Would like to know how much I will be able to use my iPad (from Aus) in Europe if I get the AT&T data plan of 20 MB. Would use it to email (maybe including a photo or two,) facebook messaging, and looking up stuff on Internet for directions,info re times of tourist stuff. Have wifi and will be staying often where wiwf will be free. It costs $25 for the 20MB, but can anyone give me an idea if I will use that very quickly, or if I can gauge how much I have left to use ?

Your us data plan is not useful in Europe, you have to buy time from ATT partners and it will get expensive. I have tried to find a cheap way, but to no avail. I was in France for a month and used only the free wifi services, most of which worked well. I used Skype to call home and other places at around 3 cents a minute. I had a gps, but wish I could have used the mapping off the 3 g on occasion.

In the UK the situation is very easy and there are many service providers who will sell you a pre-pay (PAYG - pay as you go) microSIM for your iPad that will be very much cheaper than any international plan. If you look at the UK section of the Forum, you'll see several discussions of the data plans available in the UK where you pay just a few pounds (£) for several GB of data.

Tim

Thanks Tim, have seen those but assume they only work while in UK. Will be doing TourMontBlanc, so Italy, France Switzerland, but then onto Denmark and Norway. Will use freewill when I can, but would like the flexibility of being able to use it if necessary when away from those places, eg on train etc. Still need to get an idea of what 20 MB will give me.

Depending upon the resolution of the photo and the compression used, a photo is typically 1-2 MB when compressed (JPEG). If you export the RAW image for off-camera processing it will be very much larger. So you can see that 20 MB will not get you very far at all - I think you'll certainly need more than that.

Text-only emails don't take much space - at most a few kilobytes, if they don't have a large attachment - but you can never be sure if someone is going to send you an assortment of high-resolution photographs.

Tim

Just got back from Europe. The 20mb thing goes VERY quickly ... I really had to budget it fiercely to make it last two weeks, supplemented with a lot of free wifi. Even just simple directions, etc. ate up the MBs super quick. It's a lot of money to pay for just a little data. Make syre when you start using it that you zero out your usage tallies (under cellular data plan) so you can keep track of how much you've used. It goes MUCH faster than you may think!

Thanks for all that. Will make me realize there can be old fashioned holidays where you can survive being out of touch from time to time! Terrible, is't it?
Had one holiday almost 35 years ago where we relied on a notice board in a Turkish coffee shop to get our message out to friends who were trying to meet...and all worked perfectly!

Originally Posted by 82west

Your us data plan is not useful in Europe, you have to buy time from ATT partners and it will get expensive. I have tried to find a cheap way, but to no avail. I was in France for a month and used only the free wifi services, most of which worked well. I used Skype to call home and other places at around 3 cents a minute. I had a gps, but wish I could have used the mapping off the 3 g on occasion.

I've read that the GPS on a 3G equiped iPad will still work w/o the 3G service. Offline maps would be necessary too, but that would solve your problem if this is true. Anyone know?

Originally Posted by Tonefish

I've read that the GPS on a 3G equiped iPad will still work w/o the 3G service. Offline maps would be necessary too, but that would solve your problem if this is true. Anyone know?

GPS works whether you have a SIM installed or not. Obviously, as you inferred, no 3G data is available like this, but GPS is fine.

There is another thread in the forum somewhere that talks extensively about buying pre-paid plans in Europe. I plan on buying one as soon as I touch down in Verona. There is TIM, Wind, Vodapone, Tre, Telecom and for France I think it's Orange. It simply depends on where you are as to available carrier store fronts. Check the malls if you're not sure on the area because they always have the main players represented. Anyway, that's what I remember from multiple trips over there.