[ceec]

Thanks for a great forum, I've read for a while and now I have a question myself!

I'm going to Hong Kong in a few weeks, and have been offered to order one of IBM's latest laptops to pick up when I arrive. The deal is excellent, around half the price compared to Europe. However, I just want to make sure that they laptop keyboard is 'normal', since laptop ones are hard to switch.

So, which keyboard standard does Hong Kong (especially IBM) use? It is the 'normal' American QWERTY one? Are there Cantonese characters printed on the keys too, or is it just the English one? (I can choose between Cantonese and English WinXP, and will choose English). If someone has a picture to share of a HK keyboard I would be this happy:

/Carl

[berryplucker]

My IBM Thinkpad bought in HK about 3 years ago has a normal QWERTY keyboard without any Chinese characters (whether it is American I can't be sure, but it seemed normal to me coming from the UK). Obviously the layout of some of the other keys (symbols) can vary a bit from model to model.

[shri]

Depends on who offered you the laptop. The deal sounds like a US or Southeast Asian graymarket import (IBM does have worldwide warrenty if I recall correctly)...

I'd not worry about the keyboards, unless you're dealing with a Japanese import.

[ceec]

Thank you all for the quick answers!

The laptop deal is offered by HKUST together with PCCW (trustworthy company, right?), so I don't think it's an imported laptop. Perhaps the deal just looks fantastic to me who's used to the exceptionally high European prices, partly because of the high VAT here.

It comes with a three year international warranty. I'll think I'll just fax the order form then!

/Carl

[mehmehmeh]

Are you going to HKUST as a student? I'm going to be there on exchange for the fall semester.