[thelist] International Roaming - Thanks

[Garrett Coakley]

Hi,

Last week I presented a dilemma to the list about sorting out
international roaming.

Sorry I haven't got back to people to says thanks, but the day after
posting to the list, both my desktop and my PowerBook died with hard disk
failures (yep, both at the same time, talk about cursed!!).

I'm all back up and running now, thanks to some frantic trips to london
for replacement drives and (luckily) very recent backups.

As far as the roaming situation, I looked into CompuServe first of all.
They currently have two clients available. CompuServe 4 and CompuServe
2000. CompuServe 2000 is not available for MacOS, so that was out, but
CompuServe 4 is. The one drawback of that (for me anyway) is that version
4 doesn't offer connectivity in Thailand.

The new version of the CompuServe client, version 6, will be available
for both Win32 and MacOS, but it's currently in beta testing and not
ready for public consumption. They reckon it will be released in 5-6 months. 

(version 4 -> version 2000 -> version 6 .... anything seem strange about
this versioning system? *:) 

I was all ready to go with CompuServe when I remembered that an old
employer of mine used to offer dial-up access. All it took was a few
phone calls, promises of beer and general ass-kissing, and I now have
GRIC access.

Just goes to show, it's worth asking around, you never know what your
contacts can offer you.

Thanks to issac and everyone else who offered help. Although I didn't go
with anyones suggestion, I've learnt a hell of a lot about international
internet access, and it could be of some use to someone else. Yet again
thelist comes out on top.

<tip type="Backing up" author="Garrett Coakley">

You have to have a backup solution. Trust me, there is no worse feeling
than the emptiness in your stomach when your machine refuses to boot up
and you realise all your work in unreachable.

I use a Zip drive to do daily backups of important, rapidly changing
files (accounts, client work etc) and then at the end of every month burn
everything onto a CD. You can pick up CD writers pretty cheaply these
days (Iomegas' ZipCD is only 199 UKP), so unless you are backing up Gigs
of info, you don't have to worry about an expensive tape solution.

Did I mention that you *have* to have backups? *:)

</tip>

Thanks again.

G.

P.S. I'll be posting a daily travelogue on http://polytechnic.co.uk/ if
anyone fancies keeping track of my progress. I fly out on Christmas
day....that's going to be an interesting flight!

P.P.S. Seasons greetings to everyone.

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