We received a lot of advice from people before we moved from the UK to Canada about which electronic devices work/ don't work in Canada given that the UK is on 240 volts and Canada is 110 volts. To date we have found that everything that we brought over has worked (once you add a small $15 adapter to the plug). The only thing that didn't initially was Jullie's hair dryer which, once I noticed the voltage switch on the side of it, now works fine. We also brought a FM/ DAB digital radio with us - the FM radio works well (K-Rock rocks!) but the DAB keeps looking for the UK digital stations and I have not worked out yet how to make it search for Canadian stations.

My conclusion so far is that anything with a heating element will only work properly if you can switch it to recognise the lower voltage. Everything else has been fine (electronically).

The thing that surprised me today (and promted me to post my first thread) is that Canadian printer cartridges do not work on UK printers. There is a similar thread from 2008 (now closed) that I wish I had read before I left the UK but I thought it worth adding my experience.

I have an HP PSC 1610 which uses HP338 (C8765EE) cartridges. According to hp.com the Canadian equivalent is an HP94 (C8765WC). Given the similarity of product codes I placed an order. I installed the cartridge (which looked the same as the HP338) but got an error message along the lines of the cartridge was not intended for use in my printer. I logged onto the HP support website and read a thread troubleshooting cartridge errors - one of the things to test/ check was that the cartridge was from the same country as the printer.

Wonderful. That's $76.76 I will never see again.

The general advice from the 2008 thread was to buy a new (Canadian) printer given that they pretty much cost the same as a couple of cartridges. I tried to buy one that used the cartridges I had bought but they're all obsolete now.

Ah well. Time to buy a new printer and ditch the HP94 and HP97 cartridges - unless anybody else in the St. John's area wants to pick them up?

Some HP printers can be reset to work with cartridges from different regions. You need to call HP support and nag them to get the relevant instructions and codes. It's a pain but it can be done if you're persistent enough.

Thanks. I'll give that a go.

Our Brother from the USA is identical to the one we bought in Oz but the same thing, the US cartridges dont work.

Who would have thought? I may try and get on to brother too.

Lovely Helpful Advice!! I have a HP SCF & will check that out before we leave... What about your iron?! We have a stupidly expensive one (not sure why?!) Did yours work or do I need to look for a voltage switch?? Husband is also wondering about his electric shaver..?
thanks!

Yes I do.

Sorry couldn't resist it.

Unfortunately, they dont in Ireland

Jullie decided to give our iron away before we left the UK given the heating element advice we had received so we have not tested a UK iron over here.

I have a rechargeable shaver which I brought over here but we managed to put the UK connector (to turn the usual shaver 2 prong into a usual UK plug) in the wrong pile so it went by sea freight rather than on the plane with us. We got here 4th April and our ship should be coming in this Friday. In theory my shaver should work given that the electricity will just recharge the battery.

I googled voltage switches whilst I was in the UK and they were inexpensive. I have not seen any in shops here but they were available online. I have not needed one yet but my advice to anybody (if you have room in your bags) is bring whatever electrical device you want to Canada and you should be able to buy a converter to make it work.

My tip is don't bother bringing or buying UK printers, etc for Canada. When I moved over to Canada, I naturally took everything from my laptop, printer to my TV - all in some massive shipment!!!

Anyway, for the laptop, it wasn't such an issue as it was a simple matter of buying a new step-down transformer (there were plenty for HP!).. However for stuff like the TV, etc - buying step down adaptors just simply wasn't worth it.

It would of been cheaper for me (possibly safer) to buy from here / US - let alone the warranty issues.

Had exactly the same problem with my printer cartridges, UKprinter said 'no' to Canadian HP cartridges - contacted HP who were more than helpful with codes etc but my printer would not recognise and/or accept those codes which HP guy couldnt understand. Policy is that location settings can be changed up to 3 times by HP on their printers. HP guy said they needed to send me a new printer as it was a bug and printers should change happily with these codes, I thought - fab service! Then head office said, no, printer out of 1 year warranty so tough luck! Very annoyed!

Bought new printer! ;-(

We had the same trouble with a Canon printer, scanner, copier. Had to buy the damned thing just before we left the UK for scanning all our docs as our old printer packed up.

Bought one that could specifically be used in North America.......bought identical new cartridges in Canada. When installed came up with error code and wouldn't work. Canon were useless. Ended up having to buy an HP one here and the brand new Canon printer is now sat in the basement.

I've got a Canon, have to use a step-up transformer but it's not a big problem as I rarely do any printing, but the cartridges are the same.

Simple answer is that unless it is an unique or expensive piece of kit, dump it in the UK and buy new here.

Why go through the hassle of making something work when you can just buy new, and dont forget with a new printer you get new cartridges, and without the hassle of packing, insurance, worrying if the damn thing survives the trip etc etc

We had great difficulty getting the canadian equivalent cartridges to work in our UK printer I think like DVD`s they are regionalised so we gave up and bought a new printer.

Same thing here, but I think our printer was less than a year old. The patient helpline tech concluded my HP printer was defective because it wouldn't accept the new country code, so they had FedEx collect it, fixed it and sent it back to me. It's still working well 2 years later. Only cost to me was 3 hours on the phone pressing buttons on the printer as instructed.