Traveling out of states in going to Italy/advice/help

[Lanx]

so honeymoon is planned for italy, i am not a world traveler, but i am a geek, i plan to somehow googlemaps my way in italy for that, i think the best way (a few hours of research) is to use a mifi device
UNLOCKED HUAWEI E585
novatel MiFi 2352

these seem to be the old models from 2009 and there are newer ones that seem to maybe have 4g? but i'm not gonna chance it
both of these options seem to cost around 100-180 (yes these are the asia/euro models 900/1800 band) and i guess i'll have to buy a sim card from either
vodafone
tim (Telecom Italia Mobile)
or WIND (but reviews say they suck at coverage)

too bad i've had verizon all my life, never had a sim card, but i figure it's just like a SD card really.

I plan to turn my galaxy s3 on roaming/data off and use wifi only (with the mifi)

i think i saw somewhere that sim cards with data can be had for 25euros and 10hours of internet usage, which seems to be more than enough(don't know how they calculate that tho) and then i'll browse in the hotel at night to plan the next day.

i know there's free public wifi, but i saw again that, you need a italy phone number to access it for crime/tracking purposes?

advice would be great, basically i'm going to italy and i want to have 24/7 internet access so i can google up a location, travel around, yada yada


cellularabroad offers a 170$ rental for 14days, with sim and plan.

also can i just buy this 40$ phone
http://www.amazon.com/Q53-Green-Unlocked-Quad-Band-QWERTY/dp/B00713IW86/ref=pd_sim_sbs_cps_3

buy a 10euro sim card and have sms and a few minutes? we're going to italy with another couple and would use this to keep in touch with them during the day, or meet up for dinner.

[davkol]

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[nullstring]

I don't know anything about italy specifically, but I'll share my knowledge base, whatever use it may be.

I would skip the mifi route. This is just too expensive.
You should be able to get an android cellphone for under $100 that will work on the necessary bands.
It won't be blazing fast, but it should work and you can setup tethering so you can still use your S3.
Plus, you can use it as a regular phone too.

2 minutes of googling gave me this. I am sure you could find plenty of options though.
http://www.amazon.com/LG-Unlocked-Quad-Band-Bluetooth-Warranty/dp/B0041RSFY6

Free wifi in europe isn't a given like it is in USA. Again, no experience with italy specifically, but they often tried to charge us completely ridiculous prices for wifi at some of these hotels in western europe. (This was 6 years back.)

If you need a phone number for wifi, you could use the hotels number. (I don't see why not?)

[sth]

bring a map and discover things for yourself

[davkol]

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[Matt3o]

I'm from Florence, Italy.

I must say that it's pretty easy to find a free wifi spot around here. Most bars/pubs/shops/hotels give free access, they give you the password and no registration is required. Some asks you a nominal fee (say 1 euro). Also some squares in downtown have 2 hours free internet access offered by the city hall (the service is called FiWiFi, original huh?). You need a cellphone because your identity is verified by SMS, and that's all. I believe most big cities have similar services.

Big cities have no issues regarding coverage, if you are going in very small cities you may have troubles with Vodafone and Wind. The best coverage is by TIM.

The SIM is just like a microsd card, you slot it into the cellphone and you are good to go. You can go in any tim/wind store and get your SIM card for something like 5-10 euros with a pre-paid contract, no annual contract is required, if you don't refill the card it just expires. To the standard phone plan you can add an internet plan. It's like 9 euros per month, again no minimal contract required, and it grants you 3-5gb per month of traffic. If you have a PC you can get a prepaid "internet key".

If you do that in a city like Florence, Rome, Milan, ... I believe you won't have problems, they are used to deal with tourists.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask.

Have fun in Italy!

[Lanx]

on the cheaper issue vs. getting a cheap droid, the cheapest droid gsm i found was a g1 droid for like 130, this g1 is like the first droid phone, a gsm motorola droid (what i upgraded from) is like 200bucks, also with a mifi, my fiance and probably friends could be using it at the same time as well, plus then i would use my own phone/her own phone and laptops.

is mifi still a good route?

[Matt3o]

A friend of mine used this https://www.tripbutler.com/en/ , he told me it served him well. I believe it's an European company, maybe they have better rates in Europe.

[Lanx]

oh trip butler looks awesome, tks for the link (time for research)
found a 20% coupon
TDTB2012

[nullstring]

on the cheaper issue vs. getting a cheap droid, the cheapest droid gsm i found was a g1 droid for like 130, this g1 is like the first droid phone, a gsm motorola droid (what i upgraded from) is like 200bucks, also with a mifi, my fiance and probably friends could be using it at the same time as well, plus then i would use my own phone/her own phone and laptops.

is mifi still a good route?

As I said (maybe not clearly), you can setup a hotspot on any android phone which will allow everyone to use your gsm phone just like a mifi AND you can make calls on it.

Just my 2 cents.
Resell and usefulness after the trip should be taken into account as well.

[Lanx]

yea but it'd be a g1 droid, at this time that's like going from a pentium2 to 286

[sth]

og droids aren't that bad in terms of speed -- i had one serve me well for 2 years. there were occasional slowdowns/lockups but for a wifi-mostly device being used for web surfing and maps it would work great, and it's low liability these days.