Internet on Island

[Cat_Lover3]

We will be on the Island for a 15 day full transit of the Panama Canal in December. I am looking at prepurchasing an Internet package (and getting free bonus minutes) I plan on bringing my laptop. I have a couple of questions. We plan to use it to check and send emails but plan to work offline as much as possible. How many minutes has it been your experience to purchase for this length of cruise? Also is the connection a secure one? I would rather purchase minutes from Princess than trust using Internet cafes in ports.

I know this has been discussed before but I couldn't seem to find answers to those who are purchasing minutes and not receiving them because of status.

Any information would be aprreciated.

[DandP]

We will be on the Island for a 15 day full transit of the Panama Canal in December. I am looking at prepurchasing an Internet package (and getting free bonus minutes) I plan on bringing my laptop. I have a couple of questions. We plan to use it to check and send emails but plan to work offline as much as possible. How many minutes has it been your experience to purchase for this length of cruise? Also is the connection a secure one? I would rather purchase minutes from Princess than trust using Internet cafes in ports.

I know this has been discussed before but I couldn't seem to find answers to those who are purchasing minutes and not receiving them because of status.

Any information would be aprreciated.

 

While these points may not be a direct answer to your questions, I think they are worth considering.

 

How many minutes you need is really very person dependent.

 

Windows Live Mail 2011 is quite good and can be configured in different ways. It is a very efficient way of working offline because you can compose complete messages (e.g., addressed and with attachments) which are ready to go when you connect (rather than cutting and pasting from Word, etc.). Here is a good post with more details.

 

We have multiple email accounts - a couple tend to receive most of the recent car crash videos, political rants, red neck jokes, cat pictures, and other stuff which we really don't care about. Another account is our primary account which is used for important things (resetting passwords for banking, etc.). We gave a different email address to the few people who might really need to contact us (something like ~DandPThrowaway @ gmail.com). This is the only one we used on our most recent cruise - we did not need to worry about exposing important passwords (no matter how secure) or download foolishness.

 

If you are going to create any special infrastructure for your cruise (e.g., set up email clients or new accounts), make sure that you do it far enough in advance so that you are comfortable that everything is working well before you get on the ship.

 

The Island Princess apparently made some satellite internet changes during its recent dry dock (and they were still working out some stability issues on our recent sailing).

 

Disclaimer: We did not use Windows Live Mail on the ship but rather at internet cafes ashore. However, I have seen posts from people who have successfully used it on Princess ships.

 

Oh yeah, make sure to disconnect.

[Loonbeam]

Can't answer how many in general but as a guideline, I find between my wife and I we use about 10 mins a day on average each, but thats also because we cruise during either fantasy baseball or football seasons and I have to watch my teams. The rest is for checking email, paying bills, etc.

 

The ship's wifi network is not secured, so make sure your laptop has the standard software firewalls installed, etc. The net connection is not secure per se either, if you need a secure connection set up a vpn before you go. Personally I use a secure webmail client on my email server using https.

 

 

 

We will be on the Island for a 15 day full transit of the Panama Canal in December. I am looking at prepurchasing an Internet package (and getting free bonus minutes) I plan on bringing my laptop. I have a couple of questions. We plan to use it to check and send emails but plan to work offline as much as possible. How many minutes has it been your experience to purchase for this length of cruise? Also is the connection a secure one? I would rather purchase minutes from Princess than trust using Internet cafes in ports.

I know this has been discussed before but I couldn't seem to find answers to those who are purchasing minutes and not receiving them because of status.

Any information would be aprreciated.

[Pam in CA]

The speed of the Internet is dependent on how many are using it at the same time, what they are doing (uploading/downloading photos, going to graphics-intensive websites or using something like Skype use a lot of bandwidth), where the ship is in relation to the satellite coverage, weather, etc. Expect it to be slow, sometimes excruciatingly so, and sometimes non-existent.

 

As has been said, use a mail provider that will allow you to download your mail, read it offline, respond offline, then go back online and send. If you have to go to a website in addition to doing mail, expect 5-10 minutes waiting for the page(s) to load.

 

No, the ship's Internet service is not secure. I would never consider sending sensitive information over the Internet onboard, even when using my own netbook. That might be overkill but I'd rather be safe then sorry.

[RickEk]

And to add fuel to the fire, check out this link. Very scary if you use the WiFi on the ships...

 

http://shankman.com/why-its-time-to-say-goodbye-to-free-wi-fi-part-two/