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Buying a Laptop in the US


Waylander
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I assume it would be cheaper to buy that new Vaio across the pond and as I am going in November I can wait and see.

Some questions though:

-blu-ray player on the lappy. presumably it will be set to region 1. If so can it be easily changed to multi-region/region 2 to work here?

-power lead: is all I need an adaptor plug for this to work in the UK?

Finally Customs. I know it is pot luck but mine with HMRC is not good!

lappy in laptop back, some old personal files installed. How much of a risk is it? What are the potential charges if stopped?

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My Dad brought me an apple MacBook back earlier this year. Laptop with his in laptop bag. All boxes thrown away. Manuals and leads in case that went in the hold. No problems at all.

I think the DVD players on PCs have 5 chances to set the region, after 5 plays they lock to the last used one.

Adaptor is all that is needed 169144-ok.gif

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US keyboard layout as well. Might be a bit of a giveaway that it's not a UK sourced one.

TBH, I've done it before with a Dell machine and as long as the laptop turned on, that was as much checking as they did. Luckily with Dell you can always pick up the correct keyboard from eBay. The Chairman of our company thought he'd be clever and get a super skinny Vaio from an airport somewhere without thinking about the keyboard. He's been cursing it ever since.

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The adaptor probably won't need changing, but the cord going to it will. My Vaio adaptor is 100v-250v ranging, so it will be fine. You just need one of those cheap £3 leads with the 2 pins at one end and UK plug at the other.

Make sure you un wrap your cables so they're not all tied up as new, and charge the machine up, get it past the "Using your PC for the first time" screen! tongue.gif

Otherwise you're fine. I don't think BluRay is region coded yet, but as DHA says, you can change it upto a 6 times before it locks finally. If they are doing that yet. The PS3 is region free.

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Bluray drives are region encoded, plus they use different regions just to complicate matters, but primarily UK is in region B and US region A.

I haven't seen any tools for changing regions on a drive but then I haven't exactly been looking either. The day job involves using lots of Bluray drives we just happen to have plenty of all the regions, makes life easier especially when the company is paying.

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