net access

[aussimike]

hi guys  happy spring festival --- can anyone tell me if Chinese can access Skype, Msn live or yahoo -as i want to view my long term girlfriend and just seeing lots of photos is really very ordinary -- so if someone else is using the above can you please advise - skype would be ideal as we can chat and type at same time - regards Mike

[Martin]

All 3 work in China.

[Neil]

And qq is another good alternative.  It features built in instant translation (very accurate as well).  It has all the features of skype except phone to phone voice calls.  There's a pretty good chance your girlfriend already has a qq account.

[RobertBfrom aust]

Hi Mike , yes all 3 work in China as well as qq which I always use talking to my other half in shenyang or just finding each other at the airports , funny how things work when I went to China in December I thought my phone would not work , but as I stepped off the plane my phone rang and it was my lawn mower man wanting to cut my lawn here in Melbourne ha ha ,Okay I said but you will have to wait to get paid   , she also has qq on her smart phone so she is contactable anytime , we only use Yahoo for emailing which at her end goes to her QQ email box anyway , most of the girls are way ahead of us with their use of modern electronics , regards Sujuan and Robert .

[David K]

A caution about QQ: we have found its also host to a lot of (Chinese written) trojans  / viruses.
It does have an AV function, but mostly that operates in Mandarin.

Having popped my fuses trying to disinfect the machine solely on the basis of Icons,
I now have a separate (and sandboxed) machine with a backup (cloned) spare disk for Yan to use.

Before that, I got caught by a virus programmer smarter than I;  his handiwork pinged 40 Gigs of my music files (FLAC,Mp3)
Never again

[Willy The Londoner]

Within China we always use Skype without any proxy server. That provides the best result.  My wife calls her friends on QQ but I find the quality of the picture so much better with skype so her close relatives use skype to contact us and visa versa.

Using MSN or Yahoo the user at the Chinese end is always open to the internet censors (more so at weekends when there are less businesses to censor).   But with Skype I have no problems. 

I run my online uk businesses via skype and I live here in China. That works well for me and I have access to telephones all all the World at a low cost.

I would always recommend Skype but have no experience with QQ.

Willy