Where to buy a laptop?

Oh, yeah. They’re out of control with the fees. I’m pretty sure other’s do the same, but not as much. You can get by it by doing “self-clearance” but there’s some forms to fill out and I think you have to go to the customs office. I sometimes use the cheapest shipping from DHL where they just dump it at the local post office. That has it’s own challenges, though. The easiest cheapest options I’ve found are to use SingPost and SF Express.

I’ve only ever had serious problems with a laptop bought in the US. I exclusively buy Asus computers here from Guanghua Market, particularly one of the places that specializes in selling Asus laptops. In the rare times that my laptops have developed problems, I can get them repaired while I wait, for free.

I don’t know why people are recommending ordering a Taiwanese laptop from overseas when just as good (or better) ones can be bought right here.

Did you read the thread?
You pay almost a third more here in Taiwan for poorer specs.
Scroll up and read.

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Costco have the below instore at the moment, no idea if it’s good value

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128 SSD is a joke. Way too small. You would be lucky to fit your operating system and one program on there before it fills up to capacity.

The 1TB hard drive is the much slower 5800 RPM version. And the price is way high! Abosulte crap.

I’m running Win7 on a 240GB SSD, with about 40GB free. I have a lot of heavyweight applications installed. IIRC, Win7 all by itself takes up less than 20GB.

If all you want to do is run Office and a browser, 128GB will work very well indeed.

Although not with Win10, I suspect.

The price does seem high for that spec, but a bit of Googling suggests that’s it’s lower than average. Weird.

Didn’t read the whole thread but if you didn’t get the link already:

https://www.post.gov.tw/post/internet/SearchZone/index.jsp?ID=130112

Post office official English address translator.

Just to update this, had to order another laptop the other week.

Ordered via eBay and their global shipping scheme (so like with amazon, all taxes paid in advance)

Took just under 2 weeks to arrive (the seller has to send it to the US depot first, and it’s then forwarded to Taiwan - Amazon doesn’t have this issue).

It actually arrived yesterday, but needed a “Power of attorney” filled in and sent back (to FedEx) to authorise them to clear it. This also happened to me last time with UPS, so I guess that’s just a thing…

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What did you get and how did the “all in” price including shipping/taxes etc. compare to buying the same in Taiwan?

The one i wanted isn’t available in Taiwan, but tax and shipping was just $80.

Laptop cost was $1025usd

https://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-envy-laptop-17t-3en04av-1

Has it just gone on sale?:open_mouth:

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Nah, i got the uhd display, 16gb ram, 512gb ssd and 4gb gfx card :blush:

5 posts were split to a new topic: Customs clearance

i bought a new laptop at the weekend and noticed the same things that were talked about here. the model i wanted was cheaper on the usa website, and had better specs. usa -16bg ram with 500gb ssd +1TB hdd. taiwan - 8bg ram with 500gb ssd. i didn’t want that lesser version but i thought i would have a look anyway in person, turns out you can get the 16gb 1 TB hdd version after all. basically paying for the option of them putting the good stuff back in. very odd. i asked the guy in the shop which version people usually buy and he said this version. whats the point?

good laptop though, first time buying an asus.

May I ask where you bought it from?

guang hua area, we went around a few different shops but the price was basically the same in all of them. got a 500ntd discount too which was not that impressive but hey!

Looking to buy an Acer laptop but none of the 3C clerks could show me how to change the settings to English (Windows 10). Can anyone here tell me how to do so? Perhaps this is the wrong place to ask, apologies if that’s the case. Thanks for any help.

3 seconds on Google

And from ACER

https://us.answers.acer.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/45924/~/change-the-operating-system-language-on-acer-windows-10-computers

Thank you, SuiGeneris.