Buying a laptop in the United States to use in Eastern Europe

Can this work?

[sadelb]

My friend is from Russia and wants to buy a laptop here in the United States and bring it back to Russia in a few weeks to use there. He does not understand english so my question is this. Is there a program to make the language on windows into russian? Will he have problems connecting to the internet in Europe? What type of converters will he have to get? I assume he will be using dial up to connect to the internet. I was thinking of just getting him a new dell laptop but there may be some international friendly laptops that I dont know about. Thanks for your help

[RonPK]

Windows XP ships with many languages on-board, and I'm sure Russian will be one of them.
Connecting to the internet should not be a problem (of course your friend will need a modem for dial-up access).

The main issue will be the power supply. US plugs will not fit, so he'll need an adapter. Also, the voltage in Russia is 220 V, so the laptop will need a converter or a power supply that supports different voltages.

[lammert]

Windows 2000 and XP are available in multilangual versions, but I am not sure if American laptops with XP are standard installed with all languages. With Windows 2000 only English was installed by default.

Also don't forget the keyboard. I use my laptop together with my wife and she only understands Russian. I painted the Russian alfabet on the keyboard with a black marker. I used nail polish as protection and the characters are still there after three years. But I wouldn't recommend this procedure for a new laptop...

Power supplies are often not a big problem. Laptop manufacturers know that their product may be used in different countries and they often use a power supply model which accepts voltages from 100 to 240 VAC. You only have to change the powercord or use an adapter.

<added>
Did a search on the Microsoft website. The Multilingual User Interface pack is only available on Windows XP Professional, not in the home edition. So if you buy a laptop with XP Home, you can probably only change to Russian by reinstalling the OS from an installation CD. More information at this page: [microsoft.com...]
</added>

[giggle]

Rather than paint the Russian characters onto the keyboard you could either buy these Stickers [russianstickers.com] or buy an additional keyboard [customkeys.com] to plug into the laptop.

Mick

[lammert]

I have tried stickers first, but they didn't last very long. I have an external keyboard with Cyrillic alfabet, but only for my desktop. I find it a little bit unhandy to travel with a laptop, and a keyboard which is larger than the laptop.

[sadelb]

thanks everyone, i will look into buying these stickers for the keyboard. Painting the letters on the keyboard wont really work for me. Will also see about getting windows professional to have the russian language on the laptop.

[Crush]

"Will also see about getting windows professional to have the russian language on the laptop."

Aren't 9 out of 10 versions pirate in Russia anyway? Buy it for $5 on the street