Hi. Im moving soon to Taiwan and I want to buy a high performance notebook. So I want to know what people think, if I should buy it on lets say ebay and get it shipped to me or buy it in Taiwan from stores or night markets or other? whats better? It can be used or brand new. Im planning on paying for it from 600$ to 900$ would be like 20000nt to 30000nt I think. The laptop has to be a core duo with 2gb ram or more, over 100gb hdd, min. 128mb vr, min. 14 inches screen, vista, dvd burner, wifi and lan. I also want to buy a cellphone but I have already decided Im gonna buy it there instead of buying it online or at my country.
if you buy here bear in mind the operating system (windows for example) is most likely to be chinese version. unless you buy from a major vandor like dell you probably wont even have the chance to get english as option.
from price level i am quite disappointed here as most stuff is sometimes even more expensive here then in europe or USA.
(at least for legit licenses of windows)
I bought an ASUS W7 recently, and I used a reputable store who actually put a call thru to the factory and got me a factory installed english OS, complete with the English manuals and OEM CDs etc.
My view is to always buy in the country you intend to use it the most. It make warranty claims a whole lot easier. Global prices these days are very similar.
PM me if you want the address of the place.
I thought it would be cheaper there, since notebook companies like Acer and Benq are from Taiwan. I do want my OS in english or spanish, but I can take a CD from my home country and install it there over the preinstalled OS, so its not that important. I have seen good HP, Acer and Sony notebooks in USA, like core duo 2ghz 2gb ram expandable to 4gb, 160gb hdd, vista, 256 mb vr, etc, for about 800$ but I still got to pay shipping and all the other things in order to get it, so it would be about 1k total. Now, I want to know if I can get a notebook in Taiwan for 1k or less with the same specs used or retail. I dont care about warranty and other things like that since I think its useless.
Although companies like Acer and Benq have their HQ in Taiwan the products are mainly made in China, and the shipping costs are not such a large component of the price. As an example, a large American buyer could be able to negotiate a lower per unit contract price with manufacturers, which could then mean that the product has a lower retail price in USA than it has in Taiwan.
It is also worth mentioning that Acer no longer produces its own notebooks.
I had no problem to get my Asus laptop with English OS, only had to pay for the difference between Home and Pro version (Windows XP).
No idea what will be cheaper though, buying overseas + shipping (and possible import duty) or here, but for warranty issues I would buy it here.
I think there was a thread where someone said that he had problems getting his Dell laptop fixed here that he purchased overseas.
[quote=“Gelangweilt”]if you buy here bear in mind the operating system (windows for example) is most likely to be Chinese version. unless you buy from a major vandor like dell you probably wont even have the chance to get English as option.
from price level I am quite disappointed here as most stuff is sometimes even more expensive here then in europe or USA.
(at least for legit licenses of windows)[/quote]
I bought a Fujitsu T4020 (tablet PC) in Taiwan 2 years ago (cost me less than AUD3000. If I was to buy in Sydney it would’ve cost me AUD4000). I asked the vendor to install English version of Windows XP and they were able to do that for me without extra charges.