Technical help required

[Seagull over NZ]

OK, calling upon the technical people on NSC.

My Dad is just about to go and live on a boat for 6-9 months and needs to communicate through phone calls and e-mail. So he is looking at buying a laptop and a mobile phone in some sort of way.

Any ideas of what might be the best thing to do - he has thought about getting a PDA/phone combo but he really does need the laptop as a PDA won't do.

Any ideas?

 

[Barnet Seagull]

Vodaphone 3G Data Card in the laptop will enable internet connectivity and will revert to gprs if 3g isn't available.

 

[Seagull over NZ]

Vodaphone 3G Data Card in the laptop will enable internet connectivity and will revert to gprs if 3g isn't available.

Would he need a mobile as well or does the data card double up as a phone as well?

 

[Reading Posh]

Has he considered an XDA 2?

 

[timco]

Would he need a mobile as well or does the data card double up as a phone as well?

No a data card as the name suggests does data only.

Best solution is like what i use pitchside. (If I can't get a BB connection)
Basic mobile with bluetooth (6310i not made any more but plenty knocking about) a bluetooth dongle or a bluetooth enabeled laptop.

Bluetooth is a short range network over radio waves good enough for 10m or so some claim can be upt to 100m but I doubt that is very reliable as it depends on other bluetooth products in the area.

the 6310i is a basic business phone designed too handle the knocks.

I use Virgin too connect mine and an hour of Internet activity through that at weekends would cost around £4 I think.

 

[mk_bha]

6320 is good to use as it can store 256Mb and you can email to and from the phone itself using an orange.net account.

 

[Cian]

Vodafone Mobile Connect card is excellent, the ones sold here don't do 3G (as Vodafone are too cheap to install their 3G network), but do GRPS, HSCSD and normal GSM - the first two are usually as fast if not faster than a modem (althouhg HSCSD is not commonly available in the UK and is slower than in Ireland where it is)

 

[Barnet Seagull]

GPRS should be the equivalent of a 56K wireless modem
3G is 387k which is very nice indeed

http://www.itreviews.co.uk/hardware/h592.htm

 

[Seagull over NZ]

Tomco - cheers for that. The bluetooth idea is looking like the best so far. What is the speed like - similar to just a 56k modem dial up or is it much slower than that?

 

[beorhthelm]

is he going to actually out at sea on this boat? in whihc case he might want to investigate Packet radio - using the Ham/amatuer radio spectrum to send internet data. dont know how it works exactly and ou might have to have a licence to use that radio spectrum, but its virtually 100% coverage worldwide.

 

[Cian]

You need a licence, and a lot of convertor equipment, as well as a decent radio aerial

And the connection speeds are slooooooooow. When you consider that for a Digital Radio Mondial connection (digital radio over shortwave), you're lucky to get 16Kbp/s for the audio, when you take into account the extra care data needs, you're looking at 10Kbp/s on amatuer kit.

Of course, the more you pay the better the speed