Streamyx

Who are they?

They are mostly Dutch, French, British, Belgians and Germans; they are all over 60 and some pushing 80. They are all from cold climates and just spend the summer at home, the rest of the time, they are here in Spain, and it is 'Baja' (low) season so camping is cheap.

For many, the 10?day it costs to stay here is cheaper than staying at home with the heating on. Sometimes it is just the cost of living that makes it an attractive deal. In my circumstance this is definitely true.

If I buy two beers at the bar, it makes a saving equal to the camping fee. Enough said.

802.11g - The Hardware

'My Campsite' has a room in what used to be the old reception with two PCs and a 802.11g wireless router, the signal stretches as far as the bar, so at most times of the day there are also lots of people with laptops dotted about. The 'power user' Dutch are fully equipped with Bluetooth headsets too. The laptops tend to be top of the range widescreen machines with the Dutch and more modest models with everyone else. The Dutch are not frightened of spending lots of euros if they are getting something for free!! The connection is a free with a 128 bit WEP key printed on the base of the router.

Keeping in touch

Most of the people here are parents, grandparents or even great grandparents. They have a large family network that they feel the need to email on a weekly basis. They take photos which they upload to Flickr and I even know a few who upload videos to Youtube.

I'm trying to educate some of these oldies to set up a blog so that they can earn some money whilst enjoying their retirement.

There are also a surprisingly large number of people who spend hours online, communicating with their friends, just to find out how to make their computer work properly.

Problems they encounter

Many travellers set up there outlook accounts at home using the POP3 and SMTP server details provided by their ISP at home, they are often surprised when they find that they can receive but not send emails. Often they revert to web based email such as Hotmail and then get scared when they are bombarded with spam about Viagra.

I have also seen newbie silver surfers trying to email a contact they have scrawled on a scrap of paper when they don't have an email account of their own.

The more over cautious silver surfer sets up every antivirus, firewall and spyware cleaner they can get their hands on, to combat the evil out there and then wonder why they cannot connect to a public network.

The future for campsite surfing

I can see the range of the wireless networks getting larger. Already I have heard of a campsite in Almeria, where each pitch has an available wireless network.

I am guessing that that if this becomes the case, then TV via the internet will become the norm rather than satellite systems. As laptops get more portable and phones get more complex, the devices people use will be carried around with them all the time. At the moment there is a habit at about 9pm of wandering off to the computer room with a laptop in one hand and a Skype headset in the other.

Rick Lomas lives in Serre Chevalier in the Southern French Alps. Rick is putting together a new site at the moment http://www.worldtraveldirect.co.uk where he is encouraging authors to get in touch and make contributions to the site by blog entries, photos and videos, see the site for more details.Rick is also currently working on various websites selling mortgage protection insurance, as an affiliate for British Insurance.