This is not a good time for Windows users. Just a few months ago, Microsoft pulled the plug on Windows XP and from my perspective, the rush to convert was not to Windows 8 but to WIndows 7 because the machines converted where usually two to fours years old. For those of you still waffling about getting rid of XP, you should know that the easy step up to Windows 7 is about to end for people buying Home Premium which is the usual path. Microsoft is pulling the plug on Windows 7 Home Premium the end of October 2014 while most curiously leaving Windows 7 Professional available which will cost you another $40 to buy.

I just returned from a trip to China and while i was amazed that the huge throngs of 20 somethings wandering the streets with their smart devices, i was also dismayed at the hassles of keeping connected was. Now granted that the throngs of people that i would see in the airports and railway stations are not representative of a large population of farmers, if you looked anywhere, you would see literally thousands of smart phones in use everywhere. Even on the streets, people are walking, riding, driving and texting and talking like mad.

What was the problem, was that westerners like me had some serious difficulties staying connected. I chose not to use a data plan with my smartphone and stick with WIFI mostly because the data plan rates offered by AT&T were priced just too high to deal with. In fact, I left my iPhone 5 in “Airplane” mode the whole trip just to avoid the problems of outrageous cell phone prices as unless I went over to the dark side to get the phone unlocked so that I could use a Chinese mobile SIM card, I was going to be stuck with AT&T’s pricing scheme. But I thought that would be ok as I had an old Motorola Flip Phone that was unlocked long ago and can turn it into a Chinese mobile phone while traveling and that worked out great.

At a China Unicom kiosk, I was able to buy a SIM card that gives me a Chinese phone number and 80 minutes of international long distance talk time for a paltry 100 Yuan ($16 USD).  To get 100 minutes of international calling with AT&T would have cost me $120 per month not including any data plans. So, I went strictly WIFI. As to my phone, I had it forward all calls to my home number.

The good news is that free WIFI is available in far more places than I would have thought in China. The bad news is that sometimes it is difficult to get connected to it. In the Airports and train stations, the first thing they want is a Chinese mobile phone number to send the access code to. So it was a good thing I had my Motorola with me. Many of the hotels and restaurants we visited, even tiny holes in the wall, had free WIFI available. Just get the code from someone and you are connected. And for the most part, it worked out pretty well. There were a few times my phone told me I was connected but couldn’t get any pages but the next time I tried to connect using a different location, it worked just fine.