Laptop Shopping...

[Spice]

Hi, I am travelling to Japan for a year in October (working holiday visa)... I am planning on getting a Laptop for the trip, however i am not sure if it would be better for me to buy in Japan or England bearing in mind Price and technology.

Do the Japanese laptops have Roman Letters aswell as...(what do they use for computers..katakana?). Being A Japanese laptop may have advantages later on as i wish to do a Degree in Japanese...but there maybe issues arise with Driver Compatability/DVD compatibility etc.

Obviously getting a laptop in England will be easier...but will it be cheaper to buy in Japan or are there just too many possible problems when bringing it back to the UK compatability wise.

If anyone has any experience in this matter please let me know, ive searched the net but find it hard to find anything useful! Thanks for any help,

Sam

[jasonbvr]

There is supposedly a way to switch your regional compatibility, but I really don't have a clue how to. As far as the keyboard goes, the arrangement of the keys is a little different as far as the placement because there are a few extra ones. Honestly I don't think having a Japanese keyboard would accelerate you learning the language. You would have to learn to type in the Japanese form of QWERTY, as in memorize where the keys are. It is a lot easier to spell the Japanese word using Romaji then just hit the space bar and select the correct Kanji. There are plenty of programs out there for inputing Japanese script in non-Japanese computers.

As far as technology and pricing, I found that when I was shopping around last year I could get a better deal in the States as far as processor, memory, etcetera. There are some top of the line machines here and having one custom tailored is rather convenient, but the price is going to be relatively comparative to what you will pay everywhere else.

[samokan]

getting a laptop here would be a bit troublesome. one would be the OS, most are already installed with the OS and mostly Japanese. You can always change it to English OS, but the problem would be the key arrangement. the alphabets is standard but the other special character would be the problem. Believe it would get you irritated

Prices would not differ much actually, if you are opting for a brand new ones. But there are always a rare find somewhere in akihabara if you know where to look.

this is a japanese site, but you can always compare prices here:
www.kakaku.com -> shows where is the cheapest item can be found all over Japan. Some would even deliver it directly to your place , COD.

[Eomer]

I'm from the UK originally, and when I took a look around some of the stores in Akihabara.... maybe 2 months ago or so.. I did see some pretty good deals..(Not amazing or anything, but decent.. maybe 2 - 300+ quid off an equivalent 1 grand machine) I think in comparison to the US and Japan the UK is pretty steep, computer price-wise. Bearing that in mind though, the computers I was looking at were J-OS, might go up a little if you ask for English OS to be installed.. but you could ask for it OS free, then install your own copy of Windows... which, if you can be bothered with the hassle, would give a pretty decent saving over the UK.

Regarding the key placement issue.. if you had a Japanese machine with the English OS, you could install the Japanese IME, which (I'm pretty sure) would resolve the issue.

おたくですね。

[Spice]

Hmmm...looks like it might be too much messing about...im decent enough with computers and im sure i wouldnt have much trouble sorting things out...but im sure overtime the little irritations would prove too much!

Might just have to keep my eye out for good deals in the UK. Is there much of a technology gap between Japan and UK?

Cheers for your replies