Using Email on the Road / Travelling

Tips on using email when travelling

Using E-mail on the Road

Email is a wonderful, cost saving and easy tool to use whether it be for business or pleasure. Sometimes though it can be a little daunting, especially when away from home. A few years ago we read a report that is both sad and funny that said 'we know we are living in the '90s when we no longer speak to our parents because they don't have email ! Already now in the 21st Century email has grown more important than ever to such an extent that it can be psychologically damaging in that is becoming more and more difficult to get away from it all ?

Therefore some of the tips and guides below will help you with those problems, and make life on the road that little bit easier. Please also read our article on Email Security when travelling.

  Roaming

Most ISP (Internet Service Providers) will provide you with a roaming service at a cost. This normally charges a connect fee and then per minute, but allows you to connect through the local telephone lines in whichever country you may be. This may sound expensive but really, if you want to log on directly to the Internet yourself then this is the cheaper option. The other choice is to make a long distance call and connect through that. 

The ISP and roaming service will normally work with GRIC and/or IPASS who provide the local telephone numbers to be dialed when in the country that you are travelling to. They even have a downloadable dialer that contains all the different numbers around the world, saving you the effort of remembering them all.

Trouble Shoot Roaming

Make sure that you have entered the correct telephone number to be dialed.

Make sure that the you have changed the country setting of you modem.

Make sure that you have changed your location status, in you dialer; I am now in .......

Check that any local numbers for an outside number have been entered, such as 0 or 9 and that there is a comma (meaning pause) between that and the actual number to be dialed.

Does you ISP use a proxy server ? If so disable that function accordingly;  in most countries they do not.

If all this fails then call the local help number of the local service you are calling. Strangely most of these local help numbers will ask you for your password. Do NOT give it, just try and work out where the problem lies.

If after this you still cannot connect then you will wish you had read below before your trip.

Guarantee your Presence

No matter whether you are a computer genius or not, the most important is that you stay connected, and continue to receive your emails whilst away. Who knows when that long awaited and urgent contract will come through. It is therefore strongly recommended to use the following guidelines whether you successfully connect whilst roaming or not.

Start a new email. This can easily be done from one of the many thousands of free e-mail companies out there. We have all heard of Yahoo, Hotmail etc. etc

Yahoo is by far the best in our humble experience. Go to one of these and register to receive a free e-mail address. BE SURE to click that you do not want to be solicited by companies otherwise you will receive emails that clog up your system and do not mean anything. Yahoo is very good at this and have a very strong anti spam policy with nothing coming through, they have even now set up two separate IN-folders, one for normal e-mail and another that picks out what it feels is spam and then puts it into a bulk folder. If you do start receiving junk (from people other than your friends) then just send the email provider an e-mail explaining that you are unhappy with this and want it to stop. If nothing happens, simply go somewhere else and get a new address.

This e-mail will normally provide you with all the standard services, 6MB of email space, forwarding, auto reply, paging, etc. etc. Yahoo is one of the most advanced in the novelty aspect though.

Once you have this new email then all you have to do is start mail forwarding from your ISP (normal e-mail address) to your new email address. This means that whenever you receive an email to your normal address, it will be saved there and also sent on to your other new e-mail address. It should be easy to start the forwarding process. Normally it can be done from the ISP web site, however if you have any problems then just call your ISP help line and I am sure that they will be able to help.

The advantage of doing this is enormous. If you can't log on to your own account, then at least you can use somebody else's computer, such as the business centre and just go to www.yahoo.com or your wherever your new email address web page is, in order to receive all your own email. Using someone else's computer though does have enormous security risks. Please also read our article on Email Security when travelling.

Just remember that e-mail is never really confidential unless you are using encrypted software such as PGP, so if you do have to say something about your boss be nice !