I work free-lance and need to stay in touch with potential clients, who have a maddening habit of forgetting that I'm on vacation or traveling for conferences or client visits, even after a couple of announcements. As a free-lancer, I don't want to miss a message from a client who sends an attachment with the comment,"I need this back in 48 hours."

I therefore carry a 12" laptop when I'm traveling for business and try to stay in places that offer free broadband connections. I take my usual cell phone on travels in the U.S. anyway and my European cell phone on travels to Europe. In Japan, I rent a phone at the airport.

When on vacation internationally, I check e-mail daily at Internet cafes. If I can't access my ISP directly, I go through Yahoo, which I have set up to access my ISP account.

By the way, i found that free broadband or Wi-Fi is rare in the UK but that a lot of Internet cafes will let you hook up your laptop to their network for about £1 per hour.