Will I have trouble getting email from my comcast or AOL account while in Costa Rica? I plan on going to internet cafes for access. One of the guidebooks said that it was better to establish a free web-based mail account w/ a company like Hotmail or Yahoo before we left since we were most likely to have only Web (and not POP) access. I have no idea what that means.

Thanks for any input

Although I haven't used AOL or Comcast, I have never had any problem accessing my ATT and Earthlink accounts in Costa Rica. Just go to the home page of your service and sign in with your password.

A bit of advice: After reading your email in an Internet cafe, make sure you sign out of your service. Then close the browser completely before you leave. Then, whoever follows you at that computer will not be able to go to the computer's history and and bring up your email account or other information.

Also, I often access my U.S.-based online banking from Internet cafes and moved money between accounts. No problema.

Thanks for your reply and advice. Will make sure I do as you suggested.

As long as you're able to read your E-mail messages on the Internet site for either account -- as opposed to dialing in like you might do at home -- then you can read and send E-mail in Costa Rica. (I don't have either AOL or Comcast, so I'm not sure what they offer.) I know there are no AOL access numbers in Costa Rica.

And Barbarian's advice is great. I'm amazed at the number of times I've gone to an Internet cafe in my travels, sat down at a computer and discovered that the previous user never logged out of their E-mail account or MSN or Yahoo Messenger. I always sign out for them, but, wow, someone could really cause problems for that person.

We just got back from CR on Thursday, and we were able to access our AOL account from the two internet cafes we went to in CR - we had no problem at all.

Thanks everyone!