Buying a laptop in the US

[interested]

I'm thinking of buying a Macbook Pro in the US, a rough calculation gives me a saving of about £350.

Apart from having to get a US/UK power adaptor and having to fiddle about trying to get a £ symbol if I need one, what other things should I be aware of?

cheers

[Troll]

From experience - the non-UK keyboard will pee you off very quickly... assuming you are from the UK

[cojak]

I'd second that...

[interested]

I'd second that...

Hmm, thanks

[Ardesco]

Also bear in mind that customs and excise will want you to pay tax on it for bringing it back into this country if they catch wind of what you are doing.

Final reason for not doing it is that most US electrical goods only have a warranty that is valid in north america, so if it goes on the blink you have to go back over there to get it fixed.

IMHO it's not worth the hassle unless you have a good freind out there who you can use as a US postbox and is quite willing to ship things back to you, even then it is a lot of hassle for the saving.

Just buy one in this country and claim back VAT.

[Cowboy Bob]

From experience - the non-UK keyboard will pee you off very quickly... assuming you are from the UK

The Mac keyboard takes some getting used to anyway. Shift-2 is @ whereas Shift-' is " which is annoying when you're a programmer or if you touch type. This is the case on all Mac keyboards - US or UK. I'm just about at the stage of getting the hang of it now after having my Mac for about 6 weeks. Of course, you then go to a client site and have to use a PC keyboard and get mixed up all over again.

[interested]

Thanks chaps. Just ordered my Mac Book Pro from the UK store in the light of the above comments.

Anyone got a view on whether Parallels, Boot Camp or this new VMWare thing is the best solution to run Windows (if I have to)?

[darmstadt]

From experience - the non-UK keyboard will pee you off very quickly... assuming you are from the UK

I have 2 laptops sitting in front of me, one with a US keyboard and one with a German keyboard (I also have 4 German keyboards and a Belgian keyboard near me) and have no problems with switching. Wait until you use something like aSwiss of Belgian keyboard then you will have problems. I didn't pay any tax on my US laptop as I just got it sent over via Fedex as part of the business, same with a lot of the equipment I have (such as $20,000 ESCON and PCA cards.)

[Cowboy Bob]

Thanks chaps. Just ordered my Mac Book Pro from the UK store in the light of the above comments.

Anyone got a view on whether Parallels, Boot Camp or this new VMWare thing is the best solution to run Windows (if I have to)?

Parallels, hands down. VMWare is great, I ran it under Linux for years, but it's still in beta for OSX. I wouldn't bother with Boot Camp as you'll have to reboot to use Windows. Parellels runs near native speed for Windows, so unless you're planning to run your games, you shouldn't ever need to boot into Windows.

[interested]

Just got it from UPS. Wow - what a brilliant piece of kit this is. Gorgeous and blindingly quick as well