Part of my summers are spent in Oscoda, Michigan in our home. It is a great place for the kids because of the beach, the hiking, and change of pace. =-)

However, it is a difficult place to work out of. Cell phone coverage is non-existent at our house. The only option for high-speed Internet is cable which is expensive.

NetZero

Instead, for the past two weeks, I have been using NetZero’s Accelerated Dial-Up Connection. It worked pretty well. The websites were accelerated when you use NetZero software in conjunction with Internet Explorer. They are able to speed up web browsing by reducing the clarity of images and caching popular sites.

It’s slower than my home connection, but it gets the job done. There were two disadvantages for me.

  • I had to use Internet Explorer in order to get the maximum web acceleration.
  • I could not send email until I changed my email client to send outgoing mail through mail.netzero.net.
  • I could not use XAMPP, an application that allows me to have my business website locally on my computer so I could make changes.

Free Wireless Internet Sites

I also have been able to go to several franchises that have free Wireless Internet connections including the library, McDonalds, and Subway.

Working Offline

Overall, I have gotten better at working offline.

  • Used web-based email clients instead of your computer’s email client.  Yahoo and other web-based email services allow you to check any POP3 email account.
  • For Outlook and other email clients, change your settings to set a maximum message size to download and not to download attachments.  You can download the attachments/emails when you need to view them.
  • For Outlook and other email clients, setup a scheduled time in the evening for your computer to automatically log in and check your mail. By reading/writing email offline, it will queue messages I want to send for the next time I am on line.
  • In Internet Explorer, use Synchronize (under Tools menu) to log onto the Internet at a scheduled time and cache (or save) selected websites for viewing offline. I used this feature to save weather, and online news sites locally.
  • If you plan on working on website revisions, save your website to your computer prior to your vacation. Make the changes locally and when you get back home, use ftp to synchronize your web content.
  • If your blog provider has it, submit new blog postings by email so you don’t have to wait for the site to load.
  • Have business calls forwarded to the house phone and train your family how to handle incoming calls. With RingCentral, I am able to change the phone number that my business line rings to. An introductory message is played so family members can just hang up the phone in order for it to go to voice mail.