macbook from america

utajoker

utajoker

utajoker

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going to new york in 5 week and im planning on buying a mac book, was at first going to buy an ipad just for using while in bed but thought i would probably want to put wow and football manager on it aswell.


so is the money saved worth it to buy over there?

and

i assume i would only need to get a uk plug to charge it here?

and

do they have built in wifi? speced one up on the us site and it doesnt mention it from what i can see. i upped the memory on it and it came to $1099.



do macbook pros have better gfx?
 
No, because that's where it is on a Mac anyways.
Aside from a number of layout changes, you won't have the £ sign as Shift 3, it will be #.

You can of course change the keyboard settings to UK, however the printed keys won't match that.

All notebook models have WiFi these days.

The charger has a small bit that unclips. You can simply buy a UK Apple adapter piece to use that. If you wanted the longer extension cable to work, you would probably need to buy a new power supply, if you want to do it properly. You can botch it with a figure of 8 cable.
 
utajoker said:
going to new york in 5 week and im planning on buying a mac book, was at first going to buy an ipad just for using while in bed but thought i would probably want to put wow and football manager on it aswell.


so is the money saved worth it to buy over there?

and

i assume i would only need to get a uk plug to charge it here?

and

do they have built in wifi? speced one up on the us site and it doesnt mention it from what i can see. i upped the memory on it and it came to $1099.



do macbook pros have better gfx?
Click to expand...

Having bought a few things in the US, some things to bear in mind:

1) Sales Tax - NY state has a 8.875% sales tax, which is not shown on the internet price (or the instore price, for that matter).

2) Exchange Rate - Currently XE shows £1 is $1.61 - not a bad exchange rate at the moment - work it out with the after tax price to get your final price in pounds if you were going to buy it there.

3) Keyboard - the US MBP will have the US keyboard layout - @ and " are reversed. I don't find it a big problem.

4) Wifi - it comes with Wifi up to G standard.

5) Power - you can either get a plug adaptor for a few quid, or if you want to be really clever, get the plug part of the cable when you return to the UK. The transformer is universal, so that part is fine to use in the UK.

6) Getting it back -to avoid any unnecessary complications with customs, I strongly advise dumping all the packaging for the Mac. I'd also power it up, go online and maybe bring a USB stick with some files and videos to give the illusion of it being brought with you from the UK.
The downside to this is that you won't have a box should you decide to sell it on.

7) Warranty - AFAIK, Apple are pretty good with honouring warranties worldwide. It shouldn't be a problem getting it repaired or serviced over here. Pick up the Applecare warranty extension from Ebay as well.

All in all, if it saves you money, I'd do it. There's virtually no difference between one bought here and in the US and you can get a bit of a bargain if the exchange rate is in your favour.
 
thx odos, pretty much everything i needed to know.

i was planning on using it over there anyway in the evenings before bed while in the hotel.

was also going to install wow on by downloading the client, i assume u dont need to buy a mac version of it if your are downloading the client.

is the 320M graphics card up to running games like wow? was planning on getting the 13" so i assume smaller res.
 
utajoker said:
thx odos, pretty much everything i needed to know.

i was planning on using it over there anyway in the evenings before bed while in the hotel.

was also going to install wow on by downloading the client, i assume u dont need to buy a mac version of it if your are downloading the client.

is the 320M graphics card up to running games like wow? was planning on getting the 13" so i assume smaller res.
Click to expand...

WoW runs fine - got it on my 15" MBP with the 320M and I've raided with it no problem.
 
Sorry for the hijack but I'm half considering doing something similar. Would there be any issues with warranty if I were to do this?
 
Qdos said:
WoW runs fine - got it on my 15" MBP with the 320M and I've raided with it no problem.
Click to expand...

Lol WoW works fine with my 8600M GT 256MB.. although not on high settings. The discrete video ram results in a much faster GPU compared to the 9400M with shared memory (as my mini is slower).
 
seems my friend can get a macbook 13" with an extra 2gb mem for £800 using his HE discount, so for the sake of £40 i think i will do that instead :)
 
I have done this, got my Macbook Pro from NY and it's fine no problems with it etc.

The only thing I'll say is tha you can't get any HE discount out there and if you're not used to an apple keyboard nothing will really be different.

The enter key is smaller but you get used to it within about a day i've never had any problems.

I just took mine in my hand luggage n the airport and didn't pay any import tax or anything and left the box it came with in my luggage and had no problems :)

Hope this helps.
 
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