I love forums like this. My two passions, Computers and Airstreams. I have played around with sattilite modems before on boats. They work fine for email and smaller size web sites. They loss signal strength a lot. Unless you get a expensive automatic unit you have to aim the dish everytime you want to use it.(getting up on the roof). Very poor reception in any kind of cloudy weather.. The internet signal is more sensitive than the Tv signal. Most Nokia cell phones will work as a modem now(PC only, no macs). It requires a $50 usb to phone cable.($30 on ebay) Plus a national dial up account. Netzero is free and works enough to get email and small web pages over the cell phone. AOL or something like that would get better performance. My mother has a Dell laptop and loves it. It was missing a cable when she first got it, and had to jump through hoops to get the overseas tech support to understand what cable she was missing. The manual listed the part number of the missing cable, but the tech support couldn't find it. Then they sent her another powercord instead of what she needed. After 6 tries she gave up and bought the cables at Radioshack. Other than the tech support nightmare she loves the computer and has had no troubles with it.
I have been using a Apple powerbook G4 667 with 768mb of ram, OSX 10.3, and a airport card for 2 1/2 years now. It has taken more abuse than I care to see my baby take. Drops, spills on the keyboard, constant use day in and day out. I do need a new battery, but 2 1/2 is a good life span for a laptop battery. I could get three hours of run time when it was new. The newer small models get 5 hours. I just wish my nokia cell phone would work as a modem for it.
As for Wi-Fi hot spots, There are web sites dedicated to listing wireless internet "hot spots". Not an option outside of city limits. If you are passing through a town then it is something to think about. I have a free program from downloads.com that beeps when I come into a wireless network. You could drive around town and the computer will start beeping when you come into a hot spot. Kind of like stealing cable from your neighbor.
little or no effort on my part. If people would secure their systems properly it would be a non-issue. When we were at my parents for Christmas this past year, we were able to tap 3 seperate WiFi systems from inside the house. My brother is in the computer/IT industry, one of the systems we tapped was my parents neighbor, we helped him secure his system as his hard drive was exposed. One of the other systems belonged to the church across the street, if they are paying somebody to IT their system for them they are getting burned. There was news report here a while back, the reporter took a WiFi laptop and was riding around in our wonderful state capital and was picking up open systems all around the state government buildings, makes you really wonder what they do with out tax dollars. 
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