Any modern smart phone with a MSRP of more than $50 surely has Wi-fi. No need to use a wireless phone network.Can't make any changes (i.e. adding data) without losing the core plan.
Except I have no intentions of ever letting the traveling unit ever interface with my home network. Just with yahoo for news and to my "toss away" travel email account while we are traveling. Considering it will have been in Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, etc., the odds of getting hacked/bugged are not acceptable. I want a stand-alone unit so there is clear separation.Any modern smart phone with a MSRP of more than $50 surely has Wi-fi. No need to use a wireless phone network.
Your phone plan does allow you to use modern phones, doesn't it?
Cheap, for example, the $50-100 tablets, JUNK! For the most part, you will need to spend north of $100 to get a decent tablet. Otherwise you are just throwing away your money. The cheap ones are so bad you can't really do anything on them, they are so dern slow.
Nook, kindle, Nexus 7 are good tablets. Those are in the $150-200 range. There might be something slightly cheaper out there that would do the trick.
I need to find a light bulb icon to paste in here (or one of me smacking my forehead). You are 1,000% correct - a used smartphone would be rugged enough and the "phone" section doesn't need to be activated in order to use it as a WI-FI device for browsing and Gmail! Perfect solution!!!!