We are trying to figure out the best way to gain internet access in Europe without having to carry a laptop. One thing we are considering is an Apple iTouch, which uses a wireless connection.

Would this be a good choice? Are there a lot of public places where we could access the internet? What are the charges?

I should mention that we are traveling to England, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain.

I will be interested to know the responses, since I was wondering the same thing about our trip to France.

Most McDonalds seem to offer free wifi these days (in England) and you can hire an hour or so on a pc at an internet cafe or library.

I've never used an iTouch, I have a samsung Q1 http://www.expansys.com/p.aspx?i=134699

which I love, it has now been superseded by Q1 ultra.

I have the internet on my cell phone but I find the screen too small for anything other than checking e-mail.

Hotels seem to charge a fortune for wifi, or they give you free wifi in the lobby and charge a fortune in your room.

It is possible to just search for a network in a residential area as most people do not lock their networks, however this is illegal.

Just knowing the countries you're going to doesn't help - it all depends on what cities/towns/villages you'll be in. I'm at my house in France now, in a remote little village, and there's no wifi anywhere near here. But within a few kilometers there are scores of internet cafés and hotels and such that offer dirt-cheap internet connections.

My son's iTouch and my Blackberry are working just fine here, but we both paid for international service. I would never count on a iTouch or Blackberry for internet, though - the screen's just too small and cumbersome if you're used to a laptop.

So do I need to enable or pay for international service in order to use an internet connection at a free wifi spot?

I don't think you're going to find a FREE wifi spot anywhere. Well, maybe Macdonaldds. It won't cost much, though. I'm paying 3 euro for an hour right now in a small town in France.

I don't think you're understanding the difference between using your own device and connecting to the internet at a wifi spot or internet location. It's two different things. You pay something for each.

Free wifi access - whether through a laptop or a smartphone - is just as patchy in Europe as in the US: I was charged $25 a day for it in a Park Avenue hotel recently, while it was free in two dirt-cheap, 2*, French hotels we stopped at without advance booking last month. It's free in the Cotswold pub next door: it cost us a modest fortune everywhere we looked in Monterey, California.

But as St Cirq says, you need to distinguish between the cost of getting onto the internet - often free at public libraries on their machines, or on your machines in some public places - and what your IP will charge you for downloading from the web from abroad. Use an internet cafe or a laptop in a hotel and there's generally no charge above what the cafe charges you for access. Use a smartphone - which usually gets you onto the web practically anywhere there's a signal - and you MIGHT find staggering download costs: there are people with bills in thousands who've been foolish enought to try downloading films abroad. Only your IP can give you the details about this.

Personally, I can't understand this thing about not carrying laptops abroad. I can't imagine going to the US without my laptop: why would anyone try leaving them at home when travelling here?

If staying in touch really, really matters, you need both a laptop and a smartphone - just as you do at home.

Flanner, if it's an iPod Touch, there is no IP for the iPod. When you find a free WiFi hotspot, you just log in (if necessary), no additional charges.

A really cool feature is the "where am I?" tool, which if you're connected gives you a very accurate position on a map.

I recently (March) used my Itouch at hotels in both Paris and Istanbul. In both cases, it recognized and joined the hotel wifi network with no charge and no login neccessary.

Another thought - I recently bought an ASUS computer, 7" screen, is wi-fi capable and weighs less than 2 lb. Since I travel quite often I use SKYPE as my long distance service while away. Don't know if you're familiar with SKYPE but you can talk computer to computer for free anywhere in the world or if you need to make a call to a cell or landline it's really cheap, usually about 2 cents per minute. Sorry, got on another tangent. I bought my ASUS at Best Bye and the cost was around $400 usd.

Just another choice to think about.
Susan

As others said the much despised McDonald's is not only good for their clean free toilets but also for rather reliable free wifi access. Even in the little French town of Orange I was able to get on the internet using my Archos 605 at the local McDonald's.

I had bought this internet capable media player mainly because I had heard so many reports about free wifi in Europe, particularly France. I was informed that roadside Autogrills ALWAYS had free wifi. The fact of the matter is that none of the Autogrills offered free service; very few hotels did either. I also had no luck in getting free access in any airports (Lyon, Madrid or Munich) or train stations (Nice, Paris (Lyon) or Orange).

In fact, the only reliable access I got were in McDonald's and a Starbucks as well as a 2 star hotel (Mediodia) in Madrid. I was very, very disappointed. I would've been better off just going to one of the omnipresent internet cafes. When paying upfront for access time allow yourself at least half an hour longer than you would normally use just because of ultra-slow access times and becoming familiar with the wacko keyboards over there - the French keyboard drove me insane with their juxtaposition of the "q" and "a" keys as well as the virtually impossible method of displaying the "@" symbol. German keyboards were equally wicked. My e-mails home looked like an adolescent's attempts at communication.

During our recent trip my niece used her iTouch all over Paris without a problem. As StCirq notes, in less urban areas there may be more limited signal, but in Paris she had no difficulty.

Louie Li seems to be misunderstanding the point.

Most smartphones - whether faddish Apple devices or straightforward ones from other suppliers - offer internet connection both through the cellular system and through local WiFi networks.

IF you're in a free WiFi hotspot - and they're just as tough to find and use legally in the US as in Europe - you can get free access to the web via WiFi through the smartphone. Many of us find the experience very unsatisfactory (though fine for simple emails), and prefer to use real computers at hotspots. If you're in a paid-for WiFi hotspot (very common in most of urban Europe, including stations, airports and motorway service areas) you simply pay to use WiFi. Outside urban areas and transport hubs, free WiFi is very rare (though, as with the pub next door to me, getting commoner), You can try hacking into other people's hubs, but it's often illegal and/or barred.

Away from WiFi hotspots, any smartphone will give you internet coverage practically anywhere in Europe. BUT roaming charges can kill you: on a recent month-long journey, with VERY conservative use of our smartphones' web facilities, Mrs F & I ran up a combined bill of £120 (around $250) in smartphone web roaming charges (running a business from a remote Umbrian cottage has its downsides). Stories of bills in thousands proliferate.

If you're sure that all you want from the web is very basic, attachment-free, email you might as well (in my view) rely on a smartphone, get email pratically everywhere through the cellular system and not drive yourself crazy finding free hotspots - but of course use them when they're there. If you want serious web browsing, or forsee lots of attachments, there's no substitute for a proper laptop in addition to as smartphone.

In other words, do in Europe exactly what I do in the US.

Flanneruk, an iTouch is not a phone, smart or otherwise. It's a fancy iPod. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I think the OP was referring to the iPod Touch, not the iPhone.

grandmere is correct. I was talking about the iPod Touch, which is an internet capable ipod. It has no phone capability.

I've used Pocket PCs (similar to an iPhone) on the internet with no issues. They have screens in the 3" range, and when used to access web sites that have special PDA/SmartPhone content, they are perfectly satisfactory for surfing. For an idea of their scale, here's an Eiffel Tower cam on such a site:

http://pda.paris-live.com

An exhaustive list of sites can be found at

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=450299

(Some of these are for devices with smaller screens, but many offer a PDA version also.)

I've got quite a bit of use out of http://fancyapint.mobi to find the nearest London pub.

On the Skype issue, you might want to see if you can download Skype to the iTouch. You can download it to many smartphones for use with wifi connections. I used my Blackberry last summer and got nailed with high fees for sending long emails and pictures....couldn't read the fine print at the Tmobile website because the agreement isn't to be found at the website. I was told it would work "just the same as in the US"...obviously there was a bit of a difference.

This summer, I took a laptop and used Skype. When I needed to contact home to connect through Skype, I texted at .35 per text. I made just a couple of calls when I needed info and I made the mistake of allowing my daughter to answer one call to my cellphone in Europe which turned out to be a mass message from our children's school system about registration requirements. She listened to the whole message without realizing we were "paying" for that message.

I just checked my cell phone bill now that I'm home. I have about $50 in roaming and international charges for the few calls I made and $25 in texting charges. I stayed in touch daily, for long periods of time, with video and audio to my two children at home and my husband for FREE. Last summer's cell phone bill was $800. This summer's was $75-80 and could have been less if I hadn't answered the phone or called the couple of times I called. HUGE DIFFERENCE.

The Skype site indicates that they are available for download to some smartphones. It would be worth checking out in my opinion.

I agree about going ahead and carrying your laptop though. It was wonderful to have it for our 2 weeks in Europe.

Those are good tips, Robespierre and Kellye. Thanks!