ExpressVPN in Beijing 6 months and counting Part 1

Having purchased ExpressVPN services in Beijing back in June 2015, Ive been using the service regularly for more than six months now for my PCs and mobile devices.  The VPN was accessed using a China Unicom 10 MB broadband service with a stock Wi-Fi-N generic CPE router.

For more details on ExpressVPN and China Unicom refer to ExpressVPN + China Unicom 20MB, Beijing.

Ive tested the service using the following devices and operating systems:

1. iPad 2 with iOS9
2. Windows 10 Pro on a Zotac ZBOX Nano mini PC
3. Windows 10 Home 32-Bit on an HP Stream 8
4. Debian 8 Jessie Xfce
5. Fedora 24 / Fedora 25 Gnome 3
6. Ubuntu 14.04
7. Sony Xperia C3 with Android 5.1
8. Lumia 925 with Windows Phone 8.1 (manual steps from ExpressVPN site)
9. Lumia 650 with Windows 10 Mobile (manual steps from ExpressVPN site)
10. openSUSE 42.1 KDE/Cinnamon (manual configuration)
11. Macbook Air with macOS

I use the VPN to mostly access Western web services such as Blogger, OneDrive, Linux file servers, and Google services. The VPN gets the most mileage from updating apps via Google Play, which is a service that is blocked in China. Moreover, I spend a lot of time watching Graham Norton, Craig Ferguson reruns, and the odd SNL skits on YouTube (trying to block out all the incredibly vacuous, and offensive hate from comments). There are also some Western sites such as superherohype.com that are only accessible via VPN (again, shocked at the amount of hate on US websites these days). On a few occasions, I also made purchases from online stores when the correct location associated with a payment method was required. I rarely enable the VPN for more than one client at a time (maximum of 2) and almost never have the VP N enabled for more than two hours at one go (I abhor abusing any service).

The following is a list of observations and notes for those considering ExpressVPN while visiting or working in China:

1. The Hong Kong service is generally usable for YouTube, but struggles with Google services such as Gmail and Google News. Blogger works great most of the time, though the connection drops when Blogger auto saves drafts. Twitter apps and the Twitter homepage are surprisingly the most reliable because it uses very little bandwidth.

2. Both PayPal and eBay are not blocked in China, but you may want to use a VPN since payment methods are based on your location, and eBay diverts to their Hong Kong server if youre in China.

Continued in ExpressVPN in Beijing (6 months and counting) Part 2