I’ve been visiting my friend in Taipei and travelling around Taiwan for two weeks now. Unfortunately I managed to break my MacBook yesterday. I was thinking of buying a new one in Taipei, but I called the Apple store and it turns out that it takes two weeks to order one with a US keyboard, and I’m leaving end of this week same thing seems to be with Studio A (an Apple reseller).
Since things are way cheaper here than at home in Europe, I’d really like to buy new gear in Taipei. Does anyone know a place that might have a MacBook Pro with a US keyboard lying around that I could pick up?
Cheers and thanks in advance,
Patrick
PS I’m jealous for all the people living in this amazing country, I’ve seen a lot of Asia but Taiwan seems really special
??? I buy all of my electronics outside of Taiwan. Cheaper, more variety and more current on the shelf.
My friends that buy Taiwan get that little plastic piece that goes over the keyboard to turn it into English. The only problem is the back light doesn’t always shine through.
Well I checked, and it’s about 300€ cheaper here (applecompass.com has a nice way showing that). I remember that I bought my first MacBook in Vietnam, and it’s super easy to get ones with US keyboard there.
I thought about getting one with a taiwanese layout but meh, they are not cheap devices, if I spend the money I’d rather have one exactly as I’d like.
So you don’t think there’s an easy way to grab one in Taipei?
Maybe you believe everything on the internet but I don’t believe that website. Tell me exactly the model you’re looking for and I will go look tomorrow. Then we’ll compare prices to Europe. Where are you buying in Europe?
If it’s that much cheaper then I’m buying 50 before I go to Europe next month and sell them all.
Example: MacBook Pro 13” 2.3GHz 8GB RAM 128GB SSD ist 1,499€ in Germany (it is 1,449€ in Luxembough and 1,549€ in Ireland, so prices across Europe are very similar).
Now, that same laptop costs NT$41,900 in Taiwan. If I buy it with my credit card, I get an exchange rate of 35.7 NT$/€, which means that it would cost me around 1,173€. That’s a difference of around 326€, which is like one month rent for a student like me haha.
And you can’t exactly do that, because if you import goods (as in, not for personal use), you will have to pay taxes. I think that for Germany, that would just be the 19% MwSt, which means that you’d have to pay around 230€ per Laptop, but it might even be more. So yeah, probably not worth the hassle.
why do you care about US keyboard.
The Taiwan keyboard is a US keyboard, but with the ㄅㄆㄇㄈ and the tone marks on same key. For saving that much Euros, you might as well just buy it and not worry about the “symbols” alongside the QWERTY alphabet. It’s a minor detail for such a big amount of money to save
Well, because I know that you can get them with a US keyboard. My first MBP I actually bought in Vietnam, they had two stacks (one with US, one with viet keyboards I guess) at the store. But yeah if you guys have no idea, I’ll probably just pick up one with a local keyboard I guess
CTaitung is right. The Taiwanese keyboard is actually identical in layout to the US keyboard - it just has the extra symbols on it. I find keyboards look quite naked without them now, but I certainly wouldn’t pay extra or wait for one over the other since they’re functionally identical for me: I type with US English enabled, and I type Chinese in Pinyin.
What you may or may not be aware of is that the US keyboard is different in layout to UK keyboards - which also have some differences compared with European keyboards. If you were expecting the US layout to match the UK layout, you’ll be disappointed.
Yep, and even tho I’m german I hate our keyboards. Same with french (my gf’s laptop) or UK. I always buy US. But eh I just picked up one with a taiwanese-US layout—not perfect, but it’ll do the job.
same thing seems to be with Studio A (an Apple reseller).
