Carrying the Right Equipment with You

Power Connectors

Modern laptops have universal power supplies which operate from 97 to 260 Volts AC and 47 to 63 Hertz which just about covers anything you're likely to come across. There's still the problem of the correct power-plug. Most countries use the UK, US, European or Australian type of power-plug. Laptop power supplies are "double insulated" and don't require an Earth connection which means that, while a 3-pin plug is fine, the 2-pin version can be used where these exist.

It's best to obtain a power-plug adaptor before you leave. Airport shops stock them but at a premium price.

If you're in a country and can't find an adaptor it might be easier to buy a whole new power cord as the connector at the power supply/laptop end of the cord conforms to international standards.

If you're going to hire a car then a power supply designed to fit in a cigarette-lighter socket, also an international standard, might get you out of trouble.

Modem Leads

The RJ11, or US, phone plug is the nearest thing to a worldwide standard and all modems come with an RJ11 socket and normally an RJ11-to-RJ11 lead. The name means "Registered Jack Number 11" and the plug has space for 6 wires, although the gold crimp pins are often missing from all but the centre pair, pins 3 & 4, which carry the phone line.

You'll need to get a adaptor comprising of an RJ11 socket to the variety of phone plug used in the country you're visiting. TeleAdapt is a company that specialise in adaptors and sell regional packs such as their Europe pack with 19 different adaptors.

An RJ11 adaptor to the local variety of phone plug is usually fairly easy to find in your destination country.

The UK Phone Lead Trap. In the UK we use our own peculiar connector called a BT Plug. It has the standard 6 pins but, unusually, it's the second pair, pins 2 & 5, that carry the phone line. UK telephones have an RJ11 socket to receive the phone cord and these sockets expect the phone line to be on pins 2 & 5. There are 2 types of RJ11 plug to BT plug leads available. The more common "straight-wired" lead is for phones where the pins from each plug are connected 1 to 1, 2 to 2, etc. and the one you need for a modem called the "cross-wired" lead where the pin connections are 2 to 3, 3 to 2, 4 to 5, 5 to 4.

This is why a lead you've borrowed from a phone to use with your modem doesn't work.

Toolkit

I recommend taking the following tools with you:-

A pair of pliers.

A pair of side-cutters.

A penknife.

Pack your toolkit in your checked-in luggage or it may be confiscated at airport security.

Spares

A spare laptop battery can be useful although they cost between £100 and £200.

An external mouse is handy in case the built-in one goes faulty. If you don't like the built-in mouse you can use the external one where you have the space to work.

If the failure of your laptop would be a disaster then consider using something like Norton Ghost to make a disk image that you can store on CDs along with a boot CD to restore the image back to the hard drive if required. You can even take a spare cloned hard drive in case your main hard drive becomes physically damaged. Practice swapping the drives over before you go. You'll still need to safeguard new or changed data by saving it to a floppy, CD-R, or USB drive or uploading it, over the Internet, to a server.

If you're planning to visit a number of countries, not staying very long in any one, then an account with an ISP that has a local dialup number in the majority of countries and cities around the world will be the most convenient. AOL may cover the countries you need but AT&T Global Internet is a company that specialises in international Internet access and a roaming account with them costs £15/month.

Your existing ISP may be a member of one of the international associations of ISPs that provides access for each others members when overseas.

A Local ISP

If you're staying in one place for a week or more then consider getting an account with a local ISP - you'll probably only have to pay one month's fee.

In the UK there are free ISPs such as Wanadoo, the UK's largest ISP, where you can get a dialup account instantly, for free, from their website. There's no catch, call rates are just the cost of a local call - 3p/minute peak, 1p/minute off-peak.

Your existing settings in Outlook/Outlook Express shouldn't need changing to receive email. Sending emails can be a problem and so you could use Hotmail/YahooMail etc. or try our email service.

Never use a ISP's setup CD if you can possibly avoid it. They usually put advertising, branding and other hard-to-get-rid-of junk on your computer. All the information you normally need to connect to the Internet is an ISP's access phone number and a valid username and password. Learn how to make a new dial-up connection or just change the phone number, username and password in an existing dial-up connection.

Pulse Dial Phone Systems

Remember when you actually used a dial to dial? There are plenty of such systems still around - I came across one recently in a hotel in Paris - and to use them you'll need to set your modem to Pulse Dialling instead of the normal Tone Dialling. Shock horror, some modern modems no longer have the capability to pulse dial. You might be able to select Pulse Dial in the modem's properties but it will continue to tone dial.

Some phone systems use pulse dialling to get an outside line but then you need to switch to tone dialling to continue.

Here's how to get round such problems:-

They can't have you stealing the phone! Check to see if there is a "data port" on the side of the phone designed for connecting modems or a separate modem socket elsewhere in the room. Otherwise it's time to get your toolkit out, especially the RJ11-socket-to-crocodile-clips lead.

Phones and modems don't care about the polarity of the phone line so, as long as you're on the right pair, it doesn't matter which way round you attach the crocodile clips.

Don't let the maid catch you.

Phone systems have up to 50 volts DC on the phone pair which is enough to give you a tingle. If someone calls your phone while you're fiddling with it, the Ring Tone will be more bracing.

Phone systems are designed not to be life-threatening however this cannot be said of hotel managers!

If your hotel room has a digital phone extension then your stuck.

You can usually tell a digital handset by the large array of buttons and a multi-line display showing the time and date. Digital phone systems use propriety digital signalling techniques so you can put away your crocodile clips.

Some digital handsets have a built-in analogue extension socket, called a data port, for connecting a modem. This isn't the similar, but smaller, socket the handset plugs into.

Acoustic Modems used to exist where a microphone matched up to the handset's earpiece and a speaker to the mouthpiece. These will work with a digital system but at some ridiculously slow connection speed.

If your hotel room only has a digital phone without a modem socket then you'll have to use your mobile phone for Internet access.

Minimise Call Charges

Some hotels have unreasonably high call rates even for local numbers. Global ISPs have free phone numbers in some countries and so dialling one of these numbers means no call charges will appear on your hotel bill.

The ISP will bill you for the call charges later but it will be in your own currency and, hopefully, represent a saving over the hotel's rate.

Hotel Broadband

Many hotels now have their own Broadband Internet connection which they offer to guests for a fee.

Sometimes there's a network socket in every room and sometimes it's only available in the "Business Centre". Most systems use auto-configuration where your laptop should just connect to the Internet when plugged into the network socket. You shouldn't rely on the Hotel's firewall and enable one on your laptop plus the normal anti-virus measures.

Some Internet services may not be enabled through the hotel's firewall such as FTP, Instant Messaging or VPN and Remote Desktop client connections and you might only be able to use web browsing and email.

You're normally allowed to plug your own laptop into a network socket in the Business Centre.

You could take a WiFi router with you and plug it into the network socket in your room. That way you can work on the balcony or down by the pool plus share your connection with colleagues in adjacent rooms.

Mobile Phones, Cell Phones, Hand Phones - all the same thing.

Ever since GSM phones were introduced, over 10 years ago, they have been capable of making 9600bps data calls for dial-up Internet access.

A 9600bps connection is between 3 and 5 times slower than a landline modem connection so, while still fine for email, it's a crawl for most other Internet activities.

The super-fast 3G mobile system is now starting to become available but coverage is patchy and costs are still high. GPRS (General Packet Radio System) has now made it to the mainstream and is available in most places throughout Europe.

The advantages of using GPRS when travelling are:-

Believe it or not, some buildings have jammers installed to prevent mobile phones operating inside them. These include churches, theatres, restaurants, cinemas and prisons. In the UK only the police and similar authorities are allowed to operate jammers but overseas - who knows?

France, for example, has recently passed a law making it legal for cinemas and theatres to jam mobiles - although emergency calls can still be made.

I have heard of hotel owners fitting a phone jammers to force their guests to use the more expensive hotel phones.

Using a mobile allows you to check your email in departure lounges, in meetings, over dinner, on the train and gets you some admiring glances but should be considered as a backup to a landline connection for more data-intensive applications.

Let your email correspondents know you're using a mobile for email on your trip so they can hold off sending large attachments. If an attachment is gumming up the download process it's useful to be able to access your inbox on the mail server with webmail so you can view the text of the offending email then delete it or move it to a different folder.

Getting the Right Phone

Not all mobile phones have built-in modems, the connection between the phone and the laptop is achieved using an infra-red link, a Bluetooth wireless link or a cable (it's best to have at least 2 options), and if you want to use your phone on all mobile networks around the world it needs to be Tri-Band.

A Nokia 6230 meets all these requirements. A cheaper phone may only have the infra-red option.

Making It Work

If available for your phone, it may be worth purchasing a data cable for around £30 and not relying on infra-red or Bluetooth because:-

Some phones have Bluetooth but it can only be used to connect headsets and not for using the phone as a  modem.

The data cable allows greater freedom of movement although, if you get Bluetooth working, the phone can be up to 15 or even 20 feet away from the laptop.

The infra-red, Bluetooth and data cable links appear as separate modems to Windows so it's best to make individual dial-up network icons for each one and then test them all out.

Other Points

It's also possible that some mobile networks haven't implemented a data service yet.

It's normal to dial the number *99# which instructs the phone to make a GPRS connection.

The latest generation of mobile phones can send and receive email by accessing POP3 and SMTP mail servers on the Internet via a GPRS connection. This means you don't have to carry any extra equipment or worry about how to establish a connection between your emailing device and the phone.

For this to work successfully your email needs filtering to remove everything but the important stuff. It's a good way to keep an eye on your inbox throughout the day and save any serious email replies till you get back to your laptop in your hotel room.

How all this can be achieved is discussed elsewhere on this website here.

Thuraya Phone

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Inmarsat ISDN Satellite Phone - such as the Nera M4 World Communicator

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Iridium Phone

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Portable Satellite IP Modem using the Regional BGAN Network

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No connection or call charges

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A 2-Way Dish

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Orbit Research sell or rent such systems.

You'll also have to have deep pockets and a serious requirement for data transfer to justify any of these satellite options.