I am guessing this might be character set related as they appear to differ between the two databases:

The hosted web space database server:
character_set_client utf8
character_set_connection utf8
character_set_database latin1
character_set_filesystem binary
character_set_results utf8
character_set_server latin1
character_set_system utf8

My laptap:
character_set_client latin1
character_set_connection latin1
character_set_database latin1
character_set_filesystem binary
character_set_results latin1
character_set_server latin1
character_set_system utf8

Would this cause my problem and if so how do i resolve and what are the implications?