Tech and the Traveller

April 17th, 2010 | Posted By: Tim | Filed under: Camera, Geek Cred, Hardware, IXUS 80 IS, Travel |

Currently as some people may already know I’ve been travelling in New Zealand, lots of fun here in NZ but as a techie travelling from Australia its posed a few interesting problems.

First of all is that in the land of OZ I have an iPhone as my normal mobile. But when I went to turn on ‘International Roaming’ through my carrier (Optus) I found that it would cost me $20 AUD per megabyte, not even considering the costs of calls internationally!

Mobile Phone:

I figured that even though I was attached to my iPhone I really only needed a phone to get me by if there were problems while travelling.

So I turned to my trusty Samsung SGH-E250 – basic phone, basic features, no 3G no EDGE, just phone calls.

This was an old handset so it was already unlocked, I was pleasantly surprised when as I walked out of the Christchurch airport I got a Vodafone NZ sim and 20 bucks credit for $50 NZD.

After a while though I found that the new mobile network 2 Degrees are just as good, and the sim card only costs $5 NZD (Vodafone cost me $30 NZD!)

Wireless Internet:

Lack of internet was my next problem, when my girlfriend and I had booked the hotels during our travel WiFi wasn’t a priority, so we had some pretty crappy internet during our travels.

Here’s a breakdown on the places we went in relation to WiFi.

Christchurch: Hotel SO – This place is awesome, its a tech device filled place that clearly has a digital soul. Free WiFi was provided by the hotel which was cool, but it was extremely weak in our room, I was only on the second floor but needed to go to the lobby to get a decent connection.

Speed: 512kbps
Connection: Poor
Restrictions: Unable to download mp3, zip/rar or exe

Queenstown: eCafe – yeah I know, Internet Cafe, how early 90′s, but when your hotel has WiFi that costs $20 NZD for 1 hour, what can you do! eCafe had a great deal going at $3 bucks for an hour and you could bring your own laptop so you didn’t need to use their terminals.

Speed: 3mbps
Connection: Excellent
Restrictions: None Found

Franz Josef: Not much WiFi going around here, there were a couple of backpacker lodges that have WiFi included in the price of staying. The motel I was staying with luckily had a wired connection that they allowed me to use in their reception office. But even this was pricey at $2 NZD per twenty mins.

Speed: 3mbps
Connection: Wired (Excellent)
Restrictions: None Found

Hanmer Springs: Green Acres Chalet – SurfSpot WiFi paid hotspot available, currently thats what I’m using at the moment to type this post. Its a decent price too, $12 NZD for 24 hours, the downside is the 500mb data allowance, but with a decent freeware bandwidth monitor (I’d recommend Networx) it is easy to track the use of the cap.

Speed: 5mbps
Signal Strength: Excellent
Restrictions: 500MB Data Cap

Christchurch Airport: Airport Lodge Hotel – WiFi isn’t free at this location either, they also use SurfSpot WiFi hotspots, thankfully the $12.00 NZD 24 Hour 500mb card I bought in Hanmer Springs also worked at this location so I didn’t need to buy any more before leaving!

Speed: 5 mbps
Signal Strength: Excellent
Restrictions: None Found

All in all its been not too difficult to find some sort of internet connection while travelling, although in hindsight I’d probably spend $99 for a 3G wireless device and a $50 credit to have a more solid connection, especially if blogging and uploading photos to social network / photography sites.

GPS:

I’ve only one thing to say about GPS units… BUY ONE NOW.

I bought a GPS a few months with the intention to use it in NZ (I have a TomTom XL340 – Awesome Unit), got the latest New Zealand maps loaded onto it and off we went.

It has been a godsend in the rental car, best couple of hundred bucks I’ve spent on a device this year.

It’s saved our ass more times than I can count with quicker routes, shaved off about 5 hours of drive time while we’ve been here, and saved my girlfriend and I the hours of map consulting and consequent yelling at each other as to which way / direction we need to go.

Once again… BUY ONE NOW.

So the trip to the land of the long white cloud has been a lot of fun, and travelling around has been easy with the GPS.

Camera:

If anyone has read my older blog posts you’ll know that I have recently purchased a Canon IXUS 80 IS.

I brought it over, its taken over 7GB of photos and video so far, which might seem excessive, but when you sort through the crappy shots you come out with some stunning photos.

On the video front it has been more than adequate, even when I was filming a street performer and ended up a part of the show! (I’ll upload the video once back in OZ)

So if you are travelling, take a look at the capabilities of your digital camera before you decide to lug around your whiz-bang HD recording video cam, that is unless you have one of those sexy little personal HD cams.

Overall:

So with only one and a half days to go here in New Zealand I’ll be winging my way back to Australia soon, keep watch on the blog as I’ll upload all my photos and video from the trip!

Tags:
Travel

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