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The Best Traveling Laptop?
Subaiku asks: "Next semester my girlfriend will be traveling to Japan to continue with her studies. As a going away gift I plan on buying her a laptop of some sort. I've been thinking about going with a PowerBook, or maybe a Dell, but I really need advice as to which brand/configuration/platform would be best in terms of ease of use/connectivity in foreign places (namely Japan). Any suggestions?"
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She will probably be able to buy something better at the same price, or roughly equivalent at a cheaper price, once she is there.
Next semester my girlfriend will
/. need more help than you.
Sorry, I stop reading from there. I'm afraid majority of
You won't need a new power brick - 99% of laptops these days have universal power supplies. In any case, Japan is 100 volts, so most US gear works OK here anyway (although there are exceptions - I have a US-made external modem that refuses to connect without a 100V to 110V transformer attached).
Japanese power points are two vertical bars - IIRC, this matches the US standard, right?
The first has already been brought up. Basically, whatever crappy laptop you buy her in the U.S. is going to be completely too large and too heavy compared to the laptops she can find in Japan. Take the Panasonic Let's Note Light or the Sharp Mebius Muramasa as examples of laptops that are at the pinnacle of portable, not to mention that they already support Japanese out of the box.
The second thing to consider is that this is *your girlfriend*. It's not your wife, it's not your sister or your mom. It's someone with whom you do not have a determined future with. Are you prepared to give away $1,500 bucks and have it disappear forever if she decides that she likes Fuji Nakamichi more than you? Some advice (that's why you're posting here, right?) - give her a big kiss and some flowers.
I have been pwned because my