Can anyone advise if it's cheaper to buy a laptop in Uk or Oz. We are stopping over in Hong Kong so this is also another option.

Any advice would be great.

Deciding factor would be availability of world wide warranty... Without it you're fooked... pretty cheap over here as well to be honest...

dell 1525 is about 699$ here at the mo..which is about the same as uk...but i have seen some cheaper acers, so depends what spec etc you want.

G'day
My advice to you would be to buy one once you are in OZ. There are always good deals to be had here, just need to do a bit of research thats all.
Like another poster said a valid warranty is very important on any electrical item. As to the cost, a lot depends on what sort of spec you require for your personal usage.

I a would buy one here, for the simple reason, if you are needing the laptop for the internet, some area's have no ports left to provide you with a connect from a land line, hence you have to get a wireless dongle which is around 2 inches long and an inch wide that slots into the side of your laptop. Now some computers dont have this slot and plus the dongle is only compatable with certain software packages. We brought 2 laptops and only 1of them takes the card, so the other is just sat dormant. Sorry if i have confussed you, i was just trying to show you why it might be a good idea to wait till you arrive.

Neither! USA is the cheapest place. It's $1000 more in AU. Buy the laptop in the states, pay for shipping and adaptor $100-$150 more. Save $900-950! Look at ebay for more savings. They are profiting from the exchange rate in AU. A US$2500 apple laptop is ~$3500 in AU.

hi just bought cheapest i could see at good retailer it was $600 after cash back it got wirless but no cam check out airport web site i no at changi airport you can get it tax free for oz gary

I would be concerned about losing it in the post. Are there any guarantees?

Of course... all the major couriers will offer insurance as standard... check exactly what's covered and if it isn't sufficient for your requirements usually a nominal sum extra bumps it up to what you need...

They are cheaper in the states, but not by a ludicrous amount, plus your example of Apple is a bad one because they've always over-charged everyone for their products. You're looking at about a $400AUD saving on a 24" iMac for instance - I know for a fact because I just priced one up for my parents and checked out the prices in the US based Apple store. On a Dell Inspiron you're looking at about a $100AUD saving at best. Factor in extra cost of delivery by courier (for safety reasons) plus the extra time delay in getting the product and you have to ask yourself if it's worth it.

If I was to buy now (and I'm finding it hard to resist upgrading to a top of the range 24" iMac from my 2 year old 20" white iMac ) I'd definitely consider getting one from the States, even though I'd probably chicken out and get one from Next Byte or somewhere else in Brisbane

For info, it's a myth that PCs cost more than Macs. Who says so -> Tom's Hardware - renowned as one of the more PC-centric sites

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...ista,1985.html

Just buy one here and save the hassle over anything that can go wrong, at best you are talking a couple of hundred quid, not exactly enough to make a massive life change.

You can get a bargain basement laptop cheap enough in Oz - but you'll get what you pay for.

If you want something a bit more upmarket, then get an Apple (in the US is the cheapest) as they have a worldwide warranty.

- CDM

No it's not. You're comparing two pre-built systems - the whole point of PCs is that you can build and/or upgrade them yourself - lots of people save themselves huge amounts of money by rolling their own (a job anyone could do these days). For instance my PC is a Quadcore Q6600 with 4Gb of Kingston DDR2-667 RAM, an Nvidia 8800GT graphics card and an Asus P5K-VM motherboard (built-in 7.1 surround sound etc).

Closest equivalent to that is a Mac Pro - which Apple will sell to me for $2949. However my PC, cost me the grand total of $810. My 24" MAG display (every bit as good as Apple's) cost $410 - Apple would charge me $899 for a 23" model. Oh - and those are the prices are in USD from the supposely cheap US Apple store. Same PC, same spec from the Australian Apple store is $4219AUD. For that money I could build two PCs that would leave any Mac Pro in the dust performance-wise.

Incidentally - I'm currently running OSX on my PC as I type.

My 70 year old Mother in Law tends to struggle with her thermal paste these days so has gone off building PC's. She often used to get confused when configuring her virwall and anti-firus see what I did there?software.

These days, she much prefers knitting or, turning on her MacBook, chatting to us on Skype, looking at the photos we send her, then switching it off and making a cup of tea.

You're probably right what you're saying though

My tinkering days are over now and I save time by using Macs.

It's no surprise to me that someone like you would be running OS X

Have a good one