Walter Hutchens’ Blog

The ride is quiet smooth. Once the Mag-Lev has accelerated the cars moving on the highway appear to be stationery.

The massive sums Shanghai spent on the Mag-Lev did not include it seems review of signs by native English speakers.

I arrived on a weekday afternoon but found ridership well below capacity, even now that the fare has been reduced to RMB 50.

You can pay RMB 90 for a “VIP” seat, but it’s a waste. The regular seats are quite comfortable, and no amenities are provided in the VIP cars other than a slightly wider seat. Plus the day I rode the VIP cars were the one furthest from the boarding area. I had to haul my luggage through most of the train before taking a seat.

Intensively cultivated fields besides the Mag-Lev tracks.

The Mag-Lev terminal station, with a banner against drug use. You can pick up the Shanghai subway from here.

Posted from my Sony U

After my Hong Kong course ended, I flew to Shanghai and stayed a few days. I am a complete sap for the nostalgia of “old Shanghai,” so I stayed in the hotel pictured below. It’s a few blocks from the Bund, on Jiangxi Road and Fuzhou Rd (within Walking distance of the shopping on Nanjing Rd. and the bookstores on Fuzhou Rd.). It is now called the Metropole or “New City Hotel” (Xin Cheng Fandian) in Chinese. It’s at an interesting intersection where two identical towers and a couple of smaller art deco buildings face each other, with concave shapes fronting the street. The room was RMB 498 a night. It was spacious and clean with all the expected amenities. In fact, they provided free broadband internet access.

The morass of lines in the forefront of the picture are for electric busses, which still cruise the streets of Shanghai, making much less noise than non-electric ones.

The Wall Street Journal reports here that “Merrill Lynch & Co. is expected to announce today that it has agreed to form a joint venture with China’s Huaan Securities Co., according to people familiar with the situation. The deal would give New York-based Merrill access to the securities-underwriting business in China. Merrill would acquire a 33% stake in the joint venture for an undisclosed sum.”

Macao Gets Wired. Originally Posted from my Sony U.

I finally visited the Hong Kong Sony Style store. It was actually a let down. My expectations were high; since arriving in Hong Kong I’d 1) discovered the Sony Vaio U50 on sale in many small electronics shops 2) found an attractive package deal on a U50 a in the local chain Fortress and 3) seen many adds about the U in the subway.

The Sony Style store does have a U on display, but it is simply the same package that’s available at Fortress. Moreover they have no accessories for sale. I wanted to buy a a screen overlay/protector and a carraying bag I’d seen on the website, but none of this is available, even at the Sony Style store!

U on display in Sony Style store, Hong Kong.

Ads for the Sony Vaio U are plastered many places in the Hong Kong subway system right now. This one shows an “evolution”‘ in computer size, culminating in the diminutive U.

This clipping is from the official Sony website promoting the Sony U for the Hong Kong market

Besides the “mom and pop” electronic stores I visited today, I came across a local chain store called Fortress. They also sell a Sony U. Their model is equivalent to what’s called the U50 in Japan and on sale on Hong Kong streets in a variety of smaller shops, but the official version in Hong Kong is called the U8G. It seels for HKD 15,980 in a package with a CD/DVD burner.

That’s not a bad deal. The only US model (labelled the U75O) was sold for USD 2,000 without a CD/DVD burner. The specs vary slightly on the two models; the US one had 512 MB of RAM and a different chip (a Pentium M) that is reved up to 1.1 MHz, whereas in the HK model the RAM is cut down to 256 MB and the processor is a slower one (Celeron) running at a slightly lower 900 MHz. But the Sony CD/DVD burner would add another $400 in the US, and the speed difference wouldn’t matter much for many common applications.

Posted from my Sony U

Last night I arrived in Hong Kong. I plan to visit the Sony Style store later, but this morning I just explored a number of small electronics shops near my hotel in Kowloon. Several of them, including the one pictured above, sell the Sony Vaio U50.

These shops often display a series of notebooks in descending order of size, with the U coming last, as shown.

Most stores put the U50 with the notebook computers, but as shown below at least one store shelved it with the PDAs (none of these stores had an abundance of space).

I inquired about the price at two shops; both quoted HKD 13,500 as the starting point for negotiations.

Posted from my Sony U

Sony Style Hong Kong - Sony VAIO U VGN-U8G Notebook

At the above site Sony sells a Vaio U series computer in Hong Kong. It’s designated a U8G, though its specs appear to be the same as what was called the U50 in Japan.

The Hong Kong website has more content that what Sony Style offers in the US. There are some interesting videos, though the narration is in Cantonese.

I am traveling to Hong Kong next week and will visit the Sony store there.