I did a search and it is hard to understand for anyone not tech oriented. I travel for pleasure oversees at least once a year. Dealing with cell phones has not been easy so I am contemplating e-mail. I don't know about costs but I will be in Spain, Italy, France, Greece and Turkey. Is there a phone or PDA that would be simple to set-up and use?

Well, I have an iPAQ hw6915 with EDGE and WiFi, so when I'm not able to roam GPRS/EDGE in a foreign country I simply switch to using WiFi for my e-mail. This works great for me - there's always some free hotspot available where you can download all your new e-mails!

I was sitting here thinking: "I'll tell him about GSM phones and the talk about the pros and cons of windows mobile devices like the Treo 700w.." Then it dawned on me...the most obvious answer... BlackBerry.

Others can tell you in more detail than I about international plans and roaming... I know you could get a BB from someone like Cingular (AT&T) and get a plan that lets you use it in Europe, but that tends to be expensive... I have a BlackBerry, but its through Sprint, so I don't take it internationally... but I do take a GSM phone with me and just buy pay-as-you-go cards for which ever country I'm in...

I use a T-Mobile MDA - the GPRS/EDGE works almost always in Europe, but I switch to WiFi if I have problems.
Despite Sprint Nextel and Verizon "international offerings", I would check out devices from T-Mobile and Cingular.

I have a BlackBerry and it's worked in Europe, Asia, and Central America every time. Only problem came in India when some cities only supported GSM and not GPRS.

Yea, I have a Blackberry from TMobile and an HTC TyTN with a TMobile account. The latter is a Windows Mobile device. The Blackberry for me has worked everywhere but Zambia. But then again, nothing works in Zambia, they appear to not have GPRS. The HTC has worked everywhere but it was a bit spotty in Bombay. The Blackberry has worked in places like Cambodia and Halong Bay, Vietnam. It is pretty bulletproof. I have a Blackberry Internet account from TMobile, not the more expensive Blackberry Server account.

In plain English: if you want to use your cell phone outside the US, you must have a quad-band (or "world") phone, and you must be on Cingular or T-Mobile.

To get email on that phone, you need a phone that has data capabilities. Choices include Blackberry; Palm devices like the Treo 650; Windows devices like the TyTN, Dash, or Treo 750; Symbian devices like the Nokia; or the Sidekick.

You will also need a data plan. There are two flavors of data plans: Blackberry and everything else. Blackberry plans cost $20 on T-Mobile and $30 on Cingular. For everything else, T-Mobile charges $30/month (includes WiFi); Cingular charges $20/month.

Finally, you will need international data roaming. For the Blackberry, Tmobile has unlimited international data for an additional $20/month; Cingular's is $35/month. For everything else, Tmobile charges 1.5 cents per kb and Cingular charges 1.9 cents per kb. A typical short email might be ~10kb, so if you get 20 emails a day, and are out of the country for a week, and don't do any web browsing, and don't download any attachments, your bill will be about $10/week for TMO and $13/week for Cingular.

If you are traveling for leisure, forget about your email and phone. If you do need to communicate, set up an email acct with gmail or yahoo and just check it from one of the ten million internet cafes in the world. Or if you need a phone, when you get overseas, buy an unlocked phone and then buy phone/sim cards for it as needed.

vacation = disconnected

I have several Tri Band phones that work everywhere but Japan and Korea and quad bands wont work there either. It just depends on what the three bands are.

Indeed. I was going for "simple" ... and fwiw I think all the smartphones are quad band anyway

If you are going for simple, remember that some smartphones still require you to switch between 900/1800 and 850/1900GSM. My wife's brandnew Glofish requires you to manually flip. Conversely, my E-61 autoswitches.

Quad band is needed in some areas of the US. I know here, northern MN has tons of new GSM coverage, but without a quad band phone, it won't work. They are putting GSM on some of the "old" cell frequencies, which isn't covered with most tri-band phones.

totally agree

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.