My handsome nephew - who looks uncannily like his uncle - is in the market for a cheap laptop that he will take back to England to use for his studies. Something simple. Any suggestions? Will he be able to use it in the UK without any issues?
Thank you!
[quote=“Stray Dog”]My handsome nephew - who looks uncannily like his uncle - is in the market for a cheap laptop that he will take back to England to use for his studies. Something simple. Any suggestions? Will he be able to use it in the UK without any issues?
Thank you![/quote]No problem with use, they are designed to be moved around, you’ll just need to change the plug or get a new power cable. And it will have a cool Chinese keyboard.
Dunno what’s good though, ask someone else.
Oh, and make sure the first DVD film you play on it is a UK one, coz of region encoding and all that. Or would it already be locked or do you get 5 times to change it ?
make sure the notebook comes from a reputable international company so you can get a global warranty
ASUS notebooks all come with 2 year global.
Acer, HP, Toshiba, IBM come with 1 year global.
I’d say get ASUS.
Some Guanghua vendors sell English OS and keyboard models. Some even have late model, used ones. Given the pace of change, buy new, and get the longest extended warranty.
+1 on ASUS. Asus build for Apple, and used to build most Sony Vaios until Asus expanded their own notebook line (in both models and quality) until they now have better notebooks than Sony. Not all are better, but, e.g., the Asus G1S is a full generation ahead of anything Sony offers (Santa Rosa chipset, nVidia 8600M GT GPU). I stopped buying Vaios and started buying ASUS.
Cheaper in the UK.
Good site for info on notebooks:
ASUS have a “flexible” (?) distribution channel in the US and EU, that is, they will sell in bulk to anyone that has a web shingle hung, aka “ASUS dealer”. Many small eShops, some of which are extremely competent, that are ASUS dealers survive by doing upgrades to ASUS notebooks that high volume “we sell only standard SKU” shops will not do, e.g, upgrading (without labor charge) OS, RAM, HDD, etc., none of which voids the warranty. If you have the dealer overclock the CPU, that breaks the ASUS factory warranty, but typically the dealer gives you their own 1 year warranty. ASUS offer a standard 1 year warranty, and up to 2 extension years… global coverage … a very good warranty. GenTech is the shop I use (I have no affiliation with them), and yes, they are Taiwanese in L.A. Ask for Ken.
1toppc.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv … ode=asusnb
From posts on boards, I know that even folks in the EU buy from from them. GenTech upgraded my G1S to Vista 64, and the HDD to 7200 rpm 160 GB, without voiding factory warranty. It’s cheaper to buy your own RAM sticks to upgrade RAM (pay more to get name brand, e.g., Crucial, Corsair), in my case to 4GB. A RAM upgrade also doesn’t void the factory warranty. www.frys.com has some of the best RAM prices, and again, many buyers from the EU.
Finally, in ASUS notebooks, be very attentive to model suffixes. For instance, there is less than USD100 difference in price between a G1 and a G1S, but a huge performance difference.
I speak from experience in saying that you should buy the laptop where you expect to use it most. If it is the UK where it will be used, buy it in the UK. Even if the laptop has an international warranty, not all models are sold in all markets and getting repairs done for an out of market model will be a pain. You aren’t going to save much money buying in Taiwan, and indeed there’s a lot of computer stuff that is more expensive here than in other big markets such as the US.
Really appreciate the responses. 