It's Week 3 of my trip and I'm writing from Peru. Thankfully, the quality of hotel internet connections has been excellent, possibly faster than the UK. We've only had one night without and that was in the middle of the mountains with no mobile signal either - I think I can forgive them that - this would have been a monumental "rural broadband" challenge if ever there was one.
Good quality Lenovo PCs - they always have been pro-IBM in Peru - well maintained and setup with all the main MS Office, IM and VOIP service apps has made working from Peru very easy. And, if I had a working laptop, the free Wi-Fi service is equally as good. If I had one complaint, it would be insufficient terminals. Peru is full of tourists, coach loads of them, and getting a terminal can be difficult.
I had to borrow a laptop on a couple of occasions when I needed to do some serious work, but whatever I've used I've been able to work on spreadsheets, word documents and access our WebOffice, uploading CSV file data to databases for clients. Maintaining my travel blog and uploading photos has been doddle with such a fast connection too.
The main downside of using public internet terminals is privacy. You have to be careful not to save any Userid's and Passwords wherever you go and, of course, Skype calls are easily overheard, just like mobile phone calls. If you are handling client files you have to be especially careful. Working from a memory stick helps avoid leaving files on a public PC, but you also you don't want people looking over your shoulder. And, all this is more of an issue in an internet cafe than a hotel where they take care to provide some privacy for guests using the internet.
If you have your own laptop, great, but otherwise I would suggest you borrow one for client work or other sensitive work if you can, just to be on the safe side.
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