Computers

How practical is it to take a laptop on a cruise?

I know that it can be expensive to use the ships internet access.

But my thinking is that if I took a laptop, I would have somewhere to
"unload" my digital camera so I could take tons of pictures.

I could also compose email offline and send at an internet cafe in port
somewhere. How expensive are connections to laptops at cafe's? On board the
ships? I know it varies, but an "I have paid between X and X for an hour"
would help a lot :-)

Anyone have much experience with laptops on cruises? How practical is it?

I am asking because I don't own a laptop, and am considering buying one
specifically for travel. Plus I have always wanted one, and if it looks like
something that would be a good idea on a cruise, I will get Jarrod to
"surprise" me with one for my birthday lol.

--
LES!

To send me an email, please remove Your Hat
YourHatDaddie @ bonbon.net

I recently saw an ad for IBM ThinkPad laptops in a computer magazine.
The Price was in the $650 range - for a slightly older model, still new
units though - not refurbished units. And they were Pentiums. For the
type of work you're looking to do that should be fine. Look around.

--Tom

Ali's Daddie wrote:

How practical is it to take a laptop on a cruise?

I know that it can be expensive to use the ships internet access.

But my thinking is that if I took a laptop, I would have somewhere to
"unload" my digital camera so I could take tons of pictures.

I could also compose email offline and send at an internet cafe in port
somewhere. How expensive are connections to laptops at cafe's? On board the
ships? I know it varies, but an "I have paid between X and X for an hour"
would help a lot :-)

Anyone have much experience with laptops on cruises? How practical is it?

I am asking because I don't own a laptop, and am considering buying one
specifically for travel. Plus I have always wanted one, and if it looks like
something that would be a good idea on a cruise, I will get Jarrod to
"surprise" me with one for my birthday lol.

--
LES!

To send me an email, please remove Your Hat
YourHatDaddie @ bonbon.net

In article , Ali's Daddie
wrote:

Anyone have much experience with laptops on cruises? How practical is it?

I always take my small laptop on cruises. I use it to offload photos
from my digital camera. On some ships they have internet access from
your own laptop, either wired or unwired. I have used the wireless
access in pre-cruise hotels and at the Ft. Lauderdale airport while
waiting for flights. I also sometimes watch DVD's at the airport and on
the plane. I have never used it at an Internet Cafe at ports because
the cafes are pretty inexpensive. I just use my ISP's web site e-mail
interface on the Internet Cafe's computers.

--
Charles

Les, I always bring my laptop, even when the ship does not offer in-cabin
access. (When it does, a la the newer Royal and Celebrity ships, we've always
found the roughly $100/week charge to be worth it; we can easily rack up that
much in the on-board Internet Cafes, and it saves us from having to find a place
to check and send e-mail in port.)

It certainly is a somewhat tougher decision when the ship does NOT have in-cabin
access, but when you get right down to it, it's only one more thing to schlep,
and we've found the convenience of offloading digital photos and using it for
dvd's or to keep a travel journal still make it worthwhile. Plus, as Charles
said, we're usually pre- or post-cruise at a hotel or somewhere else we can use it.

~ Peri

Ali's Daddie wrote:
How practical is it to take a laptop on a cruise?

--
LES!

Buy yourself a 256meg card for your camera. Unless you plan to take more
than a thousand pictures, at the highest resolution, it will hold them all
till you get home.

"Ali's Daddie" wrote in message
...
How practical is it to take a laptop on a cruise?

I know that it can be expensive to use the ships internet access.

But my thinking is that if I took a laptop, I would have somewhere to
"unload" my digital camera so I could take tons of pictures.

I could also compose email offline and send at an internet cafe in port
somewhere. How expensive are connections to laptops at cafe's? On board
the
ships? I know it varies, but an "I have paid between X and X for an hour"
would help a lot :-)

Anyone have much experience with laptops on cruises? How practical is it?

I am asking because I don't own a laptop, and am considering buying one
specifically for travel. Plus I have always wanted one, and if it looks
like
something that would be a good idea on a cruise, I will get Jarrod to
"surprise" me with one for my birthday lol.

--
LES!

To send me an email, please remove Your Hat
YourHatDaddie @ bonbon.net

In article ,
"Ali's Daddie" wrote:

But my thinking is that if I took a laptop, I would have somewhere to
"unload" my digital camera so I could take tons of pictures.

We take our laptop. Each evening while getting ready for dinner I
transfer the pictures from the camera to the laptop. We spend a few
minutes looking over the pictures, then erase the card so it's ready for
the next day.

We leave the laptop on the table in front of the mirror, the room
steward leaves it there.

Les, I took my laptop just for the same reasons, to download photos
and check emails. I had also planned to check on my stocks, good
thing I had set sell and buy stops before I left as it was unusable
for that purpose due to the slow connection. The system on the
Carnival Legend was marginally usable. They charge I believe seventy
five cents a minute and had a package of 75 minutes for $55.00. I
mistakenly brought my wireless card so I could just hook into the
ships network without using their computers. The guy in the cafe "set
it up" for me to access the ship's system. I don't know what he did,
but when I returned home the computer wouldn't work. Fortunately I
used the Windows XP recovery system, set it back to a date before I
left and it worked. So I wouldn't try to use your laptop connected to
the ship's network. Besides, it only worked in the Internet cafe, you
couldn't take it to a bar or your room.

The ship's connection is sloooowwww, reminiscent of the old days with
my old Franklin PC and 9600 baud modem. There were times when I
couldn't log in and we never could figure out what was going on. I
used all my minutes just doing emails. That was partially my fault,
as I mistakenly offered to let my stepson check his emails. He
insists on using Hotmail, where you have to be online to compose, edit
and read emails. When he got on he found out that his mailbox was
full and he couldn't get his emails, so he spent a good portion of the
minutes deleting spam.

They do have teminals available if you don't have a laptop. Therefore
I would recommend that you plan on using an offline program on your
laptop to compose and read emails, then get on and send/receive and
get off as soon as possible. Just be sure to bring some floppys along
to transfer to the ship's teminal. Even though you can get an
extended memory card for your camera so you don't really need to
offload the pictures, it is extremely cool to take pics on the cruise
and email them to friends back home from the ship!

I don't know about getting a connenction at a port but I wouldn't rely
on it, maybe some others on here have some experience at that.

Hope this helps,

Jim

On Sat, 13 Dec 2003 10:43:44 -0700, "Ali's Daddie"
wrote:

How practical is it to take a laptop on a cruise?

I know that it can be expensive to use the ships internet access.

But my thinking is that if I took a laptop, I would have somewhere to
"unload" my digital camera so I could take tons of pictures.

I could also compose email offline and send at an internet cafe in port
somewhere. How expensive are connections to laptops at cafe's? On board the
ships? I know it varies, but an "I have paid between X and X for an hour"
would help a lot :-)

Anyone have much experience with laptops on cruises? How practical is it?

I am asking because I don't own a laptop, and am considering buying one
specifically for travel. Plus I have always wanted one, and if it looks like
something that would be a good idea on a cruise, I will get Jarrod to
"surprise" me with one for my birthday lol.

HAL's Statendam had an Internet Cafe. In 2001 Veendam offered unlimited use
for $199, this time the offer was 250 minutes for $100 or 100 minutes for
$50. There was a 10% bonus for signing up the first day.

I only saw one person who appeared to be using his own laptop. There is a
clear advantage to being able to read and write offline with your own
computer. We easily used up the original 275 minutes and most of a second
batch of 250.
--
DG in Cherry Hill, NJ


"Ali's Daddie" wrote in message
...
How practical is it to take a laptop on a cruise?

I know that it can be expensive to use the ships internet access.

But my thinking is that if I took a laptop, I would have somewhere to
"unload" my digital camera so I could take tons of pictures.

I could also compose email offline and send at an internet cafe in port
somewhere. How expensive are connections to laptops at cafe's? On board
the
ships? I know it varies, but an "I have paid between X and X for an hour"
would help a lot :-)

Anyone have much experience with laptops on cruises? How practical is it?

I am asking because I don't own a laptop, and am considering buying one
specifically for travel. Plus I have always wanted one, and if it looks
like
something that would be a good idea on a cruise, I will get Jarrod to
"surprise" me with one for my birthday lol.

--
LES!

To send me an email, please remove Your Hat
YourHatDaddie @ bonbon.net

"Paul Sch" wrote in message
news
In article ,
"Ali's Daddie" wrote:

But my thinking is that if I took a laptop, I would have somewhere to
"unload" my digital camera so I could take tons of pictures.

We take our laptop. Each evening while getting ready for dinner I
transfer the pictures from the camera to the laptop. We spend a few
minutes looking over the pictures, then erase the card so it's ready for
the next day.

We leave the laptop on the table in front of the mirror, the room
steward leaves it there.


Becky takes her laptop on every cruise. She also takes her little HP photo
printer. It is the size of a small loaf of
bread. It is great to surprise friends with a 4x6 photo of a "kodak moment"


Joe----Booked Mariner today!

"Ali's Daddie" wrote in
:

How practical is it to take a laptop on a cruise?


This may sound funny, but the last thing I want to see on vacation is a
computer or laptop. I work on Networks and Computers at work. I've got
over 750mb of digital storage for the camera, no need to upload. I now
actively avoid the computer/internet Cafe area on board. On our last
cruise I stopped by just to "look" and ended up spending about 40mins
helping people get on-line and check there email??

If you are not actively avoiding technology on your trip, then a laptop
would be great. My only concern would be making sure it would fit in the
room safe. I wouldn't want to leave it out in the cabin.