First of all, sticker shock at Venice accommodations, even compared to Florence. Even B&Bs in Venice cost considerably more than nice apartments in nice locations in Florence.

Second, Internet access seems not to be widespread or at least not advertised if they have it.

One thing I was wary of was that ISDN is more common in Northern Italy. ISDN can damage motherboards because of electical incompatibilities with recent laptops which support only Wifi or ethernet.

It seems from looking at several apartments and B&Bs that you will find ADSL in places like Cannaregio or Giudecca but not in the center (Rialto, San Marco). Almost as if the phone company hasn't upgraded all parts of the city for ADSL?

Anyone finding it any different? I don't know about cybercafes. Yes there are plenty of them but in Florence at least, they tried to gouge you (charge more than already high prices) if you wanted to use your own laptop. Plus the notion of lugging a laptop around all that water isn't appealing or hiking good distance for it.

We found plenty of internet cafes in Venice and Florence. Rate seemed reasonable to us - 1 € for 20 min in Florence.

While in Venice this past May, we needed to use the internet one afternoon with my daughter’s iBook laptop, and found the Hotel Colombina, which offers wi-fi in its lobby at a price more reasonable than the internet shops around. It was also a more pleasant place to sit for an hour, while we finished some internet business.

The Hotel Colombina is a four-star hotel, located at Calle del Remedio, Castello 4416. It looked like a very classy and pleasant hotel, in true “Venetian” style of design. The front desk personnel were very helpful in setting us up on the wi-fi, even though they knew we were not patrons of the hotel itself.

I'm not sure, but I'd guess that hotel guests had internet access in their rooms.
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We left the notebook at home and relied on internet cafe's for the most part on our No. Italy trip last May. I'm not usually such a slow learner... but it was still a couple of days before I realized that virtually every internet cafe in Venice had an @ sign outside. I stressed trying to find a specific cafe address (in Venice, no less!) and had to laugh later when that dang @ symbol kept popping up everywhere on the way back to our hotel. You can kill two birds and get your espresso fix while you surf! oh, and the sticker shock is evident with short-duration internet use, too - if the cafe you visit has other locations, consider buying a block of time that you could use at any/all of their spots during your stay.

The Hotel Antico Doge has WIFI and is less than 5 minutes walk to Rialto Bridge and about 10 minutes to San Marco. I'll try to find the bill to check the prices.

The law in Italy recently changed that caused many if not most of the smaller internet "cafes" to close. The law requires much stricter (and expensive) data saving, for anti-terrorism purposes, and the smaller providers can not afford the hardware/software necessary to comply with the new law.

I too found internet access to be few & far between when I was in Italy for 2+ weeks last month (particularly compared to France, where it is ubiquitous).

Gekko makes a good point. In Italy, you must show your passport in order to purchase internet time. They keep a log that you sign in with date, time, etc. It's a good idea, probably for security reasons.

I just returned from Venice, used 2 different internet cafes and neither asked me for my passport. It was also extremely cheap, 1 euro for 15 - 20 minutes.

However, I did see 2 other internet cafes that were closed and both had signs in the window stating that due to terrorism and child pornography laws they would request your passport before using the computer.

My driver's licence was adequate for them to copy.

I used EasyInternet at Piazza Barberini in Rome, like 30-35 euro for one week to use my laptop. They copied my license.

Then in Florence, the place I went to had access but they delayed turning on the ethernet port in my apartment room. I kept complaining because I had booked the stay because it was advertised as having it.

Finally they put it on. They copied my passport when I checked in anyways so the security law excuse didn't really fly.

As of the summer of 2005 the Italian law changed (after the bombings in London) and any public place that offers internet connections are required to take ones passport, photocopy it, fill out information in the registry etc.

Do all places do this, no they don't. But due to the law many places have closed down. The businesses that have applied for the proper license/permit are checked by law enforcement from time to time. But a good percent of businesses have not even applied for the required license/permit and consequently do not follow the new law and consequently are usually not "caught".

If you are more interested in this subject go to Google and research it as there are a lot of interesting websites including "privacy violation" issues.

We've used at least two different cybercafes in Venice and they did ask for passports. But now Locanda Orseolo has free access so we use that.

There is also a net cafe in Cannaregio on Strada Nuovo in Venice which has a laundromat right next door. We used this facility a few times on our last trip and it was nice to kill two birds with one stone (laundry and email).