First, I had to rethink my voice calls. Instead of phoning home from the room phone, I dialed home from my cellular phone. Recognizing that I'd be traveling, the company got me a phone plan that allows me to call from anywhere in the U.S. at a basic rate. I had 400 minutes per month that I could use for anything, at any time, from anywhere. My plan costs $55/month plus taxes. As long as I kept my voice calls to a reasonable length, I'd fit under the 400 minute wire. Anything more than 400 minutes would cost me another $0.35 per minute.

Keeping email costs down
But what about email? The last time I traveled, I took my laptop and just plugged it into the wall. It's an easy approach, but as you saw above, the bill got big quite rapidly.

This time, I decided I'd try another approach. Rather than using my laptop, I decided to use my Palm handheld and my wonderful folding keyboard. Not only was the combo lighter than my laptop, but it also had the addition of a wireless modem. It allowed me to check my email and surf the Web during those times that the class got dull.

Although we've got a number of Palm VIIx handhelds here in the office which have a built-in wireless modem, I'm still a happy user of my Palm Vx. It's easy to turn almost any Palm handheld into a wireless device with the addition of a wireless modem, and that's what I did with my Palm Vx. I pulled the OmniSky wireless modem (at http://www.omnisky.com/discover/devices/palm.jhtml), shown in Figure A, off the shelf and took it on the road.

FIGURE A

My trusty Palm Vx fits onto the OmniSky modem beautifully.

Whether you go the Palm VIIx route or the add-on modem route, there's going to be a bit of hardware cost. The Palm VIIx itself costs $199, if you don't already have one. If you're using another Palm handheld, like my Palm Vx, the OmniSky modem costs $69 (after a rebate). The thing is, even if you don't have the hardware and went out and purchased it specially, you'd still save more than the in-room phone charges for a single trip.

Where things start to get interesting are the wireless plans that are available for wireless modems like the OmniSky and the Palm VIIx. Although Palm has a basic plan that starts at $9.99 for 50KB transferred per month, the real deals are the "all-you-can-eat" plans both companies offer.

Palm offers an unlimited volume usage plan for $44.99 a month (and a startup fee of $9.99). OmniSky's plan is $39.95 a month, with a $29.95 startup fee. Plus, if you happen to buy a Palm VIIx from the Palm store before the end of the year, you can also get a credit of $100 back.

I like unlimited usage plans. They mean I can access the Internet as often as I need, for as long as I need, without worrying about racking up the charges.

The final comparison
So let's go back to the numbers from my trip. Had I taken my laptop, plugged it into the phone in the room, and done my calling back to the office, it would have cost me about $400. That's 10 minutes a call, two calls a day, at $2.00 per minute.