Emailing to U.S. from Blue Danube trip

paulnj

I will be travelling on the Blue Danube during the Oct. 8 trip. I need to keep in touch with my businesses back home in the U.S. Should I bring a computer or are the computers on the boat sufficient to keep in touch via email?
Paul F.

lucinjo

Paul, are you on the Prague to Budapest trip that begins in Prague on the 9th of October? If so, my husband,Joe,and I will also be on this trip.

ScorpioS

Hi Paul,

We were on the Jewell last year on the Rhine/Moselle rivers and used the computer in the Lido lounge upstairs. You could sign up for 15 minutes at a time. The internet service is intermittent going under bridges and going through locks. I bought an iPad for our next river cruise. The Tauck river boats are supposed to be wired for wi-fi. If you don't get a response from someone on this site, call the Tauck 800 number

Sheila

MSD

They are wired for wi-fi but it is very sporadic. If you bring your own computer it will not work in your cabin. The connection speed is also very slow. You just need to be patient. Their computers are sufficient. They had one on the lido deck and a couple of lap top loaners.

paulnj

Thank you for the information ScorpioS and MSD. You definitely helped me with my decision. To lucinjo, yes my wife and some other relatives will be on the Oct. 9th Blue Danube trip.

Pete

Our boat, the Swiss Jewel, had a PC in the Lido Lounge for passenger use plus two laptops that could be borrowed from reception. We used them to mostly check email and we were not aware of any time limits. But I would bring my own if I had to conduct business matters. You would connect with their modem which we found to be quite slow when the boat was underway, generally faster when docked.

EllenDec

We took this trip on the Swiss Jewel - aside from just mediore food - the trip is an excellent one and the ship very comfortable but do not book if internet access is essential as it is either slow or totally non-existant.

CanadianKate

We did Budapest to Prague in July and also run our own business therefore both travel with laptops.

The wifi worked for us (we were on cabin 204 on the Jewel) but it is very slow (common for satellite, especially shared satellite, remember you are sharing a very slow connection with many other people.) We found connectivity best after 11 p.m. or very first thing in the morning.

I'd recommend bringing your own laptop so you can download your email, compose your responses off-line and then send them later. That allows you to do something, like dress for dinner, while your email is being sent (yes, it is that slow that sending a 2000 word email without pictures, takes a couple of minutes.)

Remember, because of the slow connection, no large files (i.e. photos or large attachments like 30 page .pdf files) and should Microsoft want to do an update while you are on board, it won't likely happen. We paid the outrageous price for internet at the Prague Marriott when we got there so I could update my computer. It was nice to have a fast connection once again.

There is a 'limit' of X megabit transfer per cabin per trip but you can just get a fresh log-in each time you run out at no additional cost. Our first evening, checking email and the three websites we are webmasters on, used 1/3 of our limit for the 7 days on board. We managed to nurse it along for 4 days after that and then got a fresh log-in. A young man on the cruise had several fresh log-ins per day.

TravelGuy

I don’t remember if the PC on board has WORD on the desktop. If so, I plan to compose my email messages using WORD, copy, log on, and paste. Does the PC have WORD (or something similar) that I can access before having to log on?

LynnBean

Just returned from the Blue Danube Family Cruise and had very few problems connecting with the internet using an IPAD. Only time that we had problems was when we traveled through the docks. Also heard that the laptops they loaned out worked well.