We’re headed to Europe next month (Benelux area, if it matters), and of course we’re taking the laptop. For downloading photos off the digital camera, for going to an Internet cafe and looking up more tourist info that we forgot to look up before leaving home, and the usual odds and ends.
Two main questions, really:
Once I get the usual power adapters that you’d get to run any American electrical appliance on European current, will there be any other problems - like is there any risk of frying the laptop by running it on the wrong juice? And if so, what do I need to do to guard against that?
Will my 802.11 wireless card work just as well at a European wi-fi hotspot as it would at an American wi-fi hotspot?
And a not-so-main question:
How common are Internet cafes and wi-fi hotspots in northern Europe these days? Should I expect to pay for Web access, or is free easy to find? Most of the time, we’ll be staying in a small hotel that we’re fond of, but that doesn’t have Web access.
You might need to change your wireless card’s country setting. Europe uses channels 1-13 and has lower power restrictions; the US only uses channels 1-11 but allows more power. You should be fine as long as the hotspot isn’t using a channel higher than 11, though.
How you do that will depend on the particular card. Here’s a site with firmware and instructions for cards based on the Prism II chipset, but YMMV.
Virtualy all modern notebook power adapters (check your adapter to see) are 120-220 Volt compatible. You do not need a transformer, all you need is a simple adapter plug to convert the ends to the appropriate type.
I just recently took a Dell Inspiron laptop to England. Our hosts there had a voltage-converting plug adapter, which wound up not working to charge the battery; the Dell-made DC adapter kept cycling on and off, and the machine couldn’t figure out whether it was plugged in or running on batteries. I have not yet figured out if I should have expected this, and if so on what basis.
The fine print on the Dell adapter, though, indicates that it can handle AC input voltages of 100-240 V. I went to Tesco and bought a plug adapter that did not convert the voltage, and it worked just fine. Like astro says, check yours.
I can’t comment on the wireless or internet cafe situations. We stayed with friends, and I borrowed his home DSL connection to get my machine online.
I visited my computergeek friend in germany and he gave me the plug from a printer to jack into the power brick so I could plug into the wall. Worked like a charm. Perhaps see if the manufcturer of your computer has the business end of the system available for the country you are going to?
Was a lot of fun, I took along about 40 assorted movie dvds in a folder and he got to see some american tv and movies that he didnt have already and I had programming in english to watch [though german translations of american 80s sitcoms are hysterical, and there seems to be some sort of really wierd gameshow that you play by calling in on your cell phone and texting commands… ]
Last year I used a Gateway laptop in Egypt with no trouble, just need an adapter plug (Egypt uses the same electricity standards as Europe). As brad_d suggests, make sure you know the different between a voltage converter and a plug adapter.
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