IPAD reception in Italy
 

Has anyone taken their IPAD, KINDLE etc. from the states to Italy (or Europe) and how does it work?

I took my iPad to Italy and it worked just fine wherever there was wi-fi.

Wi-fi works the same in Europe as the US. No change in any settings required.

There are many US hotel chains, coffee shops, book stores, etc that offer free wi-fi - some have security settings and others are wide open.

More and more hotels in Europe offer wi-fi, but in my experience the use of security settings and also pay for use is more common in Europe.

That of course is a broad generalization.

I've seen the same trend on private wi-fi in cities - 5+ years ago you could easily pick up and hijack somebody's random linksys or netgear or other router signal. These days, while you can see lots of signals in cities there is increased use of security settings.

My recommendation is to check with hotels your visiting and find out what they offer.

Thanks for the info, everyone, and thanks for the OP for posting this. I got an IPad for my birthday and intend to take it with us instead of a laptop or using an internet cafe. (The cafes are hard for me as we use Macs and I always screw things up when trying to use a PC.) I can also take books along on it -- we always run out of books in English, and aren't always in a place where there are English bookstores.

to clarify - my comments about US chains was in the USA, not in Europe.

My experience in Europe is that free wifi is not as widely available.

Sorr if I wasn't clear.

We had free wi-fi at all but one of the places we stayed in Italy, including hotels and the 2 apartments that we rented. The only place we didn't have it was our B&B in Florence.

We are in Italy right now and the iPad is working great-so much better than lugging around a computer. We have even used it as a gps when walking in the cities (of course you need to turn on your data roaming for that so does cost but we bought a package before we left).

We also have a Kindle with us, but ours is not an international version so we needed to be sure and download all the books we wanted before we left -otherwise we need access to a computer to get more books.