What account for internet at sea ?

[Johhno]

Hi all, as its been approx 18mths since our last cruise just wondering what is the best account to use for sending and recieving emails from our notebook at sea. IE Gmail,Hotmail or Bigpond a/c (bigpond my default at home)

Obviously looking for the quickest to connect so not burn our minutes up while waiting for provider connection.Im also aware that it will still depend on the satellite connection speed.

 

Off to Fiji in 10 Days.

Thanks in advance

 

Cheers

Johhno

[sydneycruiser]

I'm using Gmail next cruise. Last cruise I stupidly used my work webmail address to check on work emails (what was I thinking?) as well as family and friends but it took AGES to connect.

[cjm66]

I use Bigpond at home and tried using it three weeks ago on Pacific Jewel. It took ages to load after the first few days and was quite slow even on the first day - too much not immediately relevant incoming mail that I did not take expensice shipboard time to delete - although I did clean out my Inbox before departure. I would recommend a web e mail service as a temporary measure as sydneycruiser suggests if your Bigpond account is busy with emails you would not wish to deal with at sea or you have a lot of saved emails stored in folders. I also found text messaging with mobile on international roaming was relatively cheap for quick check ups with my son. Phone calls were very expensive.

 

Colleen

[bazzaw]

All of the email systems that have been mentioned so far are (I understand) - web based systems.

 

I have never used web based systems since the early days of the Internet and dial up connections - because they were/are too slow and graphics intensive. I have always used individual email clients - Outlook Express in the old days and Thunderbird now.

 

I used Thunderbird for 16 weeks on our recent "Round the World" cruise - including to send postings to my blog (which included pics) - and it worked well for me. Using Thunderbird allowed me to compose my emails offline. Then I simply logged into the Internet on the ships system - started Thunderbird and clicked "Send and Receive" . Of course, I have two email addresses - a private one that only friends and Rellies get to know - and another which I use to register in places like this Forum. I only then sent and received for my private email address - and did not therefore download any junkmail that my second address attracts.

 

This way, I could send and receive emails ( some of which were quite large, eg my blog posts) in about 4 minutes each time I posted a blog post. I can't imagine trying that using a web based system

 

Barry

[room010]

I have abandoned using bigpond both at home and at sea. I now use various gmail accounts for everything and haven't had any problems at all. Just remember that connections at sea are slower anyway because the ships have to use a satellite connection but the service is usually quicker in ports where wifi is available. Hotmail is Spam Central (and slow) - don't bother.

[Janet&Carl]

Hi all, for you technically minded I have a question, I would like to post a blog so that the kids left behind can see what we are up to. I haven't ever done a blog and really don't know what to do !!! are there any sites that I can connect with that are easy to use so I can keep things posted as I go?? :eek: I may find it too hard but you never know ;)

[bazzaw]

Have a look at Blogger.com - it is part of the Google stable. I found it quite easy to use - and many other thousands of bloggers also use it. Like all things relating to computers though , it takes a little bit of study.

 

For the first one I did - I posted to it using the email system within the blogging system. For the second one I did - I used the Microsoft programme "Live Essentials Writer". For the first one, we were away for 4 months - so I posted "live" while we were on the ships. For the second, we were only away for 1 month - so I composed all the blog postings using the Writer programme and then posted them all to the blog after we got home. This second one was designed more as a "report" rather than a live blog.

 

If you can figure out how to use this forum, then you can figure out how to blog :)

 

 

Barry

[smalldog]

Hi all, for you technically minded I have a question, I would like to post a blog so that the kids left behind can see what we are up to. I haven't ever done a blog and really don't know what to do !!! are there any sites that I can connect with that are easy to use so I can keep things posted as I go?? :eek: I may find it too hard but you never know ;)

 

I've been using Wordpress, which you can get for free at wordpress.com

If you don't need to add a lot of functions, it's pretty quick to learn.

 

Whichever you choose, I hope you have fun with it. :)

[smalldog]

I use gmail when I travel (as well as other times), and it's very quick to load - much less graphics etc than bigpond. And you can store emails there basically forever. And it has a pretty ferocious spam filter, so you don't get much spam into your inbox (but can check the spam folder to make sure nothing important has been sucked into it).

 

As Bazzaw says, if you write your emails on your laptop and then just connect to send and receive, it will obviously be quicker than writing while online.

 

But you can do this with a gmail account anyway - just set your computer up to check it for you into whatever email client you're using - ie Outlook etc. If you're like me and don't know how to do that just off the top of your head, Gmail gives you instructions for how to do this on whatever system you are running, Mac, PC etc, complete with screen captures, bless 'em. :)

 

Hope you have a lovely time on your cruise.

[Janet&Carl]

Thanks for all your help :)