Wireless is hot. Wireless hot spots are hot. Wireless on a cruise in the South Pacific? 1,000 miles from electricity? On the Internet? Yes, yes, yes. Here’s my story of a cruise to the South Pacific from Honolulu. Me and my PowerBook stayed wired to the ‘net the whole time. Seven days.

First, my significant other convinced me (I lost the bet) to go on a cruise from Honolulu (sounds great, huh? But we live here) to the South Pacific. I know what you’re thinking. Aren’t we already in the South Pacific? Not quite.

Regardless, my PowerBook goes where I goes, wired or not. So I went. Just so you know, my PowerBook is an original 17” with a gig of RAM and so many applications, photos, and music that the original 60 gig hard drive is just about full (time to upgrade, Annie).

We booked a one week cruise on the Norwegian Star (NCL) which sails from Honolulu to the neighbor islands, then Fanning Island (that’s the South Pacific part I was telling you about), then back to neighbor islands, then back home.

I was afraid there’d be no connections or the per minute phone charges would be $15 a minute as they were on our first cruise a few years ago.

To my surprise, NCL had a satellite wireless connection so my PowerBook and I were buddies and connected to the Internet during the whole cruise (almost; there was that trip to Fanning Island.

Here’s a photo of the view of Honolulu’s skyline from the deck of the Norwegian Star.

It’s hard to imagine going to a nicer place than this. We managed. For more photos and the rest of the “wireless” story, click on the Page 2 link below…

Want to know the best places to eat in Hawaii? Click over to Ono Dining for totally biased reviews on Hawai's best (and not so best) restaurants.