Internet in Hong Kong

[mushu mama]

Hiya

now forgive my clearly ignorant grasp on this subject but I have a few questions for those who have used the internet in HK and/or China.

What I am most concerned about is writing blog entries when I am there. Just wondering if any internet censorship associated with China will effect this in any way? I clearly won't be discussing state secrets but someone asked me today if I will be able to write whatever I want (within reasonable boundaries of course) when I am over there? And honestly, I hadn't considered that aspect at all.

Any info would be greatly appreciated.

Lisa.

[calisota]

Are you taking a laptop or using an internet cafe?

Greg

[mushu mama]

Welcome back Greg.
I'll have a notebook with external HD for my photos and to back up my blog. I'll be spending a few weeks in China as well. I'd appreciate knowing a bit more of how all that works over there. Thanks.

Lisa.

[churros]

Did I miss something Lisa? This sounds like serious planning.

[calisota]

Hong Kong is not an issue in any way, with a laptop you'll find that you're hotel has wireless and it certainly seems to be completely open. I guess they wouldn't be able to do the amount of international business that they do if there was any sort of restriction.

As for mainland China, I don't know. It's been a while since I was there and internet access was pretty hard to find. My thought would be that if you are using computers in a cafe and going through a local ISP there may be some issues. I think that it's probably more what you can access rather than what you send. It would be much easier to censor what sites people can access than to try and censor every outgoing, especially in another language. If you are using your own laptop on a wireless connection then I imagine you won't have any problems with what you can send and post. I really wouldn't worry about it. Just remember to be careful what you photograph or wave your mobile at (if it appears to have a camera) because they are very sensitive about people taking photos of things that they shouldn't.

Greg

[mushu mama]

Did I miss something Lisa? This sounds like serious planning.

yep, serious planning.. .not my strong suit but considering where I'm going, I am thinking its not a good idea to find out about this stuff when I am in a Chinese lock up.
This trip was slated for Sept this year, but am going to hold off and tack it onto the Club trip early next year now, cos it sounds way more fun than what I could possibly plan on my own. I'm planning on going to Beijing, hopping a train to Datong to explore a few antiquities/see some not often visited parts of the Great Wall/monsastaries carved into cliffs/ancient pagoda's and stuff like that( if its still there after the recent earthquake) and then down to Xian ( somehow... )and then to Hong Kong, then home.

. Just remember to be careful what you photograph or wave your mobile at (if it appears to have a camera) because they are very sensitive about people taking photos of things that they shouldn't.

Greg

Now that I hadn't considered either... if I ask first, that'll cover it ... right? I'll mostly be in groups except for the detour further inland, so hopefully I'll have the hang of it by then.

I'm planning on taking a BUCKETLOAD of photos, any suggestions on what sized Ext. HD I should take?

Thanks

Lisa

[calisota]

I got myself an extra harddrive in London (where electronics are really cheap) and picked up a 500GB USB powered one for about $100.

500GB would be more than enough I'm willing to bet but try and make sure that the drive is USB powered so you are not reliant on local power. They also are much smaller, about the size of an iphone.

Greg

[KeithS]

Yep - Greg is spot on. Get a 500gb 2.5 inch external hard drive that is USB powered. My local PC shop sells them for $112, so they are reasonably priced.

[mushu mama]

Cool... thanks guys... thats pretty much what I'd been looking at and wondering if it would be enough for both photos/videos and docs. They were a similar price at Officeworks here as well from memory.

I have a 1.5 T ex. HD for my laptop but there's no way I want to lug that around when there are much smaller units available.

Thanks

Lisa.

[calisota]

I took just shy of 12,000 photos while I was away and I took them in the best quality my camera had and in RAW format and they became to a little less than 200GB, which should give you an idea of what 500GB can hold. To put that in perspective...if you have a 4GB card in your camera then it's equivalent to using 50 of them. And you haven't even used half of the harddrive.

You may even want to download or rip a few movies or TV shows and put them on the drive so you have something to watch if you're awake at night somewhere with no English TV. You just delete the ones you've watched to free up space.

Greg

PS.
It'll be interesting to look back at this post in a couple of years and think "How did I survive with just 500GB of storage...I can only get 100 photos on that now!".

[mushu mama]

You may even want to download or rip a few movies or TV shows and put them on the drive so you have something to watch if you're awake at night somewhere with no English TV. You just delete the ones you've watched to free up space.

Now THAT is a good idea.

12000 photos is phenominal. That's one mighty slide show. lets hope that we all don't discover in 20 years time that the thousands of digi photos we took aren't going to last the distance. That would be heartbreaking. I'm slowly converting all my parents slides to digi format and their clarity amazes me when some of my 70's photos are hardly distinguisable.


Lisa.

[KeithS]

"How did I survive with just 500GB of storage...I can only get 100 photos on that now!".

[calisota]

"How did I survive with just 500GB of storage...I can only get 100 photos on that now!".

Funny but scarily true. I can think back to when you could get a whole operating system and a few programs on one of those giant floppy disks.

Greg

[KeithS]

Funny but scarily true. I can think back to when you could get a whole operating system and a few programs on one of those giant floppy disks.

Me too - our first computer (a Dick Smith System 80) which we purchased in 1982 (for $800!) had a whopping 16k of RAM. My dad then built a 4k expansion board (cost a about $100 to build).

To put that in perspective, that 4k expansion couldn't even show my little frog avatar in this forum!

[churros]

I love hearing about the size of the computer that flew to the moon as part of the apollo program. They compare it's capacity to today's handheld scientific calculator.