mlm59

I had hoped to e-mail family members throughout our trip to Europe. A friend of mine was in Germany last year and said she and the other people in her group could not figure out how to e-mail back home. She said the keyboards are different.

If so, how does a person use e-mail in Europe?

bob_brown

I have used keyboards in Switzerland, Austria, and England.

The main problem I found in Austria was that the German keyboards had the umlaut characters such as ü and the y and z keys are reversed. I had to do a little hunting and pecking because when touch typing I invariably pressed the wrong key, but I did my email.

StCirq

It's not a big deal. Some keys are in different places, that's all, nothing that would actually prevent you from sending an email...just slow you down abit.

RoadCrazy

Some internet cafes also have a small number of computers with English keyboards. It doesn't hurt to ask.

janisj

&quot;<i>people in her group could not figure out how to e-mail back home. She said the keyboards are different</i>&quot;

Sorry, but that is prettty lame (no - that is VERY lame). The telephones are different. ATM key pads are different. etc. Doesn't mean they are impossible to use.

You just have to type &quot;hunt and peck&quot; instead of super fast.

And as RoadCrazy mentions - in major tourist areas many internet cafes will have English keyboards (but you'd still have to watch for &pound; and other differences)

cocofromdijon

If you go to France :
http://gofrance.about.com/cs/interne.../keyboards.htm

grsing

In many internet cafes, they'll have multiple keyboard sets installed (software, not hardware), so you just click on the little blue box in the bottom right hand corner with letters in it and change the language to English (it likely won't be on your home computer). It won't change the labelling of the keys on the actual keyboard, but if you can touch type, you'll be fine. If you're a hunt and peck typer, yeah, it's a pain, especially punctuation (same for touchtyping at the few places that won't let you change the keyboard settings). Make sure to keep an eye out for the &quot;Alt Gr&quot; key, it lets you type the third symbol on some of the keys (including the all-important @ key).

BTilke

Generally, the staff at Internet cafes will be happy to explain how certain keys work (even if they're not happy about it, they'll still do it). When I first used Euro keyboards at an Internet cafe in Basel, I was flummoxed trying to find the @ symbol. The staff explained that and a few other differences to me.

To send and check email away from home, there are a variety of options. We use www.mail2web.com Even at home, I use it to preview my mail and delete the spam without downloading it.

indytravel

I too have had trouble with the @ symbol in the past. I've had to use the ctrl-C and ctrl-V key combinations to copy and paste it when I couldn't find it on a keyboard.

Another word of advice. Don't be like my security conscious computer friend. Do not have funny symbols and characters in your password when in Europe! He's locked himself out of his account more than a couple of times trying to key in a password that has a &quot;!&quot;, &quot;#&quot; or &quot;&amp;&quot; in it. At one point he ended up having to type his password in clear text on the screen so he could copy and paste it into his password box. Now there's some security.

Use some &quot;real&quot; characters and a number or two. You might even avoid the heavily umlauted &quot;o&quot; and &quot;u&quot; if heading to Germany.

amyb

I used four different internet cafes in both France and Italy last week, and each one had a sign on the monitor which explained how to get the &quot;@&quot; sign to work, which I otherwise would not have found on the keyboard myself.

It's not as hard as your family has told you, don't sweat it!

mlm59

Thanks so much to all of you who have helped me. Sorry that someone thought this is a &quot;lame&quot; problem, but it seems that others have experienced the same problem as my friend who couldn't figure out the @ symbol. I appreciate all of your replies.

janisj

No - I didn't mean the issue was lame - but to say they simply could not e-mail because the keyboards are different. That IS lame. As you can see from almost all the other posts - we've all faced this at one time or another and all figured it out - <u>or asked for help</u>.

Not one person in your friend's group thought to ask someone for help finding the @ symbol??

cmt

I think I used an Internet cafe only once. Yes, I did have a problem ith the keyboard. I couldn't find the @ sign, and obviously that was important since I needed to send an e-mail. But I asked a staff member, and then everything was fine. There were other differences between the Italian and American keyboards, but the only one that temporarily caused me a problem was the @ sign.

WillTravel

A couple times I had difficulty finding the @ symbol, but I just found a web page with an email address, and copied it from there, and then pasted it into my email box. (I know there are keyboard shortcuts too, but this was the quickest at the time.)

Maire

bookmarking, thanks

nospam

Keyboards are different, especially in France. Ask at the desk if there are North American keyboards available, or you will be quite frustrated (on a French keyboard, the letter placement is different, so if you touch type, you wil become very frustrated!). For Italy, the letter placement is the same, but the @ symbol is indeed different and needs a combination of keys. Ask the attendant for help! Most of these cafes are used to dealing with an international clientele, and will be more than happy to help you.
Have fun!