First time in canada

Hi,
This is my first post so please be kind. My husband and i will be travelling to canada (east and west coast) in May.
my question is what is the best way to communicate with australia using email. Could we buy a mobile in australia that will work in canada or is this too expensive? Are internet cafes safe for internet baqnking or should we take our own laptop. If so how does this work with our ISP. As you may guess i'm not very techno minded. Thanks in advance.

Internet cafes anywhere in the world are not safe for banking. I would certainly suggest you find other ways.

For e-mail communications, internet cafes (or public library in many cities) are fine.

I, too, would advise caution when doing your banking on-line. Try to avoid doing it if you are using public computers. If you must do banking try to go to a library.

Ben is right, internet cafes are good for e-mailing and are plentiful enough in most places nowadays (well, in the cities anyways). I certainly wouldn't bother bringing a laptop.

If your phone is a GSM phone (I'm guessing that it is although I'm not familiar with the Australian market) then you can send text messages from Canada to your love ones, I do that myself when I'm abroad, it's an easy and cheap way to stay in touch.

Canada has a system of government subsidized Internet access sites. They are identified by the logo C@P. Look for them in small towns.
Here you can find a list of their locations:
http://cap.ic.gc.ca/pub/index.html?iin.lang=en<BR><BR>I volunteer at a C@P site and it is safe for banking. All our computers are set to erase all new data upon shutdown. All cookies, history, etc. are removed.

Most public libraries also have Internet.

If you are travelling by car you could bring your laptop. If it has a wireless access card you will be able to find many places with free wireless access - airports, hotels, some downtown areas, C@P sites, etc.

You can get a mobile in Australia that will work in Canada, but it has to be a GSM phone and it needs to be a "world phone" (quad-band). And it will be very expensive to roam on your home network, so if you're here for a while, you should get a local SIM card - Rogers and Fido are the main GSM carriers here and both will sell you a local SIM card and activation kit for about $35 or so. Keep in mind that your phone needs to be unlocked for this to work. And that all of the above won't help you for cheap internet, because data on cell phones is costly unless you have a monthly plan, which you won't have of course.

Internet cafes are the way to go. They're everywhere in the major centres and will allow you to get online for cheap to check e-mail and take care of what you need. Warnings about banking should be observed.

Lugging a laptop around would not be my preference for travel, but if you decide to take one, there are places with wireless internet everywhere - coffee shops, airports, etc.

It's a bad idea to do Internet banking on-line on a public computer?

Oh oh! this was my modus operandi all over Mexico... not that I have any money for anyone to take.

But really... how savvy of a hacker is required to take my info off of a public computer? I find it difficult to believe that a bank would allow such a transgression to occur with all there time and money spent on securing their sites from such actions.

Are we all just paranoid?

I don't think it's being paranoid.

Probably the number one concern would be unscrupulous internet cafe owners installing software that records your bank id number and password as you enter them on the computer. This would be rather easy to do even if one only had a rudimentary knowledge of computers. They could conceivably install software that would do the same thing when you sign into your email account as well.

There are other, even more ingenious ways of ripping off your banking information as well. There are "controllers" which allow someone on another computer see exactly what's on your screen, etc.

Best bet is head to a public library or something similar that can trusted more.

Keyloggers are on public computers everywhere, now. I don't worry so much about it when sending e-mail and whatnot, but a little paranoia when it comes to internet banking isn't exactly the worst idea in the world. After all, if your bank account gets emptied while you're travelling, that's not fun.

I do banking online all the time, on public computers... no problems. The internet cafes are safe, as long as you do not save any passwords or anything like that. As far as phoning, it might be best to just buy a calling card. They are reasonable and easy. The best international phone card that I have used is called Ci Ci. (yes its spelled like that). No worries about banking online though, and if you can get to a college or university it is free to access, but this may be a hassle as some students can't even find the computers.

Gidday, which bank are you with? HSBC Australia and Commonwealth bank are both moving to online security devices (press a button during logon and the handheld device generates a unique number) so it's much safer to use internet cafes. I live between both Canada and Australia. Grab a GSM mobile phone (pick up any cheap one from Vodafone or check ebay.com.au, just make sure it's unlocked and not 3G) and when you land in Canada get a Fido pre-paid. Just like using Vodafone pre-paid. Buying prepaid phone here is almost as cheap so it's up to you which way you want to go. If you want family back in Aus to be able to call you easily and at low cost, register for SkypeIn phone number. Then forward that Skype Australia phone number to your Canadian mobile number. For example, we have a Sydney# that we forward to our Canadian mobile#, costs $0.02/min to fwd call.