Hello all,
I think I've finally decided to bite the bullet and buy a laptop for my extended trip overseas next year. Thank you to everyone who submitted your comments and recommendations.
However I am wondering about the availability of wifi while I am overseas - hopefully the upfront investment of buying a laptop with wifi capability will even out a bit over time as I will not have to pay for a lot of online time at internet cafe's everyday. Here is a rough idea of my itinerary - if you could let me know whether wifi is prevalent in airports/guesthouses/mcdonalds(?) etc in these areas it would be very helpful in allowing me to justify this added cost!
Kathmandu, Patan, Varanasi, Agra, New Delhi, Jakarta, Ubud, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
The majority of the time I will be hitting up the major cities, however I understand that there will be stretches where I will be in most remote locations and may be offline
Any information concerning wifi connectivity in these area's would be much appreciated. I'll probably still buy a laptop regardless, but it will make me feel better about doing so!
Thanks!
Jen
Reply to this You may get some free WIFI in Delhi and Bangkok, but most of the time you'll have to pay for it -- either by being a customer or purchasing it outright. In Bangkok, for example you have to be a customer in Starbucks to get their WIFI, and then you have to pay extra to actually use it -- which costs more than just going into an internet cafe. I doubt it will be any better in even less developed countries, but hey, maybe someone installed a bunch of WIFI stations in Cambodia, Vietnam and Laos since I was there two years ago!
Reply to this In Thailand now many of the McDonalds restaurants have free WiFi. Buy a coffee and nurse it for a couple hours.
You can take your laptop to a cheap internet shop and get on that way. You will will pay the same rate as the other people using the shop computers.
In airports if you have a gold card and can use the VIP lounge you will most likely get free WiFi. If you have a seat near one of the business class lounges you might be able to piggyback on to their signal if it is not free in the airport anyway.
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Think about why you need a laptop. Is it for storing photos - you can do that on a much smaller external hard drive or several high capacity SD cards or flash drives.
If it is for school or business then that is different.
I use a flash drive with Firefox and Opera on it. This Firefox almost exactly matches my home computers. I have the same Firefox home page, same bookmarks, same saves and same toolbar. I use the Opera for research and tune in my hometown radio station when I am overseas. The flash drive also has ClamWin anti virus and Notepad. When I plug that flash drive into an internet shop computer it is just like sitting at my home computer. I use the ClamWin anti virus to check the FD for bugs - lots of bugs overseas. Best of all the FD fits in my pocket.
Good luck.
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