Is there a decent place to pick up items such as external hard drives, memory for digital cameras?

I'd check Yieryi Dajie （一二一大街） just east of the Yunnan University north gate. If you walk east from the gate you'll have two major computer markets and several smaller stores on your right over the next two blocks.

After two blocks if you turn right you'll find a whole street of computer-related stores on Yuantong Bei Lu, all the way to the zoo. Hope that helps.

Chris

When I was in Kunming in summer 2004 I found a 20 gig external hard drive(no software just a plain external hard drive for storage) for 300 yuan at "Computer Town" (or was it "computer city"?) which is what the area just east of the YunDa(Yunnan Univ) east gate is called. Its at the SWC of a major intersection bracketing YunDa. I needed it because the largest SD digi camera chip was only 512mg and Yunnan is too beautiful NOT to take gigs of photos!

Lots of botique type places inside the big Computer City "ediface"(chang). A guy named Li Ke (yes...like) was extremely helpful. But just ask...EVERYONE there is very helpful.