moondog

Marriott doesn't exert a great deal of influence over internet standards at the property level.

lsquare

Interesting comment. I’m really impressed with the consistent speed at Marriott Hangzhou Qinjiang. With VPN, I would be very happy. Only problem is that it’s not next to a subway station. Courtyard HZ Qinjiang, but speeds are inconsistent. I’m better off roamiing with my SIM, which I did.

Mind telling me if Express can be configured easily without an app?

moondog

I have no idea, but why not ask them instead of us?

lsquare

I thought you’re already using it.

moondog

I've never tried --or even thought about-- using it without one of the apps (Windows, Mac, iOs, Android). I suppose if I found the apps to be invasive/obtrusive, I might inquire...or simply find a different provider. But, I'm okay with all of them. Furthermore, whenever rough seas strike, one of the first things they ask me to do is try out beta versions of the apps that they've been working on to address flavor of the day hiccups. (They also suggest specific servers that don't pop up in their recommendation lists and setting tweaks.)

If you're interested in manual configuration, I'm pretty sure that a 5 minute chat session would be sufficient to set you on your way...or confirm that this isn't supported.

Internaut

This is a useful reminder that some sort of roamed daily data allowance is going to be a must for some (many?) visitors. The phone I put my temporary Unicom sim into did not have Express VPN installed (oversight on my part) but I was able to tether it to my roamed phone (UK CMLink - 10GB roamed allowance) and download Express that way. Throughout the trip, my two roamed phones (1 x iPhone and 1 x Android - I also recommend having one of each, if you can, based on my experience) were generally more useful than the local.

moondog

You don't need to be on VPN in order to access exp download links because they constantly maintain a set of unblocked mirror sites. The sites themselves can be found by searching on baidu/bing/yahoo etc. Or you can ask Wechat contacts to download and send the files to you (they are not heavy).

uanj

This is exactly what I do and for the same reason.

Internaut

Another +1 for Android then. Being able to side load apps (Didi, for example, wasn’t available in the U.K. Play Store) and even a whole other App Store proved useful.

STS-134

The cost of the traffic violation is even higher if you factor in time spent researching your defense. Which is why I spent way more than $400 on equipment for my car to reduce the chance of it ever happening again as much as possible, but that's getting way OT.

I'm not sure what tragedy of the commons has to do with this. That has to do with shared resources getting overused by individuals behaving according to their own self interests and contrary to the common good. I suppose there could be a "tragedy of the commons" type issue if everyone uses their VPN for watching videos all day long and consumes more bandwidth than Exp has, thus causing everyone's connection to be slower than it has to be, but that's not the biggest problem with the China market.

Companies are really only concerned about money. Threatening to cancel/withhold money if they don't deliver on what you're paying for is the best way to get them to fix issues. But if you just paid for 12 months of service a month ago, they're much less concerned about fixing the issue NOW because they already got your money.

I wouldn't run any file someone sent to me on my phone unless the person either encrypted it first or gave me the checksum using a secure hash function. Otherwise it's way too easy to someone to slip malware into it. The only thing I'd do with an unencrypted file would be to run it inside of a VM, then use the VM to grab a "clean" image that I can verify is clean by other means, and then copy the clean image to the host OS. Then I'd delete the VM.

trueblu

Please do tell a corporation catering to millions of customers that YOU are the only one that counts...

I live in a sl. less self-centred world. Tbh, I'm a little concerned, since I'm moving to the Bay Area: perhaps it's something in the air?? On the other hand, a company may actually attract the millions of customers, by having a customer-focused strategy: the reality of China is that "service interruptions" will continue to happen. Some companies work proactively to fix it. Some won't. I'm guessing the former get better word of mouth recommendations and business pick-up. I'm pretty sure the tech support person or bot that I chat with does NOT check first whether I have an annual or monthly subscription before deciding to give me the exact same piece of advice once I run into a problem.

tb

Deltus

Exp has been a bit of a disaster this afternoon, and Nord has been totally useless for weeks. I saw a decent price for SurfShark recently, is that any good in China?

lsquare

What’ was wrong with Exp?

Deltus

The connection to a couple of usually reliable servers kept dropping, and now I can't get onto anything at all from my phone. One server is still working from my laptop, but it's dropped a few times.

lsquare

That’s terrible. I find that browsing with hotel wifi to be annoying since Google is blocked. I’m now racking up the phone bill cuz I’m roaming, but it’s more convenient. Nothing is blocked and nothing to worry about.