Japanese Laptop - Would it work ok in the UK?

fred_easey

fred_easey

fred_easey

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Hi,

I'm thinking about importing a Sony G-series laptop via an American auction site. Couple of questions on this:

1) Is it likely that the BIOS and OS will be in Japanese? Would it be possible to switch these to English? (considering I speak no Japanese at all)

2) Would the AC supply be ok running off UK mains?

Any advice would be much appreciated,

Cheers,

Fred
 
It'll almost certainly be in Japanese. I doubt you'll be able to switch the BIOS, but wouldn't rule it out. Windows you certainly can. The best way to do it is with English PC and the Japanese one side-by-side. Things tend to be in the same positions despite the language, and you can also use things like icons as hints as they also tend to be the same. If you do the same things at the same times on both PCs, you'll stand a good chance, but error messages sometimes have a habit of getting in the way. Things might get interesting if you ever have to do an OS reinstall though.

Since it's a laptop, you should be aware that Japanese keyboards have a slightly different layout to US/UK keyboards, with some extra keys. I've never encountered one that was unusable in English though.

PS - I've done this in both directions personally (English hardware running Japanese, and Japanese running English). Installing Japanese Windows was scary, and at one point I had to go find someone who had a passing familarity with the language to help.
 
fred_easey said:
Hi,

I'm thinking about importing a Sony G-series laptop via an American auction site. Couple of questions on this:

1) Is it likely that the BIOS and OS will be in Japanese? Would it be possible to switch these to English? (considering I speak no Japanese at all)

2) Would the AC supply be ok running off UK mains?

Any advice would be much appreciated,

Cheers,

Fred
Click to expand...
Best thing would be to ask the seller with regards to language & you may need to buy a UK adapter
 
I would had thought if you flash the BIOS to the latest English version it would be in English (IF there is an English version)

Jap->Eng in OS should be easy to do, would be in the regional settings.

I think the biggest problem would be the keyboard may have no English characters on it, there may be some character missing that we rely on. Or maybe even more annoying when the regional setting are changed (I am including the keyboard regional changes here) then such things are the @ is really above the 2 like US to UK etc.
 
Sorry to hijack your thread but I was just wondering how exactly do you go about changing the language of winXP. My girlfriends is in German but she wants to set it to English but we cant find the option anywhere!
 
yak.h'cir said:
Sorry to hijack your thread but I was just wondering how exactly do you go about changing the language of winXP. My girlfriends is in German but she wants to set it to English but we cant find the option anywhere!
Click to expand...

Regional settings...? in control panel.
 
fred_easey said:
1) Is it likely that the BIOS and OS will be in Japanese? Would it be possible to switch these to English? (considering I speak no Japanese at all)

2) Would the AC supply be ok running off UK mains?
Click to expand...

1) there usually is an option for switching the BIOS language to english (well there has been on virtually every Japanese notebook I've worked on)

the OS, either install an english OS, or install an MUI pack if you have an MSDN subscription.

Other than this no you can't switch the OS to English

2) Virtually all AC adaptors will work 100-240 so you should be fine, the VAIO ones Ihave in the office work fine.

On a side note the keyboard will usually be a Japanese keyboard, this means that the layout is different, there are several keys you will never use and the space key is significantly smaller.

Also all the VAIOs I've seen to date don't seem to be particularly well built and unless you are going to be treating it with care I'd pick another maker
 
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