We have only just acquired this, it's an Asus (15" diagonal across the screen) bought for mainly desk and home use and the other aim was to take it on our travels for weather, ongoing campsites in ACSI and locations, emails etc. What do we need to take along with the laptop to get internet and email usage?

if there is no free wifi hotspots
you may need a unlocked data dongle
3 offer you to prepay before your trip but you could buy a data sim in the area you going to.

Look at the Huawei Unlocked Mi Fi dongle; you should be able
to buy data sims in whichever country you visit.
Make sure the Huawei has a port for an external aerial to extend
its range.

Thanks to all but still a bit of a mystery to a non techie. I don't intend to pay a lot while travelling UK or otherwise but maybe an hourly rate for wifi would be enough in most cases and I do have a mains lead which will charge it. So do I still need a dongle whatever it is and a sim card?

I'm assuming that all new laptops have a wireless connection for wifi? When you arrive at a campsite in France, you just ask for their wifi and they will either say it is free and available near the reception/bar and maybe the nearest pitches too, or else they will sell you a code, sometimes per hour(s) or for a block of days. Recently more campsites are getting "80% wifi", which means that you can access it from most of the site and won't need to leave the caravan.

If you are given a code, when you open up the internet you just follow their instructions - it will probably be directed from their own website. If you pay by the hour you just need to remember to log out of the connection so as not to waste your time. You can then use the rest of the time the next time you log in. We have noticed over the past three years that wifi is getting better.

You can access all your normal websites from abroad like the BBC and banks etc. - and if you have a good connection skype video, but otherwise using text and emails to keep in touch back home. The other very useful thing to check is obviously the weather (so you can alter plans to avoid the rain) and there are several good sites like this one: http://www.meteofrance.com/accueil , that are easy to use.

The only things we've found you can't access are i player and the lottery, but you don't want to be wasting time watching programmes, and if you win your £3 on the lottery it is a nice surprise when it lands in your bank account!

In a nutshell, as long as you have a wireless laptop, and don't mind taking advantage of what is already on offer, the simplest way to do it does not require buying anything more than you already have. Hope this helps.

I would add that we still have a dongle which we last used 4 or 5 years ago.

They are the most frustrating things invented by man. Unless you have a very strong signal (usually a town centre) then the speed of loading is snail like and how many campsites do you visit in a town centre?

Sometimes you can strike lucky and land on a site, like the Old Oaks where they don't charge for internet access, plus if you use BT you get free access to hotspots all over the place, but again mostly in town centres.

4g is rolling out as dongles have to be updated to accept
http://support.three.co.uk/SRVS/CGI-BIN/...,Case=obj(11861)

Once visited Leyburn and did all internet while otherhalf was getting fish supper, was so fast to read this website... Hawes needs you to be in top park.. certain data providers work better than others
someone at other end of wood uses voda dongle but it wont work at this end

Thanks to all and it was getting technical again but the first post by Crystal seems to be good simple advice.