nytango

Thinking of bringing Ipad rather than laptop. It is wireless and also 3g. In hotels many say say wired rathered than wireless. Will bringing airport express solve that problem or is there a better way. Confused about the censorship issue and thought of freegate but it seems it doesn't work with ipad.
Also are micro sims and data plans available or should I consider cutting regular one.

manneca

I found wireless in the lobby areas of western based hotels (Hyatt in Lhasa, Holiday Inn in Beijing), so if you're willing to be in the lobby that should work.

Chinatrvl

Wireless in public areas, not so much in hotel rooms.
3G is an option, when you plan to use the internet heavily, see here (and the recent post about 3G prepaid cards): http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/china...e-china-3.html

Censorship. I guss one can live without "explicit" stuff and getting in-depth information about the Dalai Lama whilst in China Whenever your newspaper of choice is blocked, just try a second one (or get the print version for free at your hotel...).

In almost a decade of working and living in China I never had to use any of these tricks and work-arounds, or felt the urge to catch up with facebook...

moondog

http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/def...DLI-DWL-G730AP

Loren Pechtel

It's more than just porn and anti-Chinese things that get blocked. Things like Wikipedia (and most other large sites that permit user content) are also blocked.

Shareholder

FT is excruciatingly slow in China, but for the most part I had no other problems using my iPad last month in Shanghai (wifi-only version). Stayed at all three ICs and Hyatts and had pretty good wifi connections in the Club lounges (except for IC Puxi) but not the rooms where it was a chord connection. Otherwise Email loaded quickly and was dispatched equally so. Most sites offered reasonable speed and didn't seem to be blocked. Each morning I could update various apps like Bloomberg, Reuteurs, NYTimes, Huffington Post, Globe and Mail. Read my daily e-edition of the National Post and none of these seemed to be affected by the Great Firewall of China. BTW saw a few iPads for sale at stalls in the electronics marts near the IC Pudong, along with some accessories. I didn't think it was legally sold in China yet, but some outlets (all Apple-licensed) had things like screen protectors, cases, etc.

Phipps

Same experience here. I had a lot of problems with FlyerTalk, otherwise it was only the usual suspects (e.g., Facebook) that wouldn't open. No problems with news sites, email, etc.

tauphi

According to Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockin...blocks_in_2008

it is no longer blocked. Of course you're still subject to the usual dynamic filter that'll reset your connection if you read anything naughty!

tauphi

Last time I had a problem with FlyerTalk it turned out to be an embedded link to facebook. I just checked this page and indeed it still contains an embedded link to facebook.

jiejie

I believe that is indeed the problem. Before this embedded link was added to FlyerTalk, FT ran just fine. Currently, I have to use my VPN to access FT. But some people in other locations in China served by other ISP's don't seem to have much problem. Just depends where you are. This is not an ipad-specific issue.

Shareholder

Can one of you please explain to we techno-illiterates why there is a problem with FT due to a Facebook imbed? How can this be disabled? Facebook appears to be the scourge of the internet and a greater curse to society than benefit.

Loren Pechtel

Examining the page info for this page I find the "f Connect" button is hosted on static.ak.fbcdn.net.

When I load up Facebook I find a huge number of images hosted by that same server. While the IP is nothing like Facebook's it's obviously their server. I haven't tried to use FlyerTalk in China since the Facebook connect link appeared. Years ago one one trip I was on a discussion board that hosted some ads from a firewalled server--it would take a long time for those ads to timeout. Sometimes the rest of the page displayed anyway but often it didn't until the ads hit their timeout. *VERY* annoying.

I do find the flash ads really slow down FlyerTalk in China anyway. (I don't know how they compare to here because I'm normally running Flashblock.)