I recently returned from a trip to Greece and noticed a great deal of change in how travellers and backpackers alike use the internet.
I remember travelling around Europe in 2005 and having to scout out internet cafes in order to book accommodation and keep in touch with friends and family back home. Even then, it wasn’t very difficult to find internet access in even some of the smaller European cities. The growth of wi-fi in particular, has meant that you now rarely need to leave your hotel (or pay) to access the internet, but how reliable is it?
I never had any problems accessing wi-fi from my iPhone 3G on my network at home, but accessing a shared wi-fi point while travelling seems to be unreliable in most places. It usually means the signal would drop out or take a while to connect to in the first place. Many hotels/hostels have wireless routers with quite a short range for obvious reasons, meaning your access to wi-fi really depends on your proximity to the hotel lobby. This didn’t seem to cause as much of a problem for those travellers packing a netbook, who were more than pleased they didn’t have to queue for the few desktop computers the hotel makes available for internet access.
My initial thoughts were that having an iPhone would suffice on your travels, especially with applications such as Kayak, Hostel Booker and Trip It. This theory deteriorated as I discovered the quality of the the wi-fi connection on the iPhone is frustrating at times. I remember reading a few articles (iPhone World, PC World, TUAW) that suggested the poor quality of wi-fi on the iPhone is a result of the 3.0 upgrade. My bet would be to invest in a small netbook that will (in most cases) allow you to avoid the queue to use the internet on shared computers as well as the hassle of untrustworthy wi-fi on the iPhone.
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