In Rodney Myrvaagnes writes:

On Mon, 15 Nov 2004 09:49:53 -0500, Jeff Morris
wrote:

Most marinas will allow you to send emails, some have wifi, etc. And of
course there are always cafes, etc. If you stay in touch with friends
& family by email when land based, then you will want to do that while
cruising. If you like to use a phone, find the best cellular plan for
your trip. You can also send emails by cell phone.

I find that marinas with hookup for an old-fashioned dial-up modem are
less common. I will have to get a more modern machine with wifi and
ethernet connections before next season.

However, your last sentence caught my eye. I know when I first got a
cel phone, maybe six years ago, it could browse only web sites
translated by th eprovider, and couldn't be used for normal modem
acccess.

Is that different now, or are you talking about special ISP accounts
at the cellular company? I don't want to read email on a cellphone,
but if it will act as or with a modem for the laptop that would do me.

If you are happy with e-mail and internerconnections that match a normal
(fast) dial-upp modem and it is enough to get the contact when close
enough to the land that your cell phone is working, then the way to go
is the GPRS-service. This is working with a card inserted in your
laptop, it includes the operators card and works like a w-lan, but the
speeds are only below some 40,000 bauds. You can check your favourite
weatherstation (if they have www-service, receive pictures of your
grandchildren in e-mail (not very big ones) and exchange ordinary
messages. I tried it last summer in the Baltic and worked well in
Estonia, Latvia and Sweden and Finland. I bet it will work in the whole
Europe, even in UK, as the company providing the servive for me was
Vodafone.

- Lauri Tarkkonen

PS: I believe that many members of the younger generation would not bee
too happy with the speed provided by the GPRS service, but I must tell
you, that I started with speeds of 110, and found the change to 300 a
wast improvement and every step 1200, 2400, etc have always impressed
me.

Rodney Myrvaagnes J36 Gjo/a

The destruction of the World Trade Center was
a faith-based initiative. -- George Carlin