Trip-Wired: Travelers Today Have Lots of Ways to Keep Up With Their E-Mail

Recently I was in Barbados on a business trip. But just because I was out of the country didn’t mean I was out of touch. My e-mail follows me wherever I go.

Whether or not this is a good thing is, of course, debatable. I would have rather spent more time at the beach and less time in front of a PC, but being in paradise didn’t exempt me from having to earn my living.

Getting access to e-mail from the road is relatively easy now. If you have a laptop with a modem, you might be able to access the Internet with a local call, depending on what Internet service you use and where you are. But if you don’t carry a computer with you, you can get your e-mail from any Internet-connected machine at a public library, a cyber cafe, a hotel business center, an airport Internet terminal or an Internet access service that you’ll find in many business and vacation locations worldwide.

As you might expect, I tote a computer around with me wherever I go, and before I leave home, I make sure I have everything I’ll need to log on when I get to my destination. If I’m traveling overseas, I find out what type of telephone jacks they use and go to an electronics or travel store to get the right adapter. All recent-vintage laptops have universal power supplies that work everywhere, but you may still need a plug adapter for whatever type of socket is used in that country. Some people claim that notebook PC modems from the United States can’t be used in some countries, but that’s a legal, not technical, issue, and in the era of worldwide deregulation, it’s no longer even much of a legal issue. I’ve been to Asia, South America, Europe, Australia and the Caribbean and never have had a problem.

You might not be able to reach your Internet service provider via a local number, but there are ways to tap into it using a detour through one of the major ISPs. For instance, America Online, Prodigy, MSN, UUNet, EarthLink and AT&T; WorldNet all offer national or international local access numbers.

If you’re traveling out of the country, AOL offers numerous local phone numbers. You may have to pay a surcharge (typically about $6 an hour, sometimes more) while overseas, but you won’t have to pay for a long-distance call from most cities. Once you connect to AOL, you can still use your regular e-mail program and your regular e-mail address to AOL. AOL users should type keyword “access” for more information.

If you’re stuck in an airport and have access to one of the airline lounges, you can generally connect your PC to a phone line with a free local call. Several airports, including Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver have LaptopLane (https://www.laptoplane.com) facilities where, for 38 cents a minute, you get your own little office where you can plug your laptop into a high-speed line (which requires an ethernet card) or regular phone line. You also can use LaptopLane’s PCs if you don’t have a laptop. You also have access to printers, copiers and other services. If you can’t reach your ISP via a local call, find out whether it has an 800 number. You usually pay more per minute, but it may be worth it.

Another option is to go wireless. Sprint and several other cellular services now offer phones that can connect directly to your PC with a special cable. You may have to pay roaming rates and your connection speed will be slow, but it does work from most cities in the United States.

If you’re traveling without a notebook PC, you can almost always find a place where you can pay by the hour or minute to use a Web-connected machine, and once you’re on, there are several ways to get access to your e-mail.

If you’re an AOL user, you can log on to AOL as a guest (many public machines have AOL software installed) or you can retrieve your AOL e-mail from AOL’s Web site (https://aolmail.aol.com). Once there, you just enter your user name and password and you can read and respond to incoming mail and send out new mail. Just be sure you know both your AOL screen name and password.

There are also a number of free e-mail services that will assign you a user name or password. You can go to Hotmail.com or select the Mail option at Yahoo.com, Excite.com or Lycos.com to set up a free mail account. In addition to whatever e-mail address you’re given by the service, you can also use these services to access most regular e-mail accounts. For that to work, your ISP must support what is called “pop3” mail (most do) and you need to know your pop3 address, which you can get from your ISP. It’s different from your regular e-mail address, so be sure to check with your ISP before you hit the road. Once you enter this information, any of these services will allow you to download your regular e-mail.

My only complaint about these services is there is a limit on the size of your mailbox. It might not be a problem for some people, but if you get lots and lots of mail, your mailbox could easily fill up after a couple of days, requiring you to manually delete mail.

My favorite solution is MailStart.com because it doesn’t require any planning and you don’t have to worry about your mailbox being full. Unlike the other Web-based services, you don’t need to set up an account to use MailStart. To use this service, you simply go to the site and enter your e-mail address and password. MailStart then contacts your ISP and downloads all your mail.

I recently tried it and within about a minute it downloaded all 1,444 pieces of mail in my in box, sorted by date--the most recent first. It’s not only easy but very fast, and it can be used from any Web-enabled device anywhere in the world.

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Technology reports by Lawrence J. Magid can be heard between 2 and 3 p.m. weekdays on the KNX-AM (1070) Technology Hour. He can be reached by e-mail at larry.magid@latimes.com. His Web site is at https://www.larrysworld.com.