working remotely in Europe if your office is in states
 

hi, <BR>I would like to hear experiences from anyone who has been on vacation and worked remotely? Especially when in Europe and calling back to US, dealing with time differences, working via dial-up service to your company's computer access, etc.<BR>I'm curious if I can swing this; working from Italy for 1 week. My office is in NYC.<BR>Thanks

Nice work if you can get it! Buona fortuna!

A lot depends on how much you are going to work and where you will be staying. Internet access is easy in most of Europe. Major hotels usually have business services (i.e. Marriotts, Hiltons) at least the ones I know of. Some, such as Budapest Hilton, allow so much usuage if you are a guest and charge if you are not, generally in 15 minute blocks. In Prague amd Nice, our lodging did not have guest interenet so we went to Internet cafes. Some if you are having a meal allow free usuage, others are more like walk ins. You can go on line to a listing of internet access locations by city, excluding most hotels. I know when we were there 2 of the 4 checked in with their offices every other day by Internet but usually only for maybe 20 minutes at most and it was not a problem. Good Luck!

I do it from time to time when I'm visiting my mother-in-law in Ireland. I use AT&T for my home internet use, and they have international access numbers. However, local calls in Europe tend to be much more expensive than local calls in the U.S., so it could be costly. Not a problem if your company's reimbursing you, though. But if you're staying in a hotel, those rates could be astronomical.<BR><BR>Once you're connected, it's no different than working remotely anywhere in the U.S.

Jenna,<BR> One important thing is to make sure you know how to access your company's network from Europe. I used to do this quite a bit, and my company had toll-free access numbers to dial into their network in most major European cities. In some cases, the dial-up number was a local number. Either way, though, as the previous poster mentioned, you'll want to check to see if the hotel you're in has access charges for local or toll-free calls, so you'll have some idea of what type of bill you're running up while you're on line. Access may be slower than you're used to over dial-up, but should work fine.

Jenna:<BR><BR>I do this several times a year. Most of the time I'm in the same location, where I simply use a laptop to perform the same jobs I would be performing back home in my office, and that's a breeze. I arrange to be offline for a certain period each day so my office can call me if there's an emergency (I have only one phone line for both phone and computer). The time difference hasn't ever been much of a problem. Usually I can solve problems early in the day before my US colleagues are even at work.<BR>It does get expensive to spend a lot of time online because in France I pay for local calls, which includes the local call to my AOl service, plus AOL charges international surcharges which mount up very quickly. I could go online with a separate French AOL account, but then I'd be paying for two AOL services and not even using one of them for 7 months out of the year.<BR>Working from hotels has been dicier. We tend to stay in inns and small hotels in fairly rural parts of Europe where there's no such thing as a modem hookup. For that reason, I purchased a mobile phone in France last November with which I can make and international calls. It operates on a Mobicarte, which is like a telephone card - it comes with so many units, and when they're used up, you buy another. I recently discovered, when I got to page 37 in the French instruction booklet, that I can also get e-mail on this phone. I plan to try to get that working on an upcoming trip.<BR>I also have an Ipaq (hand-held PC) that I'm going to be experimenting with this year. I'm hoping that will enable me some freedom from the laptop and therefore greater mobility while still being connected to the office back home.<BR>All in all, it's not difficult to work from abroad. You'll need to invest in some special equipment, like adapters and modem cords that fit the Italian jacks, and a power cord that fits the Italian wall units, but it's certainly do-able. Not to mention a LOT more fun than being back in the home office.