Insignia Vista suite laptop

[lespes]

Having just returned from a 12 day Mediterranean cruise on the Insignia, I can say that upgrading to the Vista suite from the Penthouse suite we had originally booked was well worth the additional cost (Oceania sometimes sends out emails offering upgrades at an additional cost, but well below the cost of initially booking the upgraded cabin). We were just below the bridge, and being able to go out on the balcony and watch sailing in and out of ports was a huge bonus, in addition to having two rooms and the extra space.

 

We had an opportunity to visit some shipmates in their Owner's suite as well. These are postioned at the back of the ship, which would make sitting out on the balcony more pleasant, as there would be no apparent wind. As it was too cold to do this on our November cruise, it was not an advantage. They are also enormous with extra storage space, but would not in my estimation be worth the additional cost over the Vista suite. In fact, we were initially offered a chance to upgrade to an Owner's suite at twice the cost of the Vista suite upgrade that we eventually settled on. In any case, I would much prefer to have the captain's view of where we are going rather than where we have been.

 

Both of these suites contain a laptop computer, allegedly a Dell according to the information given by Oceania, but ours was actually a Leveno. You should be warned that the laptop we received was useful ONLY for connecting to the Internet. I had brought a small external hard drive and only wanted to download pictures and store them on it. This cannot be easily done, as there is no direct access to any files or folders on this specially configured Windows XP Professional operating system. No way of seeing the C:\drive, or of adding any programs of your own. Even Microsoft Word, which is on the computer, cannot be accessed unless you purchase an outrageously priced Internet account. Pictures can be viewed, but not stored, if you have a USB cable with memory card reader. The sytem could not recognize my Canon Eos 50 camera. Furthermore, there was no way of connecting the laptop to the TV to view pictures, as it had no HDMI port.

 

It is possible, if you are very technically inclined, to copy a folder from your memory card to a temporary folder using a memory card reader, and then copy that folder to an external drive, but there was no way to burn a CD on the provided laptop.

 

So if you have any interest in downloading and saving pictures, bring you own laptop, and leave the "free" laptop provided alone. By the way, should the laptop "accidentally" find its way into your suitcase, there was a list of items in the room indicating that you would be charged $6000! A bargain, I suppose, since the Canon binoculars were $1500, if memory serves me correctly.

[Mura]

That's interesting because we were in an OS in November 2005 and a VS in June 2006 (not since then), both of which had free laptops. Now, I did have my own laptop with me on both occasions so perhaps my memory is faulty ... but it seems to me that I didn't have that problem with the Oceania-provided laptop.

 

Most likely my memory is faulty since I had no need to try to work with photos on their computer since I had my own with me ...

[orchestrapal]

OS on Insignia in May had a dell computer, which I understand is being replaced with an I Pad.

NO you could not do anything much on it other than go on the Internet.

We had our own Sony on which we stored and manipulated all our pictures and burned our CDs.:)

[caribbeansun]

One of the first things I did was unplug the Lenovo and put it into the closest so that it didn't occupy real estate on the desk. I don't recall if it was hard wired to the internet or not which would be a mild improvement in speed over the wireless.