E
erginartesia
Guest
Ive seen several posts on how to deal with those ridiculous online access fees on Celebrity and wanted to make a few money saving suggestions. They ALL require that you have your own computer, but not necessarily your own network connections:
First. Let's face it. If you are using your computer to "surf the web" while your on cruise, take the first step, admit to yourself that you are a web-junky, and just look for those cyber cafes mentioned in other messages. However, if you are primarily in need of email, you can do a few things to keep the costs down and should not have to bother waisting your precious vacation time in cyber cafes.
The SUPER SIMPLE SOLUTION when you have your own computer:
For outgoing mail, pre-type up your messages in Word or some other word processor, offline. Do not connect to celbrity's network until you are actually ready to send the message, including your pics, Once you are ready to go, then get online, Copy (CTRL-C) and Paste (CTRL-V) the messages into either a your own web-browser email or the Outlook account that they provide to you and send. It should cost you only a few minutes to send several messages out.
If you will be repeatedly sending out a lot of emails to lots of people and they are mostly the same people, pre-type up all the email addresses, separated by commas or semi-colons (Outlook uses semi-colons), and save into a small, easy to access file. When you are ready to email, just bring up the file and copy and paste the list into the "To" box.
If you wish to send the same "ePostcard" to lots of people but want them to feel that their message is a personally written one, just for them (IE: theirs is the only name they see on the email), then send using the BCC option instead of TO: or CC: They will only see their email in the "TO" field.
If you have your own computer with WIFI, you may not have to pay that $25 a day for in room access (I've sent them an email on this question but have not yet heard back from them).
If you don't have WiFi but do have your computer, you may still be able to avoid those $25 fees by pre-typing up all your messages, loading up your pictures, etc. on your own computer and then copying the files onto a " USB Jump Drive".
To learn more about jump drives, just go to Amazon.com or Circuit City and ask about jump drives or flash drives. You can get a decent sized one for under $25. They work just like floppies, but hold much more and can be plugged into almost any kind of computer. Then you can go to the Internet Cafe, plug in the jump drive, get on the internet and send all your goodies to your friends and family in under 10 minutes! Alternatively, you can just use the jump drive to copy and paste messages using the Celebrity email account, which cost .75 per email.
If you are planning to RECEIVE a lot of emails, then you have a bit more to contend with, but can still save money. You MAY be able to remotely download all your email to that jump drive in the Internet cafe and then bring it all back to your own computer to reply to at your leisure, but that heavily depends on what email services your home carrier provides, specifically whether they have 'downloadable mail' through a web-browser (this is how I'm plannng to do it).
First. Let's face it. If you are using your computer to "surf the web" while your on cruise, take the first step, admit to yourself that you are a web-junky, and just look for those cyber cafes mentioned in other messages. However, if you are primarily in need of email, you can do a few things to keep the costs down and should not have to bother waisting your precious vacation time in cyber cafes.
The SUPER SIMPLE SOLUTION when you have your own computer:
For outgoing mail, pre-type up your messages in Word or some other word processor, offline. Do not connect to celbrity's network until you are actually ready to send the message, including your pics, Once you are ready to go, then get online, Copy (CTRL-C) and Paste (CTRL-V) the messages into either a your own web-browser email or the Outlook account that they provide to you and send. It should cost you only a few minutes to send several messages out.
If you will be repeatedly sending out a lot of emails to lots of people and they are mostly the same people, pre-type up all the email addresses, separated by commas or semi-colons (Outlook uses semi-colons), and save into a small, easy to access file. When you are ready to email, just bring up the file and copy and paste the list into the "To" box.
If you wish to send the same "ePostcard" to lots of people but want them to feel that their message is a personally written one, just for them (IE: theirs is the only name they see on the email), then send using the BCC option instead of TO: or CC: They will only see their email in the "TO" field.
If you have your own computer with WIFI, you may not have to pay that $25 a day for in room access (I've sent them an email on this question but have not yet heard back from them).
If you don't have WiFi but do have your computer, you may still be able to avoid those $25 fees by pre-typing up all your messages, loading up your pictures, etc. on your own computer and then copying the files onto a " USB Jump Drive".
To learn more about jump drives, just go to Amazon.com or Circuit City and ask about jump drives or flash drives. You can get a decent sized one for under $25. They work just like floppies, but hold much more and can be plugged into almost any kind of computer. Then you can go to the Internet Cafe, plug in the jump drive, get on the internet and send all your goodies to your friends and family in under 10 minutes! Alternatively, you can just use the jump drive to copy and paste messages using the Celebrity email account, which cost .75 per email.
If you are planning to RECEIVE a lot of emails, then you have a bit more to contend with, but can still save money. You MAY be able to remotely download all your email to that jump drive in the Internet cafe and then bring it all back to your own computer to reply to at your leisure, but that heavily depends on what email services your home carrier provides, specifically whether they have 'downloadable mail' through a web-browser (this is how I'm plannng to do it).
