I want to get my TGF a decent laptop (nothing new just decent) and am wondering what the prices are like at Pantip Plaza or if I should try to sort one out in the US in the next few days (I leave on the 15th.)

What does 20,000 baht buy in BKK these days?

For that you can get a new one in the US.

I've seen new ones in pantip for that price!

Buys you the standard 1.5Ghz celeron, 256 mb ram, cd rom, even wireless built in!

Couple of thousand extra gives you same machine with 512mb (advisable), dvd/cd burner combo (handy)...

Should be perfect for the TGF methinks.

You can get XP capable secondhand machines for a bit over 10000 Baht (just pay a bit extra to up the memory, most are stripped down to 128mb, not enough for XP).

If you go secondhand then buy in Thailand. Most of the shops give a 30 day guarantee! Gives you time to find any malfunctions (e.g. a bad modem or something). Just don't expect much from the batteries on the second hand ones...

I'd definitely buy a new one if your budget is 20.000 Baht...for 15.900 you can get the configuration described above, whereas for 17.900 I saw an ASUS with 512MB RAM and a DVD-writer! It's much better to do this then to get a second hand one which besides looking used has God knows what issues...

Buy new.

The re-furb item will have:

Slower cpu

Slower memory

Less Graphics capability

etc

All for the same money.

I want to get my TGF a decent laptop (nothing new just decent) and am wondering what the prices are like at Pantip Plaza or if I should try to sort one out in the US in the next few days (I leave on the 15th.)

What does 20,000 baht buy in BKK these days?

This is probably redundant but: Buy new.

Bottom line is even if you get an amazing deal on a used / refurbished laptop, the best you can hope for is that it's a few thousand Baht cheaper than the new 15,900 or 17,900 ones - though I doubt you could find a used one that doesn't totally suck that cheap.

Not worth it under any circumstances.

Refurbished laptops often have copied Windows regardless of where you buy it (especially eBay and Panthip). Then when she tries to update it she gets problems. Right now alot of laptops in the US are coming with free Vista upgrade coupons, or are selling cheap to clear out the stock with XP pre-installed.

used laptops at pantip usually have failing batteries...3000-4000 baht

used pentium3 goes for around 9000baht.

but, us laptops only have english...thai laptops will have dual keys

if shes a good girl get her a new one....if shes a bar girl a used one will suffice..as it probably wont see much use,and will probably see the pawnshop if you break up.

if your getting it so she can send you emails, dont forget your going to have to get online time also...or should i say she will.

As far as *where* to buy it, ie Thailand or USA, consider that if you buy it here it will probably have a Thai keyboard, Thai operating system and perhaps some Thai apps. That might be better for your Thai friend.

Unless, of course, she's not fairly computer literate and will be relying on YOU for tech support, in which case you might want the software all in English, so that you're not relying on her non-technical understanding to translate what the Thai error messages say.

I went through that latter agony when trying to help some older Japanese ladies troubleshoot problems they would have on their machines running Windows/J. They were totally fluent in English, but the technical terms used in Windows error messages, for example, were beyond their ability to accurately translate.

The keyboard is a consideration but it doesn't take much work to make Windows multilingual.

Oh she's a good girl... ;-)

I think it's Panthip. Dual keys and thai OS are the biggest consideration I think. If I can find her a nice new "branded" one (not Acer or some smalltime oem) for between 15 & 20K I'll be happy.

She won't need the baddest machine out there just a bit of hdd space and the ability to run wifi (that way I can point her to the free hot-spots in town or see if there's an unsecured network within range of her apartment). I guess I'd like it to have a dvd drive and that's about it.

Santa is going to be nice to her this x-mass that's for sure...

Buy new, not worth the grief.

I was home in Aug, bought a new laptop for my secretary for $400 at aBay Area Best Buy (look for their sales on the weekend circular in the paper. Toshiba with centrino processor, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB HDD. Looking around Pantip in BKK, comparable hardware was around 40k. On just the price level, the states is definitely cheaper. You can get Thai language pack added to your real OS if necessary.

The one issue that I'm short on is warranty. I've had no problems yet, but if there's a major one, I hope the supposed Toshiba warrany registration is valid over here.

if you buy in the us, you can alway get the thai character' stickers' put onto the keyboard.

Acer is a good brand , not big in the us but big in asia, you may want to take warranty issues into consideration also.

went to 'fortune IT plaza' the other day and got a brochure, theres a toshiba going for 16,900 baht..pretty basic though.

I wouldn't worry about the keypad. I still have an old IBM 600 that my wife uses. The laptop keypad died but my wife prefers the remote keyboard that has English as well as Thai fonts. I was going to get a new keypad but she told me she wouldn't use it anyways.