Nightrider sounds like my new lappy arrived at YOUR place instead. It hasnt %&#@$ arrived HERE yet!
Blacky you should get 14.4 ok but theres only one government cell server down there I recall and its non GSM. But Ive been using Iridium satcom for 2 years now so Im a bit out of the loop in that dept. Iridiums going down the crapper but the rates are only 20c a min now ISO bloody near US$8 a min a few months ago.
Worst laptops Ive had were Acer and Texas (whos laptop dept was subsequently taken over by Acer). Acer has that stupid suspend to disk 'swap file' it creates itself and theres nothing you can do about it. Pain in the a rse. Texas Extensa was ok but the monitor mounts will eventualy freeze up later and break from the main chassis. The removeable HDD will slowly get lose even if you never remove it and you have to continualy belt the chassis on bootup till the HDD ident is seen. Ive ordered a 400 PE 128M IBM thinkpad from Malaysia (the well known Inbi plaza in KL) at a fraction of the cost elsewhere. Came to 12000 ringit which is just on 1900 quid. Freebies and tons of free (but safe "arrr Jim Hawkins arrr!" type) software thrown in as well as freebie spare hardware (spare power pack DVD drive etc) Quite happy. Downside is it takes bloody ages to ship it out to the workers paradise. Blacky I recommend a visit to Inbi if you sidle into KL on your way to SighGone and check it out. Its very good.
PS Koh Samui? Try Phuket (Patong Bay) instead. Much better place IMHO. BTW what dates you in SayGorn?