Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
The Internet

Internet Friendly Cruise Lines? 43

Posted by Cliff from the for-those-that-can't-exist-10'-from-their-browsers dept.
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.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Internet Friendly Cruise Lines? More

Internet Friendly Cruise Lines?

Comments Filter:

  • Google says... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://cybercaptive.com/cruise.shtml

    Try that.

  • OK, here's the deal: (Score:3, Insightful)

    by vegetablespork ( 575101 ) <vegetablespork@gmail.com> on Monday June 10, 2002 @06:38PM (#3675691) Homepage
    Let's assume you're indispensible to your employer like you say, and that you're not a pathetic geek that can't bear a few days without a Slashdot fix.

    - 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?

  • When I went on a cruise.... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Alpha27 ( 211269 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @06:43PM (#3675727)
    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.
    • I've been on a couple of their cruises and they do have Internet available. I don't recall it being r-e-a-l-l-y slow...not like 56K anyway. But of course it may vary at different times.

      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

  • ... 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.

  • Princess - Their Grand Boat (Score:3, Informative)

    by mfos.org ( 471768 ) on Monday June 10, 2002 @07:22PM (#3676015)
    From Princess' web site [princess.com]

    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.

  • Geeky Cruise Line (Score:2, Informative)

    by TechSam ( 576638 )
    Check out http://www.geekcruises.com.
    It's neat.

    • Re:Geeky Cruise Line (Score:5, Informative)

      by _hAZE_ ( 20054 ) on Tuesday June 11, 2002 @06:47AM (#3678218)
      I thought I'd expand on Geek Cruises [geekcruises.com] a bit, since I've been drooling over the opportunity to attend one of their cruises for a long time.

      Linux Lunacy II - Western Caribbean - October 20-27, 2002

      Ft. Lauderdale, FL - Cozumel, Mexico - Georgetown, Grand Cayman - Ocho Rios, Jamaica - Half Moon Cay, Bahamas - Ft. Lauderdale

      Seminars include: Learning Perl, Introduction to the Linux Kernel, Introduction to Python, Application Development with Python, More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Filesystems, User Interface Programming and Architecture using Embedded Linux, Programming without Perl, Introduction to Zope 3, Building Ad Hoc Serverless Communities, Integrating Linux into a Small Business, Code Inspections and Reviews, Bullet Proofing, Paranoia, and Mucking Out, Vim for Vi Users, The Open Source Revolution, The Zen of UNIX, Twenty Years Among the Hackers, The Great Brain Race, Graphical User Interfaces using Embedded Linux, Web Application Attacks and Countermeasures 101, Web Application Attacks and Countermeasures 202, Digital Forensics Using Open Source Tools, and Preparing for Incident Response and Forensics.
      • Inside Cabin - $849
      • Better Inside - $899
      • Outside Cabin - $999
      • Better Outside - $1,149
      • Mini Suite - $1,399
      • Conference Fee - $995

      On board, what Net connections will be available?
      Holland America has equipped its ships for Internet connectivity. Called the "Internet Cafe," this room (which is open 24 hours a day) has six to 12 PCs with realtime browser access to the Internet.

      Will my PC work aboard ship?
      Each stateroom is equipped with 110-volt, 60-cycle alternating current. So most hair dryers, electric shavers, portable computers, and other small appliances not exceeding 500 watts (110 volts) may be used in the stateroom outlets. Having said that, many staterooms have only one outlet, so we suggest you bring a power strip!

      My significant other is doubtful about cruising with a ship full of geeks, but I want him/her to come along with me.
      The ship holds about 1,400 people and only about 300 of that number will be Geek Cruisers, including their non-geek spouses, friends, and family members. So, actually, it's the geeks who will be in the minority. Your spouse will have plenty of company.

      There's a lot more at their website, but that should sum it up really well.
  • 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.
    • We went on one last year. They had an internet cafe. You could connect for $0.75/min. If you wanted the priviledege of using AOL you could send an e-mail for a mere flat rate of $3.95! They never mentioned that you could use yahoo or hotmail - which I did. You could but an unlimited pass for, I think, $75, but I didn't want to spend all my cruise time on the net.

      I did manage to flirt my way to some free time. I 'caught' the hostess using AIM... I told her I was an IM user and wanted to see if some of my friends were on. She logged me in so I didn't have to pay the $$ but I could use AIM express.

      It was OK... not DSL/Cable speeds but faster than 56K.
  • 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 [macdevcenter.com] today that discusses this. It's titled "Wireless at Sea: A Report from the MacMania Alaska Cruise".

    An excerpt:

    The connection speed was, as expected, both slow and highly latent because of the satellite relay, but it was effective enough to handle email and limited Web browsing, as well as an upload of my dog mushing pictures.

    --Bruce

  • 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.

  • Carnival (Score:2, Insightful)

    by dmadole ( 528015 )
    I was on Carnival's Imagination a couple of months ago.

    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!
  • ....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.
  • 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.

Slashdot Top Deals

Administration: An ingenious abstraction in politics, designed to receive the kicks and cuffs due to the premier or president. -- Ambrose Bierce

Close