bringing a laptop

[casey26]

can't seem to see this on any other posts. Can/should we bring our own computer? Costs to connect to Internet? Usefulness?

[DeltaOne]

can't seem to see this on any other posts. Can/should we bring our own computer? Costs to connect to Internet? Usefulness?

We always take our own laptop. We leave it on the table in the room, the steward won't bother it.

 

We use the laptop as a daily repository for digital pictures. While getting ready for dinner I copy the days photos to the laptop and erase the card in the camera so it's ready for the next day.

 

We also use the laptop to check in on email with the family about every other day. By using your WiFi-ready laptop you can save money on the Internet charges. Log on, download email, log off. Take your time reading emails and composing replies. Log on, send email, log off. Fast and efficient.

 

On our last cruise a 30 minute block of time for WiFi was $10.50. I believe Princess has a new way where you don't have to buy 30 minute blocks of WiFi time, you simply pay by the minute.

[stormy75]

There are two other laptop/internet cafe threads currently active, and recently posted to.

 

In summary of what I've gleaned, various ships have different pricing and different internet systems (Star and CB have different systems). Pricing varies by the ship for internet usage: Star flat $.50 per minute; CB has various. Star allows pop3 and smtp usage; CB has smtp down, and you cannot use pop3 or smtp on gmail. One person let me know that there is a method of bypassing smtp being down, but even though I understand much about laptops and the internet, I couldn't figure out the fix that he recommended. I only do business on my vacation as its required, and I hate having to fix computer system problems when on vacation.

 

Bottom line: laptops are great for taking to shore at internet cafes, and for storing photographs. For emails, I'd recommend web-based email, as its a sure-fire way to bypass problems. To be sure, use a web-based email such as yahoo, but not gmail as on the Star firewalls slow down gmail so much that it takes 3 minutes to load the homepage.

[MaryPoppinz]

I think we are going to leave the laptop home from now on. Now that the photo kiosks are available so you don't have to part with your compact flash card, I'm not thinking the trade-off is worth it anymore.

 

We have free cafe internet access (and I had no problems with the Gmail account I set up and used on our last trip) -- if wireless was free, we'd probably continue to carry the laptop.