WiFi communication for cruisers

With the advent of Netbook computers (1 inch thick, 9-10 inch screen, Less than 3 pounds, long battery life, built-in camera and microphone, less than $400 cost), taking your computer on a cruise is effortless.

Unfortunately net access and telephony on-board ships are priced quite high. Phone calls can be $7.50 per minute, and web time can be 75 cents per minute. Here are some ideas that I will be using on my next cruise. Please feed back your tips and tricks to add to the list.

Web Browsing:

You can easily find a free WiFi hotspot in your port of call, and do your web work there. Hotels, libraries, coffee shops, book shops, etc are good bets. There are usually several inexpensive Internet cafes near each port that the crew uses to contact their distant homelands. Remember that if all you wanted to was surf the web, you could have stayed home and saved money. How many of your precious hours in this exotic port can be allotted to surfing.

If you have pressing family or business needs, there are packages for web time aboard the ship that will allow you to to your "away-work" during slack periods in your day or night at a lower cost per minute. They are still pricey, but serve as a limit on trivial tasks that will detract from your cruise experience. Mission critical jobs can easily justify the cost.

Please share your experience with me in a post.

Telephone:

My approach to telephone calls is to use the famous Magic Jack. Just because this little gem sells for $20 per year for free or low cost calling from anywhere in the world doesn't mean that it's a toy. I called my next-door neighbor from the middle of the Atlantic ocean for 5 minutes for zero dollars. Phone mail and other features are available at no extra cost. Others may want to use Skype, but I'm not sure that the video will work well.

Even at 75c/minute, a 3 minute call from the ship will cost $2.25 vs 22.50 - Wow! Finding one of those hot spots in town for a free 3 minute call is also an option (try www.wififreespot.com). You won't waste too much of your day in paradise.

Again, please post YOUR tricks and traps to share with the rest of us. With the 10x difference in cost, I'm sure that the cruise lines will not be supporting this technique. Have any of you been blocked from doing this?