Australia - Netbook - Internet Access

Mardrew

Hi

Please help/advise as I'm a complete numpty on techie things!

We are going to Australia for 3 weeks at the weekend and was wondering if someone could explain to me in very simple terms what I need to do to be able to access the Internet from my netbook whilst over there apart from paying our hotels' scandalous internet charges. (The first hotel we are staying in the daily charge for Internet is $24.95 AUD per day - and no - it's not a 5* hotel!)

I've been reading about dongles and getting them unlocked but still feel a bit clueless. Also, I've left it too late to buy one off the Internet. Can I buy an unlocked one in a shop e.g. Argos, Maplins, PC World? Any particular one? If the shops only sell locked ones, are they easy for numptys to unlock?

Is it then just a case of putting it into my netbook and picking up a data usage sim from a shop over there and then I should be able to get on the Internet?

Anything else I need to be aware off?

We will only have my payg mobile phone with us so we can't do anything via that.

Once again, many, many thanks in advance for any help you can give me.

martinthebandit

It all depends how often you want to access the net, if its only once a day ish then there are loads (well there was in 2006/7) of free wifi access points (have a google)

Most public libraries, the usual mcdonalds and quite a few cafes have free wifi.

We were touring in a camper and quite a few camp site threw wifi in with the site fees as well.

Failing that buy a dongle when you are over there, plenty of mobile phone shops etc will happily advise and sell you one.

Personally I would never use the hotel wifi etc as they are all too dear.

23n1th

Can you not access wifi for free at coffee shops over there?

Mardrew

Hi

Thanks for your replys. I suppose I was thinking it would be handy to be able to access the Internet from our hotel rooms when we are back relaxing after our day's siteseeing and are getting in gear for the next day i.e to be able to do any additional research on where we want to visit etc plus emailing family.

tonyh66

How do you know that a broadband dongle will have the required signal strength in your hotel to work? you may get one and find it doesn't work. Best use free wifi where you can find it.

giraffe69

In both Sydney and Melbourne last winter the hotels charged exorbitant rates for using wifi in the room and it wasn't any cheaper in reception. Walking to Starbucks resolved the problem though.

expatdave

I'd forget about the dongle as it will be very expensive and the signal might be poor.

Free WI-FI is the way to go. There must be bars and cafe's out there with it for free. In most parts of europe there are hundreds of free WI-FI cafe's in every town.

alanclarke

I am currently living in Australia on the Sunshine Coast about 120km north of Brisbane.

Some of the local libraries have free WiFi, you just tun up during opening times and you can connect for as long as you like for free, no library membership or password required. A number of McDonald have also have free WiFi, to check other free WiFi throughout Australia go to www.freewifi.com.au

If your going for pre-paid mobile broadband Telstra has the best coverage, they have a 3G+ network which cover about 95% of the population, I use it and get 10Mbps download speeds and that's in a rural area - http://www.telstra.com.au/shop/Consumer/CategoryDisplay?storeId=10001&catalogId=10101&langId=-1&categoryId=16126&parent_category_rn=16123&s_kwcid=TC|10546|telstra%20pre-paid%20broadband||S|b|7332058715&SMIDENTITY=NO

If your going to be staying in metro areas provider such as Optus www.optus.com.au - Virgin www.virgin.com.au and Vodafone www.vodafone.com.au have smaller networks and are slightly cheaper though it's not 3g+

All above sites have maps showing coverage.

Any questions just ask.

scheming_gypsy

If you want to use it from your hotel room then it'd probably be better to splash out on a dongle when you get over there.

stilltheone

The best thing to do is to buy a dongle here in the UK. This one is £14 and is not locked. Will be with you in a couple of days. It also an UMTS 850MHz transceiver. This means that you will have access to the Telstra 3G network in addition to the standard UMTS 2100MHz network.
It will cost considerably more to buy a similar modem in Australia and you'll end up with a locked modem.

If you buy the modem now, you can install it and get used to the ins and outs of the software. To install the modem on Windows 7, you may have to disable UAC. You can turn it back on after installation.
You can then update the software if necessary(again disabling UAC beforehand).
If it's an XP Netbook, you can install in the usual way.
The O2 modem software takes over the handling of your connections, so it's best to disable it from automatically starting up with Windows if you don't like this behaviour after installation.
To do this: Start -> Run, type "msconfig", hit enter.
A window will appear. Click the Startup tab. Then untick the O2 option. Confirm and exit.

I used a Virgin Australia Bring Your Own Modem SIM kit, purchased from a Virgin mobile telephone shop in Melbourne. It cost me AUD10 and had 300MB of data included. You can add further data packages as you go along. Look here.

Another viable option is to buy a Virgin/Optus modem with 4GB of data for AUD49. But it will be locked to that network until you spend a certain amount with them or you unlock it yourself.

Back to the O2 modem; It's just a matter of entering the APN and username and password in to the O2 connection manager interface and off you go. The network's customer service or shop will supply you with these details.

When you get there you can look at the other data SIM packages offered by the networks, but the Virgin/Optus SIM was fine for me.

If you need better indoor coverage than Virgin is offering, then look at what Data SIMs Telstra offers when you get there.

Click here for important information. Sections 4 & 5 are of relevance.

There is also 3 Australia.

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