We have our first cruise new summer on the all-new Silversea Silver Spirit. We usually travel with a laptop. Can we expect to be able to use our computer for internet access in our suite? Any idea what type of charges we can expect?

Thanks.

Pricing:

Time Plan # 1: 1000 minutes for $250 ($0.25 per minute), time plan can be used anytime throughout the cruise.

Time Plan # 2: 250 minutes for $85 ($0.34 per minute), time plan can be used anytime throughout the cruise.

Time Plan # 3: 100 minutes for $45 ($0.45 per minute), time plan can be used anytime throughout the Cruise.

Basic Rate: $0.50 per minute (pay as you go)

Full details are here

http://www.silversea.com/silversea.a...ob_onceonboard

I have had horrible luck on several cruise lines at getting a signal in the cabin. To be expected since the cabin is usually a metal box with a door on one side and a window on the other. In the lounges and decks I've had good luck.

Also keep in mind that speed is closer to dial up then it is to high speed. Fine for mails and stuff like that, but don't plan on uploading your photo albums in seconds or anything like that.

Wow - that was fast.

thanks Mike

By the way, don't know if Silversea does it or not, but some other cruise lines offer a discount or an increase in minutes if you sign up the first few hours of the cruise.

One other thing too, if you commit to a dollar amount there is no refund if you have unused minutes at the end.

Expect to spend about half an hour to write a short email. The speeds are usually slower than dial-up because there are so many people and so few bandwidth. It takes 10 minutes from log in to open my mailbox, so plan on using more minutes than you expect.

I am not sazzy at all re computers... I would compose on word and do a copy paste for sending out messages. Burned fewer minutes.oop

I usually do all my mails in two parts. I use my laptop and download all the incoming mails to it. I disconnect and take care of any replies I have to reply to, and then I'll reconnect and send all those replies, so all the reading and replying is done offline.

If uploading a picture to facebook or something I'll resize it before sending so it's not taking forever to transmit. And don't forget to disconnect if you are using your own machine, son't go to dinner with it still connected checking mail or whatever every few minutes. Remember you are charged for connected time, not usage time, even if you don't send or receiving anything on the internet, your minutes are still ticking away.

The speed is also depend on where your cruise itinerary (ship) is. Mediterranean is quite good or any cruise which stay close to the shoreline in Europe, Southeast Asia and North America.

NYC to Bermuda were slow during the at sea days due to being in middle of Atlantic.

I am a little late to this, but you might want to consider internet cafes or access points in the port of call. I tried on board access on two cruises and gave up. I now look up the location on land side access and use it while in port. Canadian ports on the Atlantic side almost all have pretty good free access points. Even in Alaska I found Internet cafes for about $5 an hour. Cruisecritic gives internet options in their reviews for ports of call. PEI is an example.

Internet cafes are the only way to go.

I agree with prior posters - internet cafes in port.

I saw one enterprising company that was set up right out on the port facing the ship where we got off.

The lesson I learned on that one was to have your session right when you got off the ship. There were very short lines then, but huge lines later near re-boarding time as most people apparently decided to go see new city first when they got off and do email later. Incidentally, I learned that the hard way.

Rates I found were from $3 to $6 an hour, and speeds from OK to really good.

I think the cruise lines really do need to rethink their internet rates. I saw the machines on board mostly sitting idle. They aren't making any money then, and are taking up valuable square footage.

Romelle

The last time we were on a cruise ship (as opposed to a riverboat) was in fall of 2007 - on Regent Voyager. We've been on numerous cruises on Regent so we get free internet but on a 10-day itinerary our internet bill would have been $400+ even though we didn't spend time online like we do at home. Speed was decent - certainly faster than dialup but not as fast as DSL at home.

While it's probably much less money in port, and it's probably much faster in port, I owuld disagree that it's the only way to get online. To me it's like saying you should only drink the free drinks on board, never order a bottle of wine or a soda, because they are cheaper in port.

There are times it makes sense to go online (at least to me) from the ship, and to me it's worth it. Like ordering a beer or a soda, you accept that you are paying more then if you would on shore, but it's worth it.

I don't want to spend my time in port in an internet cafe. I'd rather spend the money and spend the hour or two or whatever on a day at sea online or something. Much as I don't want to drink water at dinner and save the money by having a bottle of wine at lunch time in port.

I don't need a thousand minutes on a ship. If I get a hundred minutes I'm probably fine for a weeks trip for checking mail and printing boarding passes and maybe uploading a few pictures.

Echo'ing a number of comments...

Internet cafes in port are the better value. They are the more logical choice if you want to do stuff that need a constant connection (IM, surfing that requires a lot of linking or entering data, etc). Security is a consideration too. It's kind of hit or miss whether or not one wants to or can spare the time in port to visit one.

Internet onboard ships is pretty pricey but there are many ways to limit your live connection time so that it's effective for activities that don't need a constant connection. Compose one's email offline in Word (or whatever) and copy & paste when connected. (I suppose one has to do the reverse if they're using webmail versus a mail client.) For news, I connect to my local newspaper online, cnn, news.google.ca, finance.google.ca, etc and scan the headlines. For any article I think I'll want to read, I just click on the link while holding the CTRL key to open it up in another tab in the browser. I can then disconnect and read the articles offline.

I think I purchased a 90min package on my cruise and was hard pressed to work thru that time over seven days. And I consider myself an Internet junkie.

One of the problems I have had with internet cafes in European ports is that they have European keyboards -- and it's amazing how exchanging even two keys (and relatively uncommon letters at that) slows down my entry speed!

If you have your laptop with you, lots of European coffee shops and fast food places are beginning to offer free access.