Take a laptop or not
 

In Italy for a month in Apartments is it worth taking a laptop. What are the pitfalls other than weight. Will connections be a hassel to phone lines?

Hi,

To get you started, here's a recent thread about taking laptops in Europe:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34590955

Good luck.

king;

I'm not sure where you will be in Italy, but during our two week visit last summer, we used internet cafes in Rome, Venice and Sorrento. The cost was cheap and we had no need for our laptops or the hassles with getting internet connections. In Rome the internet cafe was across the street from our hotel.

Clea

The biggest pitfall is probably the torrent of unsolicited preaching you're going to receive from born-again members of the "Don't take your laptop abroad" religion, determined to win converts.

The second pitfall is that the only person who knows how difficult it will be to connect it is unlikely to be on this board. The ONE person who knows is the owner of the flat. Although all new phone installations in Italy are to a common standard, there's no guarantee your flat will conform: the phone - if there is one - could have been installed any time in the past 80 years, and can have all sorts of different connection points. Some require screwdrivers and a degree in palaeo-electical engineering to add a new device.

The second pitfall might be the cost of connection. The most common options are to dial up your ISP at home or, with some ISPs like AOL, dial a local number (for which, when I last checked it, AOL adds a minutage charge that's rather more than most properly negotiated international phone charges). Both of these can get pricey after a month.

Here in Britain, there's a relatively painless solution: many ISPs offer pay as you go dial up in Britain for around 1p a minute, billed to the local phone number. Any visitor can simply sign up. I've been trying half-heartedly for a year or so to discover similar operators in Italy, but have failed (which is not to say they don't exist).

All of which said, what's your alternative? In central Rome, an internet cafe is probably round the corner (but don't count on it). In Castelgelato Caduta Massi (pop 23), it might be several mountain passes away.

Hi KR,

Will you be on vacation?

((I))

If you take it, don't forget to look into whether your power supply will need a gizmo to adjust for the different voltage. Friend of mine fried her power supply when she simply put on a plug adapter, which of course simply enabled her to plug it into the outlet, but not adjust the voltage.

flanneruk - I enjoyed your sermon. :)

You didn't tell us why you want a laptop or how many hours a day you might want to use it. I personally don't want to spend my holiday staring at a computer screen, so the occasional few minutes in an internet café are enough (and if there isn't one, it doesn't matter), but you may have totally different requirements.

Unfortunately for us, when we travel we have to be able to access the office remotely and require high speed access. We are planning a trip to Italy in Dec and I am limited to looking for hotels/apartments with ADSL as most internet cafes don't allow one to hook up their own computer. Any suggestions of where to stay?

No preaching here, but I just finished 12 days in the UK without my laptop, and was happy about it. And I LIVE on my computer. Find an internet cafe, and be done with it. No dial-up, no lugging.

If you're going to stay with Heidi in the mountains of Switzerland, maybe you'll need to reconsider. ;o)

And no preaching here, either ... we carry a laptop and we don't find it a burden.

By the way, we had no trouble finding unprotected wireless networks on our last couple of visits to Paris. Didn't use them, of course ...

Anselm

sharkmom, google high speed internet access hotel rome and high speed internet access hotel florence and then cross-reference the hotels you find with the reviews in tripadvisor.com

Flanneruk, LOL! maybe I should start planning my visit to "Castelgelato Caduta Massi (pop 23)" -- sounds charming, and I bet it's not on the tourist trail...;-) ;-)

The first time we traveled with a laptop, my daughter spilled soda over it during infight turbulence.
The second time, someone stepped on it. I vote for leave it at home, and enjoy your vacation.

I traveled with my laptop a couple years ago through Europe with mixed success. Oddly enough the apartment in Paris which has an "easy access" DSL connection was one that I could never access. I spoke to the owner (an American) about it and he could never figure it out. In some hotels I connected easily. In others, not so easy.

But many are leaving out an important point. A laptop is a good place to have a lot of your itinerary, lists of restaurants, and a myriad of other things besides just using it for internet. In addition, it's great to have to do your daily journal on and add to as you go along.

In London, I loved being able to sign on in the morning and find out what shows they had tickets for at the TKTS booth before I went. I liked being able to check times of restaurants. And of course, I LOVED being able to stay in contact on Fodors.

DDA, on our last trip to Europe, a bird crapped on my partner. He got stepped on several times, and he also had food spilled on him. But I think I'm still taking him along next year.
(sorry, bad joke in there somewhere)

Another advantage that hasn't been mentioned here is the ability to use the internet to phone someone from your laptop.
http://www.skype.com/

Eleni,
Thank you so much for your suggestion. Why didn't I think of that?!! So simple a solution to my problem. Google is as amazing as fodors.com.

plain and simple, i love google.