India: Take Laptop vs Use Hotel Computers?
 

We will be in India for 3 weeks and are staying at good hotels (Oberoi or similar). We will not be on club floors and are wondering if computer access is readily available and cost effective.

I hate to carry the laptop between locations and am wondering if most travelers take their own computers or use the ones in the hotels?

Thanks in advance.

Roosevelt G.

Hi Roosevelt
We are leaving for India soon also for about 4 weeks
I am considering going only with my i-phone, but I am not sure yet.
I think that probably everything that you need will be available on a smart phone and usually the hotel computers are fine-
I usually take a lap top when I rent a property when I travel
Sandy

What will you be using your computer for? If just for email, then the hotel computers will be fine. The Oberoi Hotels do charge for use of the computers in their business centers.

If, however, you will be using it for financial matters - checking credit card charges, transferring money from one bank account to another, etc - then you should take your own laptop and should have a personal VPN. We use Witopia.

I prefer to have my own computer and to be able to use it from my room

I take my own computer, but I don't take a full size laptop. For my last India trip I had a netbook, but they seem to have fallen out of favor. I currently travel with an iPad (and a smart phone, but I can't maintain a blog with that!) but prefer a netbook.

In the past I have found that posh hotels charge ridiculous prices for internet access, and look for internet cafes (or regular cafes with wifi) instead. Lower end hotels rarely charge for net access these days.

I plan on taking my Ipad. Will be staying in 4-5 hotels, so I am resigned to having pay the fees to connect.

iPad!

Thanks for the responses. I was planning on backing up my photos on the laptop, editing them and sending e-mails with photos attached.

I have an iPad but it only has 16GB of RAM and is almost filled.

Roosevelt G.

Take your laptop!

Heartily agree with Kathie. We went last year - I took my 11" MacBook Air and Mr. Crosscheck took his iPad (this is our M.O. for all trips, not just for India). The wifi was excellent everywhere, including in airports, and I prefer to work and answer emails in my room. But the main reason to have the laptop is to upload the zillions of photos you will take. We stayed in a mix of upscale hotels, boutique hotels and guest houses and there was no charge for wifi or business centers anywhere.

The pros of taking it are convenience and having photo editing and backup.

The cons are the hassle of carrying it and the risk of loss/theft.

Tough call!

Roosevelt G.

For the convenience of carrying it everywhere and the ability to upload my photos, the mini-ipad was the best investment I made before our trip to India last January!

Just make sure you bring reading glasses to read and write!

If the point is to back up your photos to your laptop, I don't see how the use of hotel computers allows you to do that. You aren'y going to back up your photos to a hotel computer in Delhi! You could use a hotel computer to upload them to the cloud, I suppose.

Kathie:

You are right, I would have to upload them to the cloud.

Roosevelt G.