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Can I send pictures by email at internet cafe?

I will be taking lots of pictures in Durope.
How can I send them home by email?
If i put my card in a reader back home it will download all the pictures onto my hard drive.
If I burn them on disk will that work? And the problem there is the pictures will not have a name attached to them so I won't know what picture to send.

thanks

Posted by
32173 posts

Stew,

As the others have pointed out, transferring or E-mailing photos at net cafes is NOT a realistic option, for several reasons. While a Card Reader will allow you to transfer photos, the time to upload images (especially larger files) will be significant.

Having photos burned to DVD at local shops is certainly an option. Many people have two copies burned, keeping one with them and mailing the other home. That way there's some "insurance" in case something happens to one copy (always good to have a backup, especially after the memory card has been re-formatted!).

The most practical solutions would be to either take additional memory cards (memory is cheap now, so this shouldn't be cost prohibitive) or take a portable storage device (Portable hard drive). You didn't specify which Camera you have, but I'm assuming the file sizes aren't too large?

You might want to check www.adrianwarren.com ("On The Road" section) for a good overview of storage methods.

Happy travels!

Posted by
29 posts

I was planning on doing the same thing you were, but when I went to several Internet cafe's throughout Europe (Paris, Berlin, Rome, Barcelona), none of them allowed me to upload/copy my pictures to my email. You can burn the pictures to a cd at a camera shop, but I ended up just buying extra memory cards for my camera (bought at shopping mall--much cheaper than at a train station or camera shop).

Posted by
1158 posts

Even if you would be allowed to upload in the internet cafes thru Europe, you might not be able to upload many pictures in the same email.It depends of your email account provider.Besides this it might be time consuming. Like the other poster said, get a larger memory card, they are very inexpensive now days.another thing you can do also is to upload them to free picture stoage web site such as flickr .I don't know how much storage they give you, but there are other free sites you can try. Try a google search

Posted by
9363 posts

If you are thinking of sending individual pictures during your trip, it might be difficult to do. If you're talking about sending a lot of pictures so that you can clear your memory card at intervals, keep in mind that if you find an internet cafe where you can do that it will take a significant amount of time to upload, and you'll be paying by the minute or hour for access. Also, in many places the connection speeds make it almost impossible to upload much of anything. Many internet cafes will burn your pictures to a CD for you for a relatively small fee.

Posted by
505 posts

Greetings
I think the problem would probably be transferring images to the computer - i.e. cafe computers may not have the software for your camera and/or the transfer would be time intensive.

If you can do the transfer, one option would be to buy a memory stick - I think many internet cafes will allow you to use one with their computers. These days 4 gig sticks cost as little as $20-25 or cheaper and can be used for photos and other things after your trip.

Otherwise, you could probably get an extra one or two large memory cards very cheaply - the prices of memory sticks and cards have been plummeting recently - and just fill them up.

FYI, if you have a IPod that does images, you can now buy an inexpensive attachment that allows you to download images directly from camera to IPod.

Kate

Posted by
1633 posts

Husband says you have to use 802.11. In our case, our phone has a wireless connection like a laptop, 802.11. The internet cafes would not allow us to connect wirelessly; however, one hotel in Rome & a restaurant in Austria allowed the connection and he used his e-mail account to send the pictures as attachments. But, his pictures averaged about 350K in size and the network seemed to block any e-mail with cumulative attachments that exceeded 500K; so he could send only 1 picture at a time. Some of the McDonald's had 802.11 connections for free. Don't use your carrier data plans--that will be VERY $$$! You could purchase a local sim card with a data plan; however, we don't have any personal experience with that. Of course, this assumes you have a GSM phone; i.e., not Sprint or Verizon. Hope this makes sense (it doesn't to the Wife!).

Posted by
3551 posts

Be aware there are fewer internet cafes than before. I go to Europe every yr and this year in France they have become less common. However we found Ibis Hotels usually have one computer available for interenet use but no photos can be loaded.

Posted by
32173 posts

One additional note to my previous Post. I doubt that using 802.11 or other wireless is going to be a viable option, especially in Italy. There are strict laws there regarding Internet use, and all customers using net cafes or whatever must be registered and provide Passport details (some kind of "anti-terrorist" initiative?). The registration was also applicable when using the computers at the Hostel I stayed at in Rome.

It wouldn't seem logical that the authorities would force all visitors to register to access the net at cafes, while at the same time leaving a "wireless back door" for unregistered users.

The simplest solution is still to take adequate memory for the trip, or have DVD's burned when required. Uploading photos at net cafes is somewhat of a time consuming waste of precious touring time.

Cheers!

Posted by
87 posts

I'm not very good at updoading pictures (yet) but when we were away over this last Christmas, my daughter uploaded to one of those private chat rooms /websites on several occasions.