i just picked up an ibm r40e.
it has windows home but it’s all in chinese. the guy atthe shop said “no problem” over and over again. in my rush I bought it and now the guy at ibm tech support said I need an english windows cd. it didnt even come with a chinse windows cd. I was told i can just contact “some one” and they wil send it online.
any one know what to do.
You can try to download IMESH from www.imesh.com, install this program, then with IMESH download your English windows version, and install that one. This however is illegal. There are many other ways too.
BTW, your Chinese OS is also pirated – all computers in Taiwan are sold with pirate copies of Chinese OS. Standard practice. When you look at the price for the real thing you’ll understand why.
[quote=“Mother Theresa”]BTW, your Chinese OS is also pirated – all computers in Taiwan are sold with pirate copies of Chinese OS. Standard practice. When you look at the price for the real thing you’ll understand why.[/quote]Hey MT that was over the top. All computers sold in Taiwan? That is one nasty accusations you make. ALL of them? Times have changed. Go to Guang Hua computer market and see for yourself. Yes there are still a lot of pirated Microsoft discs, but much much less than in the past.
Hey dix2111: Have one of your Chinese speaking friends go to the shop and sort it out and if they are using pirated copies, consider yourself lucky as they will have to sort you out, lest…by the way, be careful with any threats you make. It might backfire as I suppose they know where you live, or could follow you home no? By the wya, sometimes it is hard for the shops to get the English OS from the distributor and if they can get it, sometimes costs them more. That shop should really put English OS on there for you. Offer to pay them a little more. Where did you buy it? All hell, I am in the right mood today to call them and take care of this…send me a PM with their phone number and yours and I will call them for ya.
Get a language pack CD to change the UI from Chinese to English. Or get a new English version of Windows.
If you want to keep the Chinese version, just buy and install a new hard drive, put the old one in a box somewhere, and install an English version of Windoze on the new drive. That way, you still have the self-repairing Chinese Windows version around somewhere if you get desperate.
BTW, downloading a CD of Win** is not illegal; installing it with a pirated key is. You can borrow an English-version CD from wherever; what you buy from Microsoft is the license to install and use the OS, which is embodied in the key. If you can buy a license&key legitimately from someone (e.g., you call your Aunt Sophie in Akron and get her to buy a box and email the 25-character key to you) you’re basically fine.
One issue, though, is that Microsoft uses incompatible keys between releases, i.e., a copy of Win2K purchased in January 2001 would not work with keys that got shipped with Win2K that Microsoft shipped in November 2001, because in that timeframe Microsoft would update drivers, change various random pieces of code, and introduce new and improved bugs into the system for IT to deal with, and would change their key-generator to have a different encoding. Similarly, your presumably legitimate key for Chinese WinXP almost certainly won’t work to let you install English WinXP. Yes, it’s a pain. What else did you expect from Microsoft?
I’ve used WinXP English product keys to install WinXP Chinese and vice versa. As long as you have the same kind of XP, whether it is Home, Pro, or Volume Licensing (aka Corporate), then it should work fine. I can’t speak of the legalities, but I don’t see a moral problem in installing WinXP English using a WinXP Chinese product code for a laptop you bought legally.
To address Mother Teresa’s concern, since the laptop is an IBM, I highly doubt it was sold without a legit license. IBM can be sued in jurisdictions where IPR is actually enforced.
Ok, I admit I was waxing hyperbolic. But that was my experience when shopping for a laptop a couple of years ago. All the vendors and people in my office were pushing pirate software on me and no one seemed to comprehend why I might want to buy the real goods. My apologies to those willing to pay Microsoft for their products.
Anyway, here I am two years later and my laptop was temporarily devastated by a malicious worm (jlick was kind enough to remove the 2.5 million infected files that it left on my harddrive, a process that took 3 days of deleting) that screwed up my MS Office, which jlick has advised me to reinstall. So I searched through my boxes of computer stuff and. . . waddaya know. . . no office. I recall now that I “borrowed” my Office software from a secretary. 
But I’ve decided it’s time to go straight. This time I’ll pay the exorbitant price. My wife just informed me of a company that sells English version of Office for NT8,100 (for use on one computer) or $12,900 (if you want to be able to use it on different computers). Does that sound about right? Any better deals available for legit Office software?
That’s not bad considering Office 2003 goes for about USD400-500 in the US. The best deals I’m aware (with catches) are:
Educational Edition: About USD120-150, allows you to install on three computers, must be a student or teacher to legally use it.
OEM Editions: Technically must be sold with a computer, varies in prices, and the cheapest versions only include the basics and often an older version, not the whole suite. Prices range from USD40-200.
Make sure you see a certificate of authenticity before forking over your dough. Even this isn’t a guarantee, but there’s a lot of dodgy places selling pirated copies, some of which can look pretty real, but often just a CD-R and a sheet of paper with the product key.
it’s still mucked up
but if I get another one and leave them open tI can use them as bookends. as a extra plus I can use the computer case as a lunch bag and scrap the power cords for copper wire. i’m going to make ninja stars out of my dvd’s. can i use dvd’s from america to make nina stars in taiwan or do i need some kind of decoder?