Updates to our Web pages

We've updated our pages on Getting Online in the French West Indies and on Wireless Access.

Additional information

We travel to the French West Indies, and we have begun taking our iBook with us, along with other items that demand batteries (cameras, GPS/PDA combo, and the like). While we admire sites like One Bag, where the proprietor tells how to pack all your stuff into one carry-on, we cannot make that. We find that we bring our iGo Juice which we can use to recharge and power our laptop not only from wall outlets at home and in the French West Indies, but also from airplane seats that have power; it also recharges cellphones and other lightly powered items for which adapters are available. All of our chargers work on dual voltage; check yours to confirm they work on American and European voltages. We bring a Wonpro multi-outlet strip with us, which lets up plug the strip into the European wall sockets, then plug our US-style plugs into the outlet, running the chargers on 220V. That lets us keep our iBook and all our cameras charged without having to bring plug adapters for several devices and without having to swap stuff in and out of the usually limited number of outlets available in Caribbean hotel rooms and villas. (The Wonpro outlet comes with a US 3-prong plug wired to the strip, and the seller provides a free adapter; pick the adapter for your most frequent destination.) The Wonpro sockets are a technical marvel, as they allow you to plug in any electrical device from anywhere in the world, so you can plug your charger in, plus the local lamp or other round two-prong plug into sockets in the multi-outlet strip. 110220volts.com also sells plug adapters for every country we have ever heard of, so you can take the strip anywhere and probably have it work with an adapter from the company.

We do bring some plug adapters so that we can take our iBook to Internet cafes or Wi Fi zones and avail ourselves of any power outlets there and to plug in an electric shaver in the bathroom, but the convenience of having a single multi-strip outlet makes it worth packing it. There is enough distance between the sockets that we had no problem with bricks taking up too much space, plus having five sockets, we had empties anyway.

We have not tried other items offered by 110220volts.com, but we notice they offer unlocked GSM cellphones, region-free DVD players, and multi-system VCRs.

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