Where to buy a laptop in the USA

[GMS]

Will be travelling to the USA in January and wondered if anybody could suggest a good place to buy a laptop. Either by mail or in the Orlando area.

Many thanks,

GMS

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

GMS,

Two good places to start are:

Best Buy (http://www.bestbuy.com/)

And

Circuit City (http://www.circuitcity.com/ccd/home.do)

If there is any way I can help in choosing a Notebook, please let me know.

Take Care,

Richard

[seacue]

I suggest buying a Sunday newspaper. The major big box retailers generally have multipage fliers inserted in Sunday papers, and these always feature a selection of name-brand laptops at special prices.

But the special prices usually involve mail-in rebates and I don't know how you could handle this since the rebate is in the form of a cheque mailed to your home, and you won't have a home address in the USA I would suspect.

The big box stores that carry laptops are:

Best Buy and Circuit City (as Richard suggested)

CompUSA (I find they have the best selection of add-ons in my area). Look on the bottom shelves for their cheaper house-brand items.

.. and the major office supply big box stores -
Office Depot (headquarters are in Florida)
Office Max
Staples

Most cities only have two of the three "office" store chains.

seacue

[Loose rivets]

I went to best buy following Richard’s pic of the Toshiba in my thread “gone batts”….thanks again Richard. It certainly was a good price, and a salesman at circuit city knew of it and pointed me back to BB !! Glad he doesn’t work for me.

As for mailing the rebate…well you could have it sent it to me, whereupon I would promptly put it towards the price of my Tosh…which is a good lump of half its price!
:D

[Shanwick Shanwick]

If you buy it on www.Amazon.com, not only will it be cheaper than any of the Best Buy/Circuit City/Comp USA retailers but you won't pay any state tax either. Just have it shipped to the hotel.

[mikeddavies]

Bear in mind that a computer bought in the States will have a USA keyboard which can be a real pain at times. Also check the warranty is world wide collect and return.

[Daysleeper]

and watch out for customs on the way home!

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

TCS,

That is exactly where I look too! It is funny, I find better deals on hardware at Tech and Ben's Bargains then I can get from my parts warehouses like Tech Data. :eek:

Take Care,

Richard

P.S. If you are worried about Customs like Daysleeper mentions, I would recommend sending all the paperwork and warranty cards home in the post. Have the Notebook in a Notebook Case along with all your work papers as if you brought it for work on the trip. ;)

[Tinstaafl]

I did that. Saved over 500 quid on the UK equivalent model. In fact the US model had a 100MHz faster processor & WiFI in addition to the UK version's stuff. I also wanted a US keyboard - which is what prompted me to search in the US in the first place.

[GMS]

Thanks to all of you for your comments and suggestions. A few things come to mind. Is the US keyboard that different to the UK version for someone who only types with two to three fingers? And what about the warranty, is it US only or can you add worldwide cover?

Many thanks again,

GMS

[MadsDad]

GMS

Did some investigation recently for MadsLad who was intending to buy in the States. The warranty is the biggest issue apparently. Most manufacturers now have an international warranty so the machine can be mended under warranty although it is a pain to get it done - a friend had to get hers mended (bought in LA, bust in Bristol) and it took lots of phone calls and faffing about. Apparently Sony do not have an international warranty.

Other than that all you need is a phone plug adapter and you're off (t'Lad eventually bought an iPod (I think; a Mac anyway) and is very happy with it).

[Rollingthunder]

As far as the keyboard goes, the only differences I have noticed are that the @ is in a different place and there is a $ instead of a pound.

[faq]

Doesn't windows xp give the chance at installation to load different keyboard lamguages and thereafter to change keyboard languages in control panel>regional and language options?

If so the buttons would function like a UK qwerty but a couple of the keys would be incorrectly labelled.

[Evo]

As far as the keyboard goes, the only differences I have noticed are that the @ is in a different place and there is a $ instead of a pound.


Rather irritatingly, Apple added a £ in the right place for their UK keyboard, but seem to have forgotten to swap " and @ :rolleyes:

[Tinstaafl]

There's usually one or two more keys that are placed differently 'twixt US & UK. I'm a touch typist & am used to US - hence my preference. For a two finger typist I don't think it would make a difference unless not having a UK pound key readily to hand is bothersome.

[PPRuNe Towers]

Hmmmmm,

The stock up on toys with a half empty samsonite in tow during recurrent ploy huh Mike :ok: :}

Regards
rob

[PPRuNe Towers]

Sim time can be very hard Mike.

Now do I take all the manuals or leave room in the case for toys? ;) ;)

All the best to you and yours
rob

PS Evo, I've banned myself for 24 hours now. Savage thread drift and my apologies to all.

[Oggin Aviator]

I got a Mayhem G3 from here. (http://www.abspc.com/app/Series.asp?familyno=25&series=76)

Cant recommend enough. Blindingly fast, beautiful screen (ideal for widescreen DVD), built in WiFi G, exceptional price, great service. You could get it delivered to your US address (takes about 7-8 days from ordering). Comes with a carry case as well. I would not personally buy via Circuit City, Best Buy or Comp USA or any store for a PC or laptop, too expensive you are paying for their store overheads after all. Just my thoughts.

Oggin

edit to say the DVD hardware /software may get locked to Region 1 but there are fixes out there on the Web I guess.

second edit to say the adaptor is 115-240 v input so you just need to use a UK lappy cable to hook up to UK wigglies. Also I have used a custom key selection in Word (I used Alt + $ - within the Insert Symbol submenu) to produce the £ sign.

[Tinstaafl]

My US bought laptop's DVD had region coding enabled. A little bit of research at www.rpc1.org soon fixed that. :ok: Now it has no region coding at all.

Did the same for a colleague's UK equivalent model too.


Note: Some DVD drives are problematic when it comes to removing region coding from them. Make sure you check the exact model number of the drive when you browse at the computer shop. The salespeople won't have a clue but you can often get it via Windoze control panel. Alternatively bring a USB key with one of the purpose built softwares that can do this. Some of them will also tell you whether the drive has region coding enabled.

I can email one ('DVD region info' or 'drive info' or whatever it's called) that I got from rpc1.org if you like.