Phil Conners

I'm in the market for a high-endian Notebook/Laptop. Not too concerned with brand names as long as they don't include a fruit.

Problem is I don't really find anything I fancy in Pattaya, but maybe I'm not looking the right places.

- CPU: something like Core i7-4600M (~5000 passmarks) or better.

- Screen: Don't need touch screen, ~15" 13xxx7xx is fine, but preferably both HDMI and VGA connectors for external displays

- Disk: SDD, 250G or better

- CD/DVD/BR: Don't need.

- RAM: 16G, at least upgradable without having to throw things away (i.e. would probably have to have at least 8G standard plus a free memory slot)

- USB 2 + 3 ports, more is better

- Gigabit Ethernet port

- Wifi: 802.11n, preferably 802.11ac

- Price: I would think around 25,000 ought to cover something like this

- Availability: Thailand, preferably Pattaya, though not necessarily with Thai keyboard.

Any suggestions? What would you buy, and why?

I find Best at the dolphin roundabout have a good wide selection of booze, including tequila, from cheap plonk made in Vietnam to some very good (but expensive) authentic Mexican brands, including a couple of different types of Patron.

Thanks, yes they are very lovely! Never aggressive, always friendly. They're in and out, but tend to stay very close to home.

The Burmese is 5, the Persian 7 years old. They're actually relatively large cats. For comparison the tiles are 45 x 45 cm.

Our two sweet cats are looking for a new home. A female Burmese cat (the dark), and a male Persian cat (the white).

They grew up together and love each other very much so it would be best if they could go together.

They need new owners who will love them and take care of them!

Both fully vaccinated and neutered.

If you are interested or have any questions feel free to ask below or by PM.

I tried one of them, they were .. not interested ... to put it mildly. There wasn't any parking for miles around the other, but it also looked like it was mostly geared at selling very expensive new gear. I recall hearing about a place in Thepprasit Road, anyone know about that?

Anyone know of a shop in Pattaya that will take used golf gear in consignment? There used to be a golf shop on the east side 3rd road just around the exit from Carrefour/Big-C but it seems to be closed now.

60 baht on Ebay, free shipping. Only catch is the 2-3 week delivery time.

There is a guy who attends the Pattaya City Expat Club meetings on Sundays at the Tavern by the Sea at the north end of Beach Road who creates a card with the cover of your passport, the face page, and your latest visa. IIRC, he charges 200 baht, and delivers the card a few days later. I did it when I first got here, and now I just create them myself and take them to one of the private postal kiosks in the malls and have them laminated.

He's on a nice little earner then

Doesn't seem like much: scan the three components, reduce them to the proper size and line them up, print them, laminate the card, and deliver, all for 200 baht.Seems like quite a bit of work for the equivalent of $6.00.

Not counting the cost of buying a scanner, a printer and a laminating machine.

Regardless of what we call it, it seems to be how shipping parcels are measured, i.e. the total of L+W+D.

I don't think anyone was told lies if that's what you mean, maybe misunderstandings.

When they say 150 cm they mean the sum of the size of the box - width + height + depth. The 55 cm I understand you was told is probably the largest size of any one side.

Would you please clarify the 140 cm bit and your last sentence. I visited the post office yesterday and the lady there told me that the maximum size box (or any article size) for international delivery is their size 6 box. Their size 4 box (55 x 100 x 55 cm) is only for domestic deliveries. If I wanted to send anything larger than a size 6 box it would have to go by private contractor. So who received the right info?

I also checked out the unaccompanied baggage service at the airport. No size/weight restrictions (within limits I guess). To Australia 179 baht per kilo plus a once off fee of 3000 baht. Direct phone number is 66 (0) 2 134 2308. They will pickup for 1500 baht, BKK address. I didn't ask about outside BKK.

I don't understand your question - I said the max size for int'l shipping is 150 cm, which is larger than a box 4 which is 45 x 55 x 40 i.e. 140 cm. Essentially the same info you got.

Yes, if unaccompanied baggage to AU is 179 baht/kg it sounds realistic that EU would be 250 baht/kg with the longer distance. I asked, they will not pick up outside Bangkok. They told me 25 kg max per parcel, so you'd be looking at 3000 + 25 x 179 = 7,475. At that price I think you might as well take the Thailand Post SAL option, cheaper and more convenient I'd think.

I went to the post office today and had a few good answers.

The EMS World option is available from the Naklua Post office in Pattaya, but as I understand it it's a relatively small box with unlimited (or very high) weight. Maybe an option if you have something small and very heavy to ship, otherwise probably not.

The Int'l Parcel-Surface option is available up to a box size of 150 cm (x+y+z). They sell a size 6 box that's 45x55x40 so 140 cm and just under the limit.

Great thread! I need to ship some personal items to Denmark. The Thai Post website has a shipping calculator, where I got the following prices for shipping to Denmark.

20 kilo

30 kilo

It seems from other threads that the one world parcel is no longer available, and in any case a quite small box with a high weight allowance, so not very useful for my purpose, but the "Int'l Parcel-Surface" seems to hit the spot for me.

Anyone have experience with this? Is the parcel likely to actually arrive? I am not in a hurry and can wait 2-3 months, no problem. Any gotcha's ?

(Updated)

I just found this long, recent thread with many details of how to send by post, so let's take the postage option in that.

Anyone have information about unaccompanied/excess baggage please update here.

There was a discussion about this back in 2007 but it's closed now, so here we go again.

If you have more baggage than your airline allows you can pay excess baggage fee up to a certain amount for the extra baggage but it's expensive and there's a limit.

In the past I've used a method commonly known as "unaccompanied baggage". I see in older threads that this is sometimes understood to be baggage-storage, but in this thread it means checking in your excess luggage with another airline that you dont fly with. I've done this in the past with China Air, and it was half the price of the carrier I was flying with at the time.

The question is, does anyone have personal experience with this - which carriers are likely to offer this service from Bangkok to Europe?

There's a company offering to broker this service, aptly called "Unaccompanied Baggage Service" with a website www.ptcargo.com and an email address [email protected], but I think they sound relatively expensive. I calculated around 8,300 baht for a 25 kg bag (268 baht/kg + a handling fee of 1605 baht + possibly some more fees they were a bit vague about).

For about the same price I could send my stuff with UPS, and they're certainly not cheap.

http://www.thailandpost.com/ has a shipping calculator showing prices from 1500-8500 for a 20 kg parcel, thought 1500 sounds unreal, wonder if anyone know the facts?

Aiming for a jazzy playlist is really a very good idea. I'm sure we're a lot of people who enjoy this kind of music, and all other places play the usual unbearable middle-of-the-road-sixties/seventies-pop.

Sorry I'm probably a bit naive regarding drug abuse. So yaba = methamphetamine? In the series Breaking Bad they always seem to smoke it, but it's my impression that Thai's use it in pill form, why the difference? Just curious.

Right, I assumed the value was in percent, my bad.

Though I agree with you that 0.59 to 0.69 is a 17% increase in the surcharge, the final increased cost is still only 107 baht compared to last month.

Our electricity bill went from around 3,600 last month to 5,100 this month. In Dec-Jan our bill was around 1,000 baht.

There is a "fuel surcharge", listed on the bill as Ft, varying depending on the fuel costs producing the electricity. It was 0.59% last month, up to 0.69% this month, a 0.1% increase in the cost, representing an actual increased cost of 5 baht on this months bill, so practically all the increased cost is from increased use.

There was a rumor last year of a coming price increase of some 35%, I hope that was just a rumor, or at least way out in the future. An electricity increase of 35% right now would be a deadly double whammy on top of the rest of the current problems.

What is the status with the Silom/Lumpini park intersection that was blocked since forever? I seem to have to go through it for everything I ever need to do in Bangkok. Has it been dismantled yet?

Pattini was opened by an Italian and later sold (to a British, idk) who kept the name. No mystery there.

From your link:

Android does account for 97% of all mobile malware, but it comes from small, unregulated third party app stores predominantly in the Middle East and Asia. By contrast the percentage of apps carrying malware on Google’s official Play Store was found to be just 0.1% and F-Secure acknowledges rigorous checks mean “malware encountered there tends to have a short shelf life.”

Obviously caveat emptor. Those I know are smart enough not to install crap that is obvious malware.

Not after MS stop supporting it. And now I think we've gone far enough off topic. Allow me to gently nudge the discussion back on track,

With XP now outdated I am thinking of getting a new operating system. Can anybody advise the best and most reliable available ? Also what sort of price to pay?

Our company develop mobile apps for iOS and android. For me it's just strange how google deal with there own store. You upload a software and some minutes later it's just available to download from the playstore. For me this feels complete unsafe. Apple proof your app against there rules. That's fine for me. Sure android isn't bad at all. They have some very nice features. But have to say after trying many android phones in the office I switched back every time to the iPhone. It just works. And yes it's not failure free. But who is without any failure?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Maybe you think so. I think it's no different than any software you can download on the internet for any platform. If you're the kind of person who need someone to hold your hand before you feel comfortable downloading and installing software on your device perhaps iphone is for you, but that's not to say it's for everyone.

Never heard virus should be a problem on Android phones. I've certainly never had any anti-virus software installed on any of my Android phones, and never had any problems. If it should happen one day I can assure you iphones will be hit harder than Android for the same reason Windows is hit harder than IOS on the desktop, bigger and more susceptible market.