wireless on princess?

[marley]

Hi, If I bring my laptop, Can I get online in my cabin?

[jpancake]

I believe it depends on the ship. Which ship will you be on?

[Druke I]

Wireless?

 

All ships at sea have had wireless (Marconi) since the Titanic "incident"!

 

Wi-Fi may be a better term for today's world.

[prarie cruiser]

Don't get too excited about using your WiFi system on any Princess ship! Princess has some very nice desktop internet connection areas. They charge 35 cents per minute for a slowwwwww connection. OK, its not as bad as the old 2400 phone based modems but it is not wonderful either.

 

For anyone bringing their laptop, they sell 30 minute time blocks for use. They are really expensive, slow to use, and only good in the intenet areas or the atrium. The upside is they have a computer staff member on board who will help you to get it set up, as it requires some special settings. On my last cruise on the Sapphire Princess, it was just too expensive and too much hassle. The service is not free for Platinum or Elite members either. So, I used the ships desktops in the internet cafe, which are free to Platinum members. My best advice is that if you are not a Platinum member, make friends with one and talk them into going to the internet cafe!

[waterrats]

One other good thing to note. Last year we were on CB when we got an extended two days due to Hurricane Jeanne. Well the internet line was long unless you went in the middle of the night. If you bring a laptop and this situation happens, just buy minutes and use it in the atrium without waiting online for the internet cafe.

[DeltaOne]

Hi, If I bring my laptop, Can I get online in my cabin?

In your cabin, no. Either use one of the ship's computers in the Internet Cafe, or your Wi-Fi ready laptop in the Atrium area. Thirty-five cents a minute, either way.

 

The speed is acceptable, considering you're on a moving ship...and only doing email.

 

It's cheaper to connect via your own laptop, since you can log on, get email, and log off. Then read and compose replies offline, without the clock ticking. Then log on, send replies, and log off. Very efficient.

[samtesla]

The speed is acceptable, considering you're on a moving ship...and only doing email.

 

The speed was most definitely NOT acceptable to us; I would rate it at 28.8 modem at best, with unpredictability to match. To make things even worse, the internet cafe systems use this bizzare browser that can't handle a lot of web based mail systems (i.e. gmail).

 

The biggest problem is the unpredictability of response. Just to log into my internet provider and check mail took nearly 4-5 minutes. No reading, just log in. I don't expect 4 mbps like I have at home, but for crying out loud, at $.35/min I would expect better.

[waterrats]

If you have any problems with connection speeds, just go to the pursars deskout and they will credit you the minutes used during that session.

[Verde]

I was on the Coral Princess last week. I brought my laptop because I erroneously thought I could use it in my cabin and because of the difficulty and expense that I had encountered using the ship's computers on the Tahitian Princess last summer. When I found that you are limited to the Atrium area of the ship and still have to pay $.35 per minute, I waited to go onshore to use free WiFi facilities available in coffee shops or Internet Cafes.

 

Actually, because of the inability to receive and send email, I forgot about the office and enjoyed the trip more.

 

Verde

[jennew]

leave your laptop at home...it is your vacation! I already got the 30 second lecture from my teen when I suggested I might bring mine along

**hangs head**