Internet:

There are several options for you to receive your e-mail and connect to the Internet while in France.You can find an Internet cafe and pay the hourly amount to access the Internet to pick up and respond to your mail. Seems that in France less people own their own computers so you will find plenty of internet cafes.You will find that the French keyboards are AZERTY and not the QWERTY that you're used to. So when you type what you think will be an 'a' you will get a 'q' There aren't a great many differences - just enough to drive you crazy for a while. If you are a little aventurous you can turn the AZERTY keyboard into the familar QWERTY keyboard so that you can type freely without looking at where the letters are. To do this you would go into "panneau de configuration" on the start menu and then look for "clavier" which means keyboard. Then you click on "ajouter langue", meaning add language. When you find English US you can click on OK and you will wind up with an icon on the task bar. This icon looks like: Eng Fr and you click on the language you want. That keyboard will then be the active one. Don't forget to change it back to Fr when you leave!

Why not save the space in your suitcase by bringing a net book which I'm now doing. They all come with wireless cards internally and more and more hotels are offering free wireless to their customers. Many of the major computer manufacturers are making these cute little laptops with all the power of a full size laptop and sell for under $350!

Still, in France there are so many Internet cafes that you would have to be way out in the sticks somewhere to need your own device for connecting to the Internet.

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