WiFi?

[PattyMichael]

Do the ships have free WiFi?

[ccletzgo]

no, pay the minute. Charged to your sea pass account

[jewopaho]

You're half-right ... wi-fi, yes; free, hardly! The cost is $55 for 150 minutes, but there are plans with less time. Depending on the ship, you may or may not be able to use wi-fi in your stateroom ... I know you can on Freedom class vessels and Oasis. Speed leaves a little to be desired. The best way to control your time is to compose e-mails off-line ... we use Word, then copy/paste them to Outlook. Every ship has an Internet facility, and it can get a bit crowded, especially on sea days. The cost is the same. Hope this helps. Enjoy your cruise.

 

Al

[Langley Cruisers]

Do what we do: follow the crew into port! They don't get free Internet either, so they take their laptops and go into port. Wherever you see them sitting down typing, there it is! Sometimes, you can get WiFi access right inside the cruise ship terminal.

 

Or, if you're going somewhere fabulous and warm, enjoy a local brew at an outdoor pub and you'll get WiFi access to boot. Nice. :)

[tiyana4]

Wifi is available at a premium onboard. Or you can bring your own laptop and pick up free signals from your balcony (while in port). Provided, of course, you are not transmitting confidential information. You can still draft your email messages in advance, connect, and send at will. We do this fairly frequently with a laptop designated primarily for travel. If you have an interior or oceanview cabin, you may be able to get a signal by utilizing the top deck or public areas starboard or portside.

[Langley Cruisers]

Or you can bring your own laptop and pick up free signals from your balcony (while in port).

 

Mmm, we tried that recently and as it turns out, the signal was somehow blocked on our balcony. We physically had to get off the ship and at least get onto the pier before we could get any kind of signal.

[PCWalton1]

Since this subject is Wifi can someone tell me where I will be able to connect up on Voyager? Will I be able to connect in the cabin or will I need to go to a central location? Thanks:)

[silentbob007]

You generally need to go to a central location on older ships unless your cabin happens to be close enough to one to get a signal ... but even then it may be weak and slower than it normally is.

 

Wifi on ships is always funny ... when people see others using it, I think the first assumption is that it is free because that is what we are used to in coffee shops, bookstores, restaurants, etc.

[cruiseguy1016]

Mmm, we tried that recently and as it turns out, the signal was somehow blocked on our balcony. We physically had to get off the ship and at least get onto the pier before we could get any kind of signal.

 

You probably won't be able to get it in your room unless your room is near one of the hot spots. There are hot spots in the internet café, the Café Promenade, the library, I think the Viking Crown lounge. There are several hot spots throughout the ship. I believe they are listed in the Compass.

[tiyana4]

Mmm, we tried that recently and as it turns out, the signal was somehow blocked on our balcony. We physically had to get off the ship and at least get onto the pier before we could get any kind of signal.

 

We have done this numerous times in the Caribbean and most recently did this in Alaska. We had no problems connecting in Juneau or Skagway. I guess it all depends on the port.

[pcur]

I just got off the Rhapsody for 33 nights, and I took my laptop with me. It was a LOT cheaper and more convenient that using the ship's computers for several reasons.

 

As mentioned above, I composed my emails offline in Word, and then just copy, pasted and sent them. I used up a fraction of the minutes for internet service onboard than in the past .

 

The internet lounge is frequently crowded, so I would go elsewhere. On the Rhapsody the Loyalty Ambassador's lounge is right across the centrum from the internet lounge, only the LA's had comfy leather couches. Much quieter and more comfortable. Most of the public areas with tables have wifi. Another favorite spot of mine was the International Ambassador's desk, which is usually on the same deck as the Customer Relations Desk. The Int'l Ambassador has a big desk and a visitor's chair. It overlooks the ocean, and when the staff are not using it, I sit in the visitor's chair and get wifi there. It's an out-of-the-way and quiet place.

 

Also, with all my music on my laptop, we could play the music we liked in the cabin, instead of listening the ship's choices on the TV, which are pretty bad IMO. We bought this great Coby portable travel speakers for $10 that you plug into your laptop, or plug your mp3 or iPod into the speakers, and get amazingly good quality sound.

 

I'm going to get a lightweight notebook for our upcoming trips.

[CVU]

We bought a little notebook and use 'Google Off Line' to read and compose our e-mails, works great!!!:) No need to cut and paste etc.

[MMastell]

These are some hints to make the most out of using your laptop onboard and making the most out of your minutes.

 

1. Do all of your composing of email or message board posts offline. Once you sign in then send or paste what you want and submit.

 

2. If you are doing a "Live at Sea" thread and want to answer questions. Copy and paste those questions into Word or other text editor, sign off and then compose your post including the response to their questions.

 

3. Turn off ALL automatic updates: I.E. Microsoft Update, Virus Software Updates, etc. Don't waste bandwidth, time and money on something that can be done once you get back home.

 

4. Only run the programs you need to run. If you have Weatherbug, Breaking News, or other Internet sessions. Turn them off. They take up the bandwidth and slow down your system. For techies: Disable all "Services" and process that you don't need.

 

5. Use your Webmail service instead of Outlook or other, PC based, email software. It takes time to download email to your PC. If you log into your Webmail and just pick and choose the emails you want to read you won't be downloading SPAM, advertisements or the eight 6MB pictures Aunt Betty decided to send you.

 

6. Go online at off hours. The ship only has a small amount of bandwidth allocated to guests and that is eaten up very quickly in the morning and late afternoon when most people get online. If you can go online late at night or early in the morning you will get better response time and better response time means less time online. Remember you are charged for the time you are on ship's network, not the time you are actually on the Internet.

 

7. When using your computer, do it in a quiet place. Often people who use their computers in a bar, lounge or atrium area become distracted and even start up conversations with people and forget they are online and eating up valuable minutes.

 

8. DON'T FORGET TO LOGOFF: A lot of people are guilty of this. Don't just close your browser or even power down your laptop without clicking "Logoff" in the second browser sessions that will pop up on your screen. If for some reason you close that window and need to logoff: Just open a browser session and type in: http://1.1.1.1 in the address bar. This is the address for sign off window for almost all ships. When it comes up, just logoff and save those minutes.

 

Take care,

Mike

[madforcruising]

These are some hints to make the most out of using your laptop onboard and making the most out of your minutes.

 

1. Do all of your composing of email or message board posts offline. Once you sign in then send or paste what you want and submit.

 

2. If you are doing a "Live at Sea" thread and want to answer questions. Copy and paste those questions into Word or other text editor, sign off and then compose your post including the response to their questions.

 

3. Turn off ALL automatic updates: I.E. Microsoft Update, Virus Software Updates, etc. Don't waste bandwidth, time and money on something that can be done once you get back home.

 

4. Only run the programs you need to run. If you have Weatherbug, Breaking News, or other Internet sessions. Turn them off. They take up the bandwidth and slow down your system. For techies: Disable all "Services" and process that you don't need.

 

5. Use your Webmail service instead of Outlook or other, PC based, email software. It takes time to download email to your PC. If you log into your Webmail and just pick and choose the emails you want to read you won't be downloading SPAM, advertisements or the eight 6MB pictures Aunt Betty decided to send you.

 

6. Go online at off hours. The ship only has a small amount of bandwidth allocated to guests and that is eaten up very quickly in the morning and late afternoon when most people get online. If you can go online late at night or early in the morning you will get better response time and better response time means less time online. Remember you are charged for the time you are on ship's network, not the time you are actually on the Internet.

 

7. When using your computer, do it in a quiet place. Often people who use their computers in a bar, lounge or atrium area become distracted and even start up conversations with people and forget they are online and eating up valuable minutes.

 

8. DON'T FORGET TO LOGOFF: A lot of people are guilty of this. Don't just close your browser or even power down your laptop without clicking "Logoff" in the second browser sessions that will pop up on your screen. If for some reason you close that window and need to logoff: Just open a browser session and type in: http://1.1.1.1 in the address bar. This is the address for sign off window for almost all ships. When it comes up, just logoff and save those minutes.

 

Take care,

Mike

 

 

I agree with all your points except #5. I do the exact opposite and my advice is to use an email client like Outlook / Outlook Express etc.

It´s much faster to download your emails than to open a webmail window and read the mails you are interested in. Send your friends and family an email to hold off those pics and fun emails until after your return to not fill up your mailbox. I get quite a number of emails daily and when at sea I usually log in to download mails about once a day. Usually I´m done in less than a minute downloading my emails. I can then go offline and read all e´s and replay - all offline. For sending I go online again and again will be done in less than a minute. So for sole email purpose I can get away with an average of 2 minutes online time a day and I couldn´t get to open my webmail page in that amount of time plus reading and replying.

[MMastell]

Madfor:

 

I also do the same but there are "friends" who pay no attention to "please don't send" requests and still forward the "send to ten friends", joke of the day and picture emails.

 

I actually have three email accounts and two of them I do download via Outlook but my main account I will only look at that through webmail and only respond to an important email and all the others just sit in the inbox until I get home or somewhere that has free broadband.

 

I've done fourteen day cruises, including writing a virtual cruise, posting pictures and responding to posts, and used less than sixty minutes of Internet time.

 

It really depends on what type of email you receive and how well you filter what email you read and respond to, when using Webmail, that makes either choice the better one.

 

Take care,

Mike

[pcur]

We bought a little notebook and use 'Google Off Line' to read and compose our e-mails, works great!!!:) No need to cut and paste etc.

 

I've looked around in Yahoo, but they don't offer this service. It would be nice to be able to work with all the emails offline. Problem is, if I'm job hunting I have to have all my email history with me from my saved folders to review if I get any responses, etc.

 

I'm going to buy a notebook (today most likely!!). It will be nice to have the lightweight one to travel with.

[pcur]

I have a technical question:

 

Have any of you ever had your cookie retention changed after using your laptop with RCCL's wifi? I got home a week ago, and ever since my mail and other logins won't stay logged in after my session is over, even though I check to stay logged in. I'm thinking there was a change made automatically in my cookie options that RCCL's client made for logging off. I have changed as many options as I could find: trusted sites, cookies, etc., but Yahoo and CruiseCritic both log me out automatically.

 

Never happened to me before when I traveled, and this was the first time I used my laptop on a cruise.

 

Any ideas?

[cweed]

how do you get "google offline"?

[dizzy205]

Do you get any better wifi connection in an aft cabin? It may be a silly question, but you never know...

[PhoenixCruiser]

Do you get any better wifi connection in an aft cabin? It may be a silly question, but you never know...

 

In our experience you will get better connections in cabins that are closer to the "hot spots" which are normally in the middle of the ship, the Internet cafe, the library, etc.

 

###

[dizzy205]

thank you! I will get my exercize too!!! I will get to the hot spots

[bassspanker]

I agree with all your points except #5. I do the exact opposite and my advice is to use an email client like Outlook / Outlook Express etc.

It´s much faster to download your emails than to open a webmail window and read the mails you are interested in. Send your friends and family an email to hold off those pics and fun emails until after your return to not fill up your mailbox. I get quite a number of emails daily and when at sea I usually log in to download mails about once a day. Usually I´m done in less than a minute downloading my emails. I can then go offline and read all e´s and replay - all offline. For sending I go online again and again will be done in less than a minute. So for sole email purpose I can get away with an average of 2 minutes online time a day and I couldn´t get to open my webmail page in that amount of time plus reading and replying.

 

I agree, using a local email client like Outlook is faster since you can download then go offline- but only if you change your download settings. Most email programs like Outlook have the option to "download message headers only" so you can see what the email is before you decide to download the whole thing, so you can choose not to download that stupid 5MB video that your buddy sends you. This feature was originally for the old days when you had a dial-up connection, but it's usually still there and makes a lot of sense in cases like this when you're trying to conserve bandwidth & time.

 

But the webmail would work just fine too, since it doesn't take long to scan your emails & decide which ones you want to respond to. If necessary you can save or copy the long ones so you can compose offline later.

 

Anyway, bottom line is you should use whatever program and method you're used to, since you're probably not going to set up an alternate email account or client program just for the cruise. (or at least if you have the technical know-how to do so, you're not going to be looking for advice here from this group...).

 

Most email programs & webmail services have tools and options to make offline work possible, so just use good sense and take some time beforehand to learn what your email program can do.

[SXM54]

So do you think the study or lounge would be a hot spot on deck 8 of splendor of the seas?

[SXM54]

Do you need to download anything prior to accessing the ships internet....besides setting up $$$ account. Will all computers be compatible with ships internet?

[SXM54]

Do you need to download anything prior to accessing the ships internet....besides setting up $$$ account. Will all computers be compatible with ships internet?