On technology

Back in October in Blaye, I pulled out my mobile phone to look something up for Les.  He was astonished to see such an old phone still being used “There are museums that would pay good money for that” he said. But on the other hand, Les had just bought a new i-Phone and was having terrible trouble getting to grips with it, constantly missing messages and losing numbers.  My Nokia 3310, which I bought reluctantly so that I could stay in touch when briefly homeless in 2001, does what I need it to (not much) very cheaply. I'm still signed up to a long forgotten deal with Orange which gives me a guaranteed subscription free contract forever.  Since my monthly bill is never more than £5 it suits me fine. Let them laugh!

To be fair to Les, and to me, and to everyone, Les uses his i-Phone constantly for business, I use my phone for emergencies and for saying 'I'm on my way, put the kettle on', so it's each to their own.  In fact, the Beautiful Big Blue Van carries a respectable amount of technology for a twenty-first century nomad home.

As well as a mobile phone each, we've got an Acer Aspire 5532 laptop which was my 20 years service gift from the Environment Agency just before I bailed out.  It's got built in wireless networking so I can connect to the internet, in theory, from any WiFi equipped café or McDonalds.

It's come to my attention that there's been some grumbling that we don't update this blog as often as some people would like.  We're pleased that anyone cares, but have to explain that it's not as easy on the road as you might think.  Certainly not as easy as the people on the advertisements make out.

Yes, there are a lot of WiFi access points out there, but most are not really free.  Not unreasonably they want you to buy something in return for 'free' WiFi.  A typical WiFi search goes like this:

• Write a blog entry on the laptop, ready to publish.  50% battery remaining.
• pull into McDonalds' car park, start the laptop, detect McDonalds WiFi signal but it's far too weak to use.
• Great, they have WiFi, but we can't use it from here.  Close the laptop and go inside.
• Find a table, order the minimum; a coffee and a tea.  There's tea on the menu but no-one's ever asked for it before (this is France), so the staff run around for a while shouting 'Has anyone seen the tea bag?'.  Eventually they find a nettle and radish herbal tea bag.  “Do you have normal black tea?'.  Mystified expression – what's normal about tea?   Total cost 5 euros.
• Back at the table, we're connected to the McDonalds' WiFi network but no internet connection.  Ask another guy who's sitting with a laptop, who tells us it's been slow all morning and he'd also now lost connection.  Damn.  Look at the list of available WiFi connections and spot 'Flunch'.  What's a 'Flunch'?  Where can we get one of those? 40% battery remaining.
• Stella spots 'Flunch', another fast food place just across the road.  Bail out of McDonalds, leaving behind half a litre of khaki tea, and go to Flunch.
• Sit in Flunch, order two soft drinks for 4 euros, start to log in.  It redirects us to Flunch's homepage, which explains that due to the anti-terrorism legislation we have to provide some personal information, after which they'll be able to give us temporary access until we've confirmed our identity by replying to an email... “Yes! Yes! Yes!  Get on with it!”
• Fill in all the forms, get given temporary access, then the connection is cut. Spot a note pinned to the wall, explaining that they cut the WiFi connection during the peak lunch period 12:00 to 14:00.  It's 12:01.  Hover over the battery icon and find we're down to 15% of our battery capacity and really need to think about plugging it in somewhere.
• Back to the van cursing, full of caffeine and pop, 8 euros down to no effect.  We drive off.

So we bought some more technology.  First was an inverter which converts 12 volt electricity from our van to 220 volt AC, which our laptop's power supply can convert back down to 19 volts DC to charge the laptop battery.  A painful purchase because I've already got two inverters packed up in boxes back in Britain, which I didn't think to bring with me.  One of them is a monster 1000W unit which was fitted to our old van when we bought it.  It must have cost a fortune, would give us plenty of power but would flatten our battery in minutes.  The inverter is a great help, but we can only really use it with the engine running, so it takes a reasonably long drive to fully charge the laptop.

Before we left Britain I got myself a Huawei 3G modem, unlocked so that it could be used with a SIM card from any supplier.  It gives me reasonably fast internet access from almost anywhere that I could get a mobile phone signal. 

To avoid high roaming charges, you need to get hold of a local SIM card for the country you're in.  In France I bought a prepay SIM card from Orange for ten euros.  In Spain I bought a prepay SIM for nineteen euros from the Carrefour supermarket (which came bundled with another Huawei modem).  In Italy I got a SIM card with '3' and only had to pay for the credit I put on it.

If you're planning to do this yourself:

• You might have a 3G modem built into your computer, or you may have to get hold of a modem which plugs into your USB socket.  It will probably be locked so it can only be used with the network that sold it to you
• Find out about unlocking your modem on the web or from your provider.  For most modems it can be done for around £5 (www.dc_unlocker.com) but whether or not its legal depends on your contract.
• Don't use the internet service provider's own software.  Install Mobile Partner, which you can download from Huawei, which will allow you to use different SIM cards in different countries 
• Buying a local SIM card can be a bit awkward.  One shop will tell you it's impossible for a foreigner to buy a SIM without an address in the country, but the next shop will sell it to you cheerfully.  You'll need some vocabulary:
• A 3G modem is usually called a 'dongle' in Britain, 'un clef' in France, 'un modem' in Spain and 'key' or 'chiavetta' in Italy.
• The precious little thing that's called a SIM card in Britain seems to be called a 'SIM' everywhere.
• The type of SIM card which requires you to pay in advance rather than getting a monthly bill is called 'pay as you go' in Britain, 'prépayé' in France, 'prepagado' in Spain and 'ricaricabile' in Italy.  This is probably the type of SIM you want as if you don't have a permanent address in the country they can't send you a bill every month.
• France, Spain and Italy all have anti-terrorism legislation which requires people who sell mobile communications equipment to record the identity of the purchaser.  Take your passport along and you'll be OK.  Italy seems to be particularly strict, making free public WiFi internet less common and harder to use.
• The settings in Mobile Partner might take some working out.  Settings for some providers are on the web.  Carrefour sensibly provided them all in the users' booklet.  Otherwise you might have to get help at the shop or call the supplier's technical help desk, a conversation which would stretch my English let alone my Italian!

The 'dongle' is very useful but not great for doing jobs that need a lot of information downloaded or uploaded. Stella was feeling guilty that she hadn't posted any photos on Facebook, but when she tried it took 5 mins per photo to upload, so there aren't many posted!

Another bit of snazzy technology is Stella's Kindle ebook reader.  Before we left Britain I (Richard) was pretty sceptical about them.  I couldn't understand why you'd carry an ebook reader when for similar money you could have a proper laptop with a colour screen, a proper keyboard and the ability to run proper programmes as well as read books.  Now I know the answer...

Reasons to get an ebook reader:

• long long battery life.  Possibly weeks instead of the two hours I get from my laptop
• the high contrast screen really is much easier to read
• smaller and lighter, even than a netbook.

In addition the Kindle has some clever networking built in.  It's intended to allow you to connect to Amazon's shop to spend money and download books, but also gives you free limited clunky web access which on several occasions has been really useful.

Our wedding present from Richard's parents was a Garmin Nuvi Satellite Navigation System.  We'd owned a cheap Satnav before, which only had UK mapping.  We wanted something that would help us throughout our travels, and save us from having to buy and carry kilos of local maps.

It's an incredible piece of kit.  We spend a lot of time swearing at it as it sends us on silly routes, but in fact a piece of equipment that will fit in your pocket carries detailed road maps of the whole of Europe, at least one voice for every major European language (we use the local voice as they pronounce the place names better), a collection of useful landmarks, and can certainly do far more than we've asked it to.  We leave it on whenever we drive, as it logs our route and works out an estimated fuel consumption and cost for every route.

Apart from that, our technology is all gas oven and pedal bin, but not a bad showing … in spite of my venerable cellphone.