On the Road

The best ways to connect while you're on the road are the following:

• A dialin ISP that has local telephone numbers everywhere you go. This means either a national ISP or a local ISP that has an "on the road" option. (It pays to check your current ISP out before you switch or subscribe to an additional service.)
  
  The four largest national ISPs are:
  
  
• AOL http://www.aol.com/
• Earthlink http://www.earthlink.com/
• NetZero http://www.netzero.net/
• MSN http://www.msn.com/
  
  
• Many hotels provide high-speed Internet connections these days -- for a charge, of course, typically about $10 a day.
  
  Don't plug your regular analog modem into a hotel's phone jack until you check it out; many hotels use digital telephone systems that could fry your analog modem.
  
  
• Rent or borrow a computer with Internet access, in an airport terminal, an Internet cafe, your colleague's office, or your cousin's home, and use WebMail to read your email.

All but the last require you to bring along a computer; high-speed hotel connections also usually require the computer to have an Ethernet card.

(Some Internet companies provide free dialin telephone connections in exchange for your looking at a few ads. I don't recommend them for everyday use, but they might do when you're traveling.)