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Internet Friendly Cruise Lines?
ttyp0 asks: "The team of upper management at my company, including myself want to take a week long cruise vacation together. Unfortunately, being away from the office and unable access the Internet is terrifying in the case of an emergency. Are there any cruise lines that provide internet access in the cabins (ethernet jack)? If you've been on a cruise recently, who do you recommend?" Those boats are big enough, you figure at least one of the larger cruise lines have thrown a modest satellite and a small Internet cafe on one by now.
wouldnt it be easier to ask the CRUISE LINES instead of a bunch of morons? You're more likely to get a RIGHT ANSWER, that's for sure!
Would Slashdot stop printing these 'I have a cool life and you don't stories.' It's getting annoying. Thanks.
http://cybercaptive.com/cruise.shtml
Try that.
- INMARSAT is not cheap, but could be available. Better grease up--when I say it's not cheap, I mean it's not cheap.
- If you can't be incommunicado during your vacation, perhaps a cruise isn't the best choice of vacation?
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
I've never been on a cruise before, but I've heard they're quite lovely this time of year. My sister was bitten by a moose once...
I decided to go to Alaska/Vancouver this past summer and enjoyed it. The lack of net access was a plus, but I did want to at least have access on board. The good thing, the cruise line, Royal Carribean, does have net access.
The downside of their net access be listed:
- slow access, similar to a 56k modem.
- has to use their equipment setup, could not use my laptop.
- had to use their intergrated desktop envirnoment which is designed to charge the used by the minute, using your cabin card.
- i could only use an older version of IE at the time which did not have java support.
The way I got around this was to use VNC viewer to connect to my office machine, and use what software I needed to on that side such as my email and instant messengaging clients.
Another thing to note is that some ports of call do have net access. I can recall 3 cities on my trip with their own net access. There could have been more, but I wasn't looking for them. They were usually in near plain site, because of the tourists.
If this is not up to your liking, then I would say bring your own satellite hardware. But if you're on vacation, then keep it that way. Enjoy the vacation and pretend you don't have access. That's pretty much what I did.
Just because you spend 8 hours a day with your co-workers doesn't mean they are your friends. In fact, if you think about it, you probably all fucking hate each other. Why not spend your time with your real friends instead?
... giving the money as bonuses to the workers?
$1000 for Phone
$250 for Data connector
$1.50 per min of 9600 baud
(the phone looks like a slow serial modem to your computer)
I've used a Psion Revo, null-modem cable and Iridium phone to telnet into servers while on vacation - works well for me, and the whole package weighs about 4 pounds.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
AOL Internet Cafés
Aboard the Sun, Dawn, Sea, Ocean, Royal, Regal, Grand and Golden Princess you can keep in touch while you're at sea. Extended hours are available allowing you to send and receive email, browse the Internet and utilize the Center's computers for word processing. Programs available include Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, etc.), Corel Suite (WordPerfect, Corel Draw, etc.), Lotus Suite (Lotus 1, 2, 3) and AOL. Printing and photocopying services are also available. We encourage you to contact your ship's Computer Officer to discuss your specific needs and the charges that apply for these services.
I have been on 4 princess cruises, and they are a very nice way to travel.
Just each a bunch of pringles, and leave a receiver at dock.
Have you read my journal today?
Muslims should NOT be allowed free passage any more. It is obvious their filthy hate-filled belief system compels them to murder.
Q. How long does it take for a Muslim to make a bomb?
A. Nine months!
Check out GeekCruises.com - they say that they have wireless access.
The cruises have a public lounge where you get Internet access (there may be a fee, I forget) and you can also get it in your cabin for $$$$.
And it's true you can get net access in port...even in places like St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands, there are places that let you fax/email/Internet right by the dock.
- adam
Billy: We've done it. We've done it. We're rich. Wyatt. (Laughs) Yeah, man. (Laughs) Yeah. Clearly, we did it, man we did it. We did it. Huh. We're rich, man. We're retired in Florida, now, mister. (Chuckles) Whew.
Captain America: You know Billy, we blew it.
Billy: What? Huh? Wha-wha-wha- That's what it's all about, man. I mean, like you know - I mean, you go for the big money, man, and then you're free. You dig? (Laughs)
Wyatt: We blew it. Good night, man.
Check out http://www.geekcruises.com.
It's neat.
2 years ago I went on the Disney cruise line (it was a freebie, from my moms company)
No net access, and a sat connection to a land phone was 13$+ a minute, my dad made one call, and it came to 65.something$
There phones did have data jacks, so I guess if you absolutely wanted just to check your e-mail, you could though.
Um where do I apply for that job? Do I get, like, a cool Gopher hat to wear around too?
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
I sailed on Infinity in January. They had in-cabin net access from $100 for the week. Worked like a charm (or maybe more like a complex incantation, all sorts of adapters and such involved to get to my laptop), except that it wouldn't pass SMTP through to my ISP properly. I've since learned to use the work-around SMTP port at my ISP (5190 for mine, instead of the usual 25) to bypass this sort of SMTP interception problem.
I came across an O'Reilly article today that discusses this. It's titled "Wireless at Sea: A Report from the MacMania Alaska Cruise".
An excerpt:
--Bruce
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.
Some of the Norwegian cruise line boats have Internet access. We did the New Years 2K cruise on their new Norwegian Sky boat. You could dial-out from the rooms (sloooow) or they had an Internet cafe type setup. The cafe wasn't bad and it was more than enough to check web mail and things.
No net access in cabins, but they had an Internet 'Lounge' that had about 24 machines running Internet Exporer kiosk-style (no menubar, buttons for BACK, RELOAD, etc., only).
Speed was quite good, at least comparable to the 1.5Mb/sec DSL I have at home. The browser did have Java enabled. I was able to successfully use SSH and VNC (both Java applets from my web server) to get into my FreeBSD box back at home. Didn't try much else except HTTP(S). Of course, once I got VNC open and KDE running in that, I could do anything that way.
Cost was 0.75 per minute, with discounts to something around $0.55 and $0.40 per minute for prepurchasing 100 and 250 minutes, respectively. I only tried it a couple of times, mostly out of curiosity, so I just used the per-minute plan.
There was a two-hour window the second night of the cruise when access was free so you could try it out. Access was only available the first full day through the last full day of the cruise (i.e. not on the first night or last morning)
I just got back from my honeymoon. I was on Royal Caribbean's Voyager of the Seas. There is in-room 56k modem access. I did not look into the fees. They also have a "business" center that has computers that can be used at 50c/min that are connected to the outside world.
Telephone calls to shore are a killer: 8$/min!
In jamaica, and grand cayman there were internet cafes.
I was on my honeymoon, so I did not so much as even think about touching a keyboard.
Hope this helps!
I'm getting married on the 26th! Oh well guess I'll have to move the wedding up a week to take the cruise as our honeymoon.
LinuxWorx
Spelling errors are intentional as are gramatical error
....but they are all wired.
:)
I used to be a port agent in Alaska for the cruise ships, and the main way we communicated with them, was via email. Much much nicer than telex or fax. I can actually use vowels now
Even with the cargo ships I dealt with, we would just use a service called 'stratosmobile'. We'd email the 'telex' to (theshipstelexnumber)@stratosmobile.net and they would take care of it all.
Its still not cheap, however. A voicelink to a ship, via INMARSAT, *starts* at about 20 bucks. Thats usually just if you want to say hi. Any more, and it really gets expensive. So sat-based internet isn't cheap.
However, almost all the ports of call (in the Northwest, anyway) have internet cafe's. Just ask any crewmember. They all flock to the cafe's. Not to mention, they are in and out of these ports regularly, so they know all the spots. One of the first questions I would always get from new crew, is "Where is internet cafe?".
On a side note, the telecommunications infrastructure of the non-brand-spanking-new ships, is not exactly robust. Running ethernet to every cabin is not exactly an easy thing to do.
The on-board network is usually a core AS/400 server, with a Windows NT client network.
This was a year ago, things might have been upgraded, but I doubt it.
I was on the Voyager of the Seas. On the newer Royal Carribean Ships, the Voyager class (7 day ships) all have net access and in room net access. The inroom netaccess is a flat fee. Also these ships are the largest cruise ships in the world. They sail to the eastern, (Explorer of the Seas) western (Voyager of the Seas) and Southern Carribean. Also, the Radiance Class Ships (5 day voyages) have in-room netaccess.
My wife and I took a Carnival eastern carribean cruise (Bahammas, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands) in April and the boat had an internet cafe on board. The speed was reasonable but it was like 25 cents/minute I think. The machines were locked down so you couldn't do much but type in an address into the browser. I thought I'd be smart and install a Java SSH client on my server, but the applet took too long to download, I gave up. It's probably best, as the vacation was more important than getting email or working.