Advice Needed

[lesw]

Hi, I wonder if anyone could take a few minutes and advise us about the following.

We want to buy my 13 yr old Thai stepdaughter a computer to help her. She is due to change schools next year and because of her local village school upbringing she's had limited contact with computers and unfortunately these days computer literacy is a must.

We'd been toying with getting her a laptop but I wasn't sure if I should purchase before we go to Thailand or wait and purchase there.

Can someone tell me if there's any difference between a laptop purchased in Thailand or in Europe? Do they have a US or Thai keyboard as standard and is it a special Thai version of Windows? I have some instructions for making Windows XP Thai supported and we can always plug a Thai keyboard in but will this then be the same as Windows on a machine in Thailand?

I also noticed last year looking in Bangkok I was surprised to see prices not much different to prices over here in the West. Anyone like to comment on this?

Any advise, Help or Comments Welcome

Thanks

Les

[Guest endure]

Laptops are:

More expensive than an equivalent desktop

Practically impossible to upgrade apart from memory and perhaps hard drive

More easily damaged (because of their portability)

More easily stolen

Unless there is a good reason why you must have a laptop I'd recommend you wait till you get to Thailand and buy a desktop machine.

The money you save on buying the desktop will allow you to buy a good big TFT screen which is probably the most important part of the whole caboodle.

[Abandon]

Good advice from Endure - forget the laptop unless it is vital. Get a desktop.

You can buy in Computer centres here, desktops made from individual components - i.e. non brand name ocmputers, that will nonetheless be made from brand name components (you can speicfy). This is far cheaper than buying a brand name computer, not to mention the shipping cost, and duty at the airport.

If you do this the shop will install windows and Thai language specifics to your specifications with no problem. There is not really much difference adding Thai in anyway, aside from having a keyboard with the thai characters.

If you buy abroad and bring it over, you can easliy buy a sticky-back thai character set to stick on to your keyboard if you want to see the Thai characters. You can also buy a Thai character USB keyboard to plug into the laptop if that is the way you want to go.

In short, don't worry about it - it is not much of an issue. But far easier to buy something here which will be much cheaper than buying abroad, all things considered. There are lots of excellent computer centres around, and they will look after you too when a fault develops.