Still in the planning stages, with two nagging worries.

I just watched my first YouTube video yesterday (the one about dealing with a blow-out) and wondered if there might be quite a bit available on videos. Your suggestions are incredibly timely! Thank you! We already have our own YouTube channel, so I'll sign up to follow these suggestions. Brilliant!

There are well over 100 RV "Channels" on YouTube, but some of them are dealer or product sales oriented so keep that in mind if it seems to be heavily focused on one brand or item. Still useful, though.

SusanV said:

Hi all. My husband and I are still in the planning stages for downsizing to a smaller house, purchasing a (Class A) motorhome, and spending a year or two traveling. I've been reading the forum voraciously, including lots of useful links, and two issues are starting to gnaw at me.

It seems most people on here are pretty savvy when it comes to mechanical/technical aspects of motorhomes, with knowledge that makes my brain spin. We are not "handy-persons" by anyone's standards, though we're willing to learn, and capable of learning when it isn't a Friday at 5pm (Gin and Tonic hour). Did most of you come into it with skills, or did you learn them along the way?

The second issue I'm getting a bit nervous about it energy availability and consumption. We lean heavily toward having or adding solar panels, but this decision to take to the road will be primarily a work decision, and our work requires extensive internet use. How realistic is it to have online access, and to draw power for several hours of laptop use each day (two laptops being used at the same time)? I'm starting to worry that we really won't be able to maintain the ability to work, and that would be a stopper.

Click to expand...

Internet access and bandwidth is an ongoing problem. If you need internet to conduct business on a daily basis, it can be very problematic.  I have used wifi boosters, 4g hotspots and cell phone data and if NO or weak signals are all you got, well, you will not have internet.  As for solar panels, are you planning to be boondocking all the time?  A few hours of laptop time could be handled by the coach batteries.  You might considered have another bank of coach batteries too.

SusanV said:

The second issue I'm getting a bit nervous about it energy availability and consumption. We lean heavily toward having or adding solar panels, but this decision to take to the road will be primarily a work decision, and our work requires extensive internet use. How realistic is it to have on line access, and to draw power for several hours of laptop use each day (two laptops being used at the same time)? I'm starting to worry that we really won't be able to maintain the ability to work, and that would be a stopper.

Click to expand...

I am full time and have been for several years.  I also work and need internet access.  Generally I have found internet access very problematic in the parks I have stayed in.  Wi-Fi in most parks that I have been in is weak and even the parks where you pay for internet the speed and service are not very good.  In addition most free Wi-Fi, which parks advertise, is not secure which should concern your employer.  Speed is often dependant on the number of users in the Park.  My solution is to stay at one  park for an extended period of time.  I only stay in parks where I can sign up for wired internet, DSL or cable.  I have used my phone as a hotspot in a pinch, but the speed is not very good.  If you are planning on boondocking, then I have no idea what you will do as many areas will not have cell service.  You could explore something like Hughes Net which is a satellite provider, but I suspect this will be a very expensive option.

I think part of the problem with this question of internet access for work purposes depends on the specific need.   

On one end you have people that need to exchange emails containing typical document files that are  typically 1-20 megabytes in size and can be done (though slowly) over just about any type of internet connection, the point for them is to have some type of live connection so they know when an email comes in, etc.

On the other end you have people doing professional video editing sending multi gigabyte files back and forth multiple times per day who will not be happy with even the fastest 4G cell connection because 30 minutes is too long to wait for their 5 minute long ultra HD video to upload.

In the middle are those people that may need to do more than send and receive documents, such as participating in webinars, sending short lower resolution videos, or large numbers of photos back and forth.

Without knowing which group you fit into it is hard to answer this question, also how time sensitive is your internet need, if it is mostly documents, but occasional video conference with flexible timing, then a 4G cell mifi hotspot may work fine for you.  Also keep in mind the cell network is getting better every year, so if you can put up with marginal today, it may be on average much better in a year or two.

We're going to have to send large documents, lots of photos, and both send and upload videos, but each of these things will only happen weekly rather than daily. It would be fantastic if we could do Facetime or Skype, but that's less important than the ability to send and upload photos and video.

I'm pretty sure we'll need some sort of booster, but I'm also pretty sure we can make happen what needs to happen, and it won't be a stopper. I just have to plan carefully so that we know our requirements, and how to solve the problem when internet is poor or non-existent at a campground or other overnight location. I'm encouraged by the info I'm finding here, even as I'm concerned by some of the experiences I've read.

These days it is usually easy to find a high speed Internet connection. Every public library, every McDonalds and just about every coffee shop has it. You won't find high speed in a campground unless you bring it with you. Project Fi might be just the ticket for you:

http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,110136.msg1065790.html#msg1065790

I saw something in one of the RV forums yesterday where Verizon has a new unlimited pre-paid data plan for about $65 per month.  See this page, scroll down to the tablet and jetpack plans https://www.verizonwireless.com/prepaid/

Actually, I would recommend two hotspots and a backup laptop!  If you are just surfing the internet, you can make do for a couple of days if something breaks, but if you are really working online, you need backups.

I also keep portable hard drives--one in a safe in my motorhome where I back things up every month, another in a safety deposit box near one of my sons' houses, and a third at another son's house.  I switch them around periodically to make sure they are all current.  If I every have a hard drive failure or an accident with the motorhome, I will not have lost every electronic document I own! 

You don't have to guess about this or wait till you have an RV - try it out now.  If you have a smartphone, you can access the internet directly via cellular data service, and you can also use it as a "hotspot" (wifi) for your computers.  Better yet, buy a dedicated cell data modem/hotspot and start using it for your daily affairs.

Obviously performance will vary with the cell service wherever you are, both because of the quality of service and the number of people competing for the cellular bandwidth at an moment. Experiment in multiple locations to see the range of usability.  If you camp in a remote mountain valley, chances are the cell signal doesn't reach it all, so no phone or internet. And if you camp at a rock concert, odds are there are hundreds of people all trying to do send Facebook videos at the same time (and none succeeding). In between that is a broad range of perfromance.

Thank you for the links. I'll do some reading this afternoon.

We're used to working online while we travel (that's a large part of our job), so we're familiar with internet connectivity issues in the US, Europe and South America, but that's always been from hotels, which seems quite different to me than a campground, and certainly to being parked in a remote location, so we have to make sure we've got access.

Backing up our systems daily (sometimes hourly) is second nature, so at least that won't be a problem!

Hotels tend to have much better wifi than campgrounds my guess is that it has to do with corporate buying power

They also charge several times more per night than a typical campground.  Though in some cases, the price difference is narrowing. 

True, but my point is that someone that is accustomed to typical hotel wifi performance, even cheap motel wifi performance, would be shocked by how poor the typical RV park free wifi is.  I would say maybe 1 in 10 campgrounds that offer free wifi can compare even to a below average cheap motels wifi.

Sure there are the rare campgrounds with good free wifi (fast enough to stream HD video), but those are at best 1 in 50, but that is by far the exception and not the rule.  Since getting my AT&T Mobley mobile hotspot last year, I rarely even bother to connect to campground wifi, and when I do I don't try to use it for much.  On the low end wifi performance at campgrounds can be truly awful, though this is often not the fault of the rv park owners, as broadband internet that people have came to expect is often not available in the remote locations where people tend to build RV parks, at least not at prices that are affordable.  The equivalent to a basic cable internet that city folk have came to expect for $50 per month might costs several thousand dollars per month in some more remote areas if it were to be available at all.

Ike

p.s. the worst free campground wifi I have ever experienced was at a Louisiana State Park (yes strangely enough they had free wifi), it was only even remotely usable between midnight and sunrise, in those hours web pages like this message thread without photos would load in 30-45 seconds, during daytime hours web pages would simply time out.

I should have mentioned we're also used to cruise ship wifi in North/South America and Europe, which is several steps in the direction I imagine campground wifi to be (slow; like, glacially slow). That's a non-starter for us, so we'll need solutions. Libraries seem like a good idea, along with our own mobile hotspot or other self-owned solution. It does seem that for every problem there IS a solution. Even in the short time I've been doing my research, my thinking has become far more flexible when it comes to getting from the problem to a good outcome. Thanks, all!

Susan - in today's world the Internet is ubiquitous, it is everywhere. If you can't find a signal you aren't trying hard enough.

Susan, like Tom said it's getting very easy to stay online.  Especially if you're able to find and take advantage of a couple of cheap, unlimited or high data limit plans from different providers.

Last year the hot plan was AT&T's $20 a month Connected Car Unlimited plan using the Mobley device, currently it's Verizon's $40 a month unlimited data Vision plan that I mentioned in another topic.  I'm sure there will be more like these in the future.

AT&T and Verizon have the most consistant nationwide coverage, but every carrier has their strong and weak areas.  By having service from multiple carriers you can take advantage of each one's strengths, greatly increasing your ability to get online no matter where you are.

Also check out Technomadia's https://www.rvmobileinternet.com and consider subscribing.  They literally wrote the book on mobile internet connectivity and they keep current on the best deals.

I've spent all of my free time in the last two days reading through Technomadia's site. Great stuff, and part of the reason I'm thinking in terms of flexibility, more so than I was before. While we never had a firm time-frame, we were figuring on a year non-stop, but it won't really  matter if we return to Florida for two months to take care of a work project that has a fixed deadline if there is no time frame for traveling, right? Dumping the rigid thinking might be part of the process for us, I think.

You can return home if you want, but there's plenty of wide open spaces (BLM land, etc) out west where you can camp with good cell coverage.  Plop down for a week or two and work with a nice view, solitude and maybe a nearby hot spring to relax in.   

That's our main plan, but we have a yearly project we normally do in Florida, and would not really want to end it if we don't have to. We live in FL now, though we'll be selling here and buying a home (cash, no mortgage) in GA to put our son in while he gets his career established, then we'll sell when we're done traveling and decide where we want to be. While we're traveling, we can still come back to Florida and do our annual project. We initially thought we'd give it up, but now we see no reason why we should. 2 months in Florida in April and May isn't the worst thing in the world (July, August and September are!), and if we don't have a limit on how long we'll travel, 2 months won't matter one way or another.