internet on board

[left handed knitter]

Does anyone have any suggestions on using the internet on board if you bring your own computer. Are the oversea rates by any of the major carriers that are cheaper than the ship's.

carol

[nparmelee]

Ship connection speeds are very, very slow and tend to drop periodically as well which can make some processes very frustrating, like uploading or downloading a larger file. Using the wireless in our cabin with our laptop was about the same slowness as the ship computers in their lab. International data from most of the US carriers is also pricey, you don't say where you are cruising, that could be a factor. I had started to research an international wireless card but didn't get very far in that, the hassles were a factor. We made sure our pre and post cruise hotels all had internet available and that was much less frustrating than the ships internet.

[seafare]

Has anyone had any success in capturing wireless signal from town while up on Deck with laptop while docked?

 

Jill

[A Knitter]

I brought my laptop on my first voyage with Oceania and kept losing the signal while in use in the cabin. I have found that if you have a port intensive cruise there are always internet cafe's just about everywhere.

 

Love your user name. I am also a left handed Knitter :)

[calvin81]

We found that several ports had internet cafes right in the terminal and they were popular with the crew. We used the ship's internet once as the cafe in the terminal at Pireaus was down and there wasn't another cafe close by. Rather than get back into Athens and try and find one we thought we could just use it quickly. It was unbelieveably slow! Our cell phone rate per minute wasn't much higher and we ended up calling home rather than emailing. Although you can write offline I guess.

[Aussie Gal]

I took my laptop with me on our last cruise on Oceania and ended up spending a lot of money due to the slowness of the connection. I found it was cheaper to use the Oceania@sea email address, the ship's computers and only pay $2 a time for sending an email.

 

Next time, I would send just one email to someone at home and then have them direct it on to all my friends and relatives. The cost would only be $2 each time. Also organize it so that all the emails being sent to you are sent via that one person who will send them on to you as one big email. Again, that would only cost $2 to receive.

 

That is much better than paying out hundreds of dollars and wasting time trying to connect to the net. The downloads did take forever.

 

Jennie

[gr'aunt]

Okay, I know fdr "cruises" these Boards, because I saw his post on another thread. So I hope he reads this. (My DH also addressed this in a letter to Oceania).

 

We returned last month from a 12 night Eastern Med cruise. The next-to- -last day, we used the on-board computer room to check in for our flight home. It cost $42.00!!!!! No kidding...we did nothing else, no email, no web surfing, nothing! It took 40 minutes. I have a hard time believing that it costs "O" that much money ($42) for about 40 minutes of satellite time to access the internet (this amount is multiplied by the number of computers in the room-about 15?). Butthen again, maybe it does. I'd like to hear from those "in the know" regarding the true cost vs. what the consumer is being charged.

[gr'aunt]

forgot to add to the above:

 

We also used internet cafe's in several ports to keep in touch with those at home. The average cost for 1/2 hour was 2 euro. Internet cafe's were abundant and easy to find...just ask.

[Fontana]

gr'aunt, it is my understanding that the on-board Computer Room Facilities for guests on each of the ships are not operated by Oceania but by independent operators.

 

My only time saving tip when using the computers is to write up my emails using Word before logging on and then to later cut and paste to my email.:)

[CintiPam]

Avoid all of these charges; just bring along your blackberry (with its international ability enabled) and use it whenever the ship is at a port.

[Momto6]

I took my laptop with me on our last cruise on Oceania and ended up spending a lot of money due to the slowness of the connection. I found it was cheaper to use the Oceania@sea email address, the ship's computers and only pay $2 a time for sending an email.

 

Next time, I would send just one email to someone at home and then have them direct it on to all my friends and relatives. The cost would only be $2 each time. Also organize it so that all the emails being sent to you are sent via that one person who will send them on to you as one big email. Again, that would only cost $2 to receive.

 

That is much better than paying out hundreds of dollars and wasting time trying to connect to the net. The downloads did take forever.

 

Jennie

So do you not have to pay the per minute connection charge if you use the Oceania email address? It sounds in our paperwork like you would have to pay both the per minute charge and the $2/100 KB data transfer rate. That could get extremely expensive!

 

Thanks-

Sue

[gr'aunt]

gr'aunt, it is my understanding that the on-board Computer Room Facilities for guests on each of the ships are not operated by Oceania but by independent operators.

 

My only time saving tip when using the computers is to write up my emails using Word before logging on and then to later cut and paste to my email.:)

 

hmmm, if that's the case, maybe it's time to find a new "operator"

[Aussie Gal]

No, you don't pay any connection fee if you use Oceania@sea as your email address. You can take as long as you like to write up your email and it is only charged when it is sent.

 

Whereas with my laptop, it took forever to load, especially hotmail, so by the time I sent the email I had written in word and cut and pasted to hotmail, I had used up precious minutes. I think my first 150 minutes or so went after only 3 days of using the net.

 

As we were in some unusual ports, it was too hard to find an internet cafe and also I didn't want to waste time on shore using the net when we had so much to see whilst on land.

 

Jennie

[LHT28]

It may be the area of the world you are in but we did not find the connection that slow in the Caribbean.

I bought a package & had minutes left over near the end so was just surfing the web to use them up.

we did email daily but we used Eudora mail reader downloaded the mail read it offline made any replies then went online & sent them off.

 

My biggest complaint was friends... after you tell them not to send jokes etc...you are not at home they still send crap to you.:(

I ended up going online to the webmail page deleted the junk then downloaded the mail to my laptop.

 

We will be in Norway next year but I am not holding out hope for any good connections there, guess we will look for cafes to check the mail.

 

Lyn

[Benita]

Has anyone had any success in capturing wireless signal from town while up on Deck with laptop while docked?

 

Jill

 

In Athens, the port has wifi and we captured the signal for free while on the balcony.

[Aussie Gal]

We were in Asia, India and the Middle East right through to Athens and the connection in those areas was extremely slow.

 

I have now purchased a netbook which I am taking on our Transatlantic in November. Hopefully the connection in that part of the world and the U.S. will be quicker than the above areas.

 

Jennie