Portable Internet
 

I'm looking for possible "portable" Internet solutions. Here's my situation:

I live in Canada (near Vancouver specifically), and plan to do a fair bit of travelling this summer, much of it in a motorhome. We're not going to be doing a lot of camping out in the wild country, more likely to find ourselves in small towns where I'm not going to find much WIFI. I'll have a laptop with me, obv.

What solutions are there? I'm going to do some web-surfing to try and find out what's available, but I thought I might check here and see if any fellow Canadians are already doing this. Even hearing from some Amercians might be helpful; often what's available there is coming soon up here.

The possibilites that came to mind were cellular, satellite, and WIFI. Cellular I'd assume to be expensive, and WIFI is going to have pretty poor coverage. Is there anything else I'm missing?

Re: Portable Internet
 

Cellular doesn't have to be too expensive but it won't be blazing fast either. For example I've heard of people getting the unlimited internet plans for their sidekick and putting the SIM card into a cell modem instead. last I head T-mobile didn't like that much though. They do sell unlimited plans. I hear some truckstops have wifi too but I'm not sure how fun that would be.

Satellite AFAIK requires a telephone line (for upload).

Sadly thats about it. I don't know what you are going to do with the connection but if all you need is email you may still be able to find a circuit-switched cell modem (9600bps). that would use your talking minutes as well as an dial up ISP though.

Re: Portable Internet
 

OK, I've done a little research on my options. If I go with cellular, I may end up on a "metered" connection. I really have NO concept of the kind of data I push back and forth when I'm normally using the Internet...would there be an easy way for me to monitor my use in a day so I could determine what kind of volume I might need? One of the plans is 250 MB/month, I have no idea if that is a lot or not.

Thanks for your answers, CT11.

Re: Portable Internet
 

250 MB/month is good if you are only checking you email on it. Normal web surfing will use more than that. I don't know of any aps that will measure your bandwidth usage, but it should a fairly easy google to find some.