Vodafone Germany is currently giving away prepaid SIMs (Call'ya) including € 3 of credit for absolutely free: http://www.gratis-callyakarte.de/
Unfortunately they ship to Germany only, but if you're interested contact me and we'll find a way to get you one. ;-)

Regarding the WebSessions (24h access while roaming for € 14,95, limited to 50 MB) the price is expected to decline in the next weeks, most likely such will be announced at CeBIT in March.
Btw WebSessions work in many more countries, where Vodafone networks or partners operate (for a full list see: http://www.vodafone.de/privat/tarife...nt/105359.html).

Where part of italy will you visit?

Anyway for a week I suppose that Wind can be the cheaper solution

thanks for all the help so far - i'm not normally so thick - i'm just finding it hard to focus because of all the planning!

i'm visiting barga, north east of pisa - what's the coverage like over that way?

the reason why i don't want to mess with a WIND sim is that my italian is poor - i've been trying to learn off cds but it isn't working!

On 3 website they say that Barga is covered on 3G (no HSDPA, just 384Kbps 3G). Surely Wind has no 3G there, let's hope they have GSM... AndreA should be more expert of that zone, even if it's even closer to where I live! :D

do you go to visit Giovanni Pascoli's last house?? Barga is among the hills, i don't think wind works very well, but AndreA can help you;)

Only 3ITA seems to have UMTS coverage there. Wind doesn't have for sure. I don't remember Vodafone and Tim, but I don't think that they have umts in Barga

Well, you can use a Wind simcard in... english :beer:

:) it's the going into a shop part and trying to speak italian that scares me! i get enough funny looks when i try to order food!

i think i will probably get a german voda sim for use on the way, and a 3 sim for use in italy with the voda sim as a backup - sounds like the easiest way..

thanks for all the help.. now.. anyone want to help me learn italian!!

It has sort of been said before already, but you should really put your 3 card on manual network selection. Especially when you have a Smartphone which makes a data connection automatically. Because you will pay 0,60 euro every time you make a data connection on the tim network. Which in my case was every time I went from 3 coverage to tim coverage. In the end 7 euro of calling credit was wasted in just one morning in the mountains.
An other problem I had with 3 was that it kept my phone on HSDPA all the time, it didn’t switch back to normal umts when I was not sending or receiving data. And that wasn’t very good for my battery usage time.

Ties Brants is right and since Barga is on the mountains and I'm not that sure that 3 has a decent coverage there, pay attention. If you see you have no or very bad 3 coverage go and buy a Wind card at any phone shop (it's usually not a problem to find one in Italy). It could even happen that you meet an English speaking Italian! I know it seldom happens, but in Toscana they are quite used to English and German tourists...

thanks for the tips - i haven't met an english speaking italian on my previous journeys - although i think they do it for fun so they can listen to my poor attempts! sometimes i even had to resort to german.. which i'm equally poor at!

out of interest - what is more offensive to an italian - trying to speak italian (poorly) or doing what most english people do and just talk very LOUD in english?