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Getting A Laptop With The Low U.S. Dollar
An anonymous reader submits "I am heading to the U.S. pretty soon and am keen to take advantage of the low US$ to buy a laptop. The differences in prices are astounding - on dell.com (US) you pay $2049 for a Precision M60 - in the UK this costs 1620.33UKP, or $2999. That is a fair difference! It makes it cheaper for me to fly to the US to buy it and carry it home than it is for me to buy it in the UK. Now, that said, it isn't particularly easy to find a place to buy a laptop from, since most of the places don't ship to the UK (or it takes weeks) and it is difficult to get stuff delivered to your hotel ... any suggestions of how I can get a good laptop in the New York area when I am only there for 4 days?"
If you consider to run Linux on your new laptop, you may check Linux-On-Laptops or TuxMobil - Linux on laptops, PDAs and mobile phones first. If you can not get the appropriate information there, you may take a Knoppix Linux CD to check the Linux compatibility. Just ask the salesman whether you may boot from the CD before buying.
Last November a friend had me bring him a fully loaded 17" Powerbook from the States to Hungary.
...and found that, in dollars at least, the local price for the same config was more than double what he paid (>US$6K vs US$3K).
After about a month he didn't like it anymore - he discovered that it's a giant heat sink, that the monitor hinge is a case study in bad industrial design, that the trackpad is badly positioned... in short, that the sucker is not a laptop at all but rather a "desktop replacement" meant for people who need a big pretty computer they can move easily from desk to desk. (Yes, I did warn him about all this ahead of time).
After he talked to Apple and got an agreement that he would get his money back minus shipping, we checked out local prices...
Being a nice guy, he found someone in under three days to buy it at his cost.
So my advice is to get a top-of-the-line powerbook, resell it back home for a decent profit but well below market, and use the extra cash to take either buy your real laptop at home or to take a fun-filled short trip to NYC,USA and buy what you want there.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
This Like That - fun with words!