<p>Hi all, I know SOME smart person will know the answer to this question. S is headed to France for a 10-day school trip on Thursday. He wants to bring an iPod touch…so the question is, do you have to do anything special to it, in order to access the internet (via wi-fi) in Europe? Any special settings, apps, etc that are needed? Or will it just pick up a public wi-fi signal if available?</p>
<p>Good question, I am planning to take my iTouch to Europe this summer. I will be interested to hear if there is anything special needed. One issue for him could be charging it. We will have D’s laptop (and will figure out charging for that prior to leaving), so I will just be able to charge through that. But your S may not have that option.</p>
<p>He did buy a wall charger (and a european adapter)…so should be able to keep it charged…</p>
<p>I took my iPod Touch to the Middle East and Egypt last fall, and it worked great, at least when I could find a WiFi hotspot. I was even able to use Skype and call home. That’s actually why I bought the iPod Touch in the first place. I am hopeful that over time there will be more and more WiFi hotspots available around the world. I’m sure it varys significantly by country, and I have no first hand experience in Europe, but I would be optimistic that your S will find it useful while traveling in Europe.</p>
<p>It should work fine. Wifi is not like GSM versus CDMA for calling.</p>
<p>Yeah, WiFi is an international standard and the above poster is correct, there is no “split” among standards such as those in the cell phone market (though GSM will get you much farther than CDMA anyway).</p>
<p>Great! That’s what I was hoping. Thanks everyone!</p>
<p>hijack : my daughter is going to be in Barcelona. Anyone know if there are lots of hot spots in that city ? </p>
<p>She also has a unlocked Blackberry.</p>
<p>I have used AirPort to turn any room with wifi service. If a hotel doesn’t have wifi, I would pay for one internet service, plug it into Airport and the room has wifi. All four of us (H and 2 Ds) could access it via our iPhone (which is really iTouch without phone service). Our kids could skype their friends and we could check our emails.</p>
<p>In Europe, a lot of cafes, McDonalds, Starbucks have hot spots. Every once in a while we wouldn’t have wifi for few hours, then we would come upon a hot spot, all four of us would pull out our iPhone to check emails. It’s almost like drug, we need our fix.</p>
<p>Can you explain what this AirPort is, oldfort? </p>
<p>When we travel as a family, 3 of us have iPhones and we all have our own laptops. Mine has a Dell Mobile card so I can dial into Internet wherever I am, but everyone else has to rely on finding free wifi.</p>