (for example, the fantastic Rough Guide series), and tourism information centers in most towns can direct you to the nearest rental centers. If you want to connect your own computer, however, connecting is a bit more difficult. The following are some tips I've picked up in travels through Mexico, Australia, and Europe: Do your research before you leave. Search the Internet to find at least one Internet location and/or ISP in each area you'll be visiting. Print these pages and bring them along, being sure to get the local address and telephone number. You might find a more convenient location or better service after you arrive, but this way you have a place to start. Most Internet cafés won't let you hook up your own computer. Some will. You can find Kinko's Copy centers, for example, in many large cities in North America, Europe, and Asia; they're outfitted with fast computers, fast connections, and at least one bay with an Ethernet cable that you can use to connect your own laptop. Bring a PCMCIA (PC Card) Ethernet card, and you're set. (You will have to configure it using the Local Area Connection icon in Network and Dial-Up Connections, as you'll learn in Chapter 16, using the settings provided by the rental center.) Bring some formatted floppy disks with you. If you need to transfer files and can't hook up your own computer, you can at least use the floppy disks. If you normally receive email through a POP mail server at your ISP, use one of the free email services such as Hotmail or Yahoo! Mail to view your home email via the Web while you're traveling. Use a different password, not your regular password, for the free account. Set up the free service to fetch mail from your ISP, using what is called external or POP mail. Set the mail service to "leave mail on the server" so you can filter through your mail the normal way when you get home. Delete the free account, or change its password, when you return home. These steps will (a) let you read your mail from virtually any Internet terminal in the world and (b) protect your real mail password from unscrupulous types who might be monitoring the network traffic in the places you visit. If you're staying a reasonable length of time in one country, you can sign up for a month of Internet service. For example, in Australia, I used ozemail.com, which gave me local access numbers all over the Australian continent. A month's service cost only $17, with no setup fee. After I found an adapter for Australia's curious telephone jacks, I was all set. If you do use a foreign ISP, configure your email software to use the foreign ISP's outgoing mail (SMTP) server, but keep your incoming POP server pointed to your home ISP. (This step is important because most ISPs' mail servers won't accept mail from dial-up users outside their own networks. You need to use their SMTP server to send mail, and your home POP server to pick up mail.) Get power plug adapters and telephone plug adapters from a travel store, telephone accessory store, or international appliance store before you leave, if you can.
|