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Internet on the move

Posted on 26 Sep 2002 at 17:27

I've received quite a few emails from readers asking about the best way to make Internet connections while travelling abroad. I've mentioned this briefly in recent columns, but it seems that readers want to know more. There have been many changes in these technologies recently, so I'll cover some of the newer tricks now available.

When I visited a second time, I managed to get it running at the same store. If you tell your laptop to connect to a network called 'tmobile', it will make a connection. This is very short range and I could only get it to work within the store, although I've heard of people using directional antennas from much further away. All your web activity is diverted to T-Mobile's proxy, which will present a login page. You can sign up to various payment plans from that page, so no advance preparation is required. One of the plans is even a pay-as-you-go system with 15 minutes for $2.99 (£1.95), so full marks on that score. Having logged in, you need to wait for a short while, probably around 10-20 seconds, and your connection will be open and working. The staff were pretty good - I sat there for a couple of hours without getting total caffeine poisoning or being summarily ejected onto the sidewalk.
The catch is that this service is still only available from a limited number of stores - in San Francisco, Texas, Seattle and New York - so it isn't suitable yet for the more adventurous traveller, although with that coverage I expect it will catch the majority of international travellers.
www.tmobilebroadband.com/

PowerBook demise
If you've been following this column, you'll know that I rely on an Apple PowerBook G4 for laptop programming and heavy-duty travel email and have been using the same laptop since February 2001, just after it was first released. It has weathered memory and hard disk upgrades with great success.
However, when I first removed the backplate, one of the seven retaining screws didn't want to be replaced, and this has proven to be the weak link in the chain. I made the mistake of leaving my laptop case in the hands of a hotel bellboy and, when I next checked, the frame at the corner that would have been secured by the missing screw was fractured. Between the headphone socket and the modem socket, there are small cracks and the hinge now bends the case alarmingly whenever it's opened.
This may be the beginning of the end - and the model hasn't reached end of life yet. Although there are some minor upgrades available to the PowerBook, they're purely processor speed and nothing of great importance, which is an amazingly long life for any laptop model these days.