Buying a laptop in Japan

[noobish hat]

That's how it works Jables. It turns into kana, then when you've typed enough to make a whole word, it will change to the most likely candidate kanji-wise, if it's wrong, you press space to flick through a list of variants. So, in answer to countless questions I've been posed over the years, no, Japanese and Chinese keyboards do not have something like ten thousand keys, no matter how awesome that would be. The down side of this is that absolutely no one in Japan actually knows how to write kanji by hand.

[Supergoal]

I bought a new laptop only the other month in Japan. Got it from Bic Camera and got loads of points too. I only have Vista Premium so I can't change the language into English. Though I can't see it being a problem if you have some level of Japanese ability. Especially if you have used to the English version of Vista.

[kryss]

That's how it works Jables. It turns into kana, then when you've typed enough to make a whole word, it will change to the most likely candidate kanji-wise

Er, only if you press Space or the henkan (変換) key. If you press Enter or muhenkan (無変換) it just stays as hiragana.

The down side of this is that absolutely no one in Japan actually knows how to write kanji by hand.

And that's a big exaggeration.

To add Japanese to any Windows PC you can enable it in the control panel>regional and language settings>language then click "details" and add it there.
Typing Korean is a pain because they map the different parts of the hangul to different keys in the same way we do with Roman lellers. Until I discovered that there's an input system for Linux that lets you use the new standardised Romanisation system. MUCH easier but feels very lazy.

[hoyteamx]

I bought a new laptop only the other month in Japan. Got it from Bic Camera and got loads of points too. I only have Vista Premium so I can't change the language into English. Though I can't see it being a problem if you have some level of Japanese ability. Especially if you have used to the English version of Vista.

I`ve been using the Japanese version of XP for the past couple of years and its ok. But given the choice I`d rather use the english version, much quicker for me, easier to deal with problems and I`m the main user. Actually that reminds me...I want to use MS Office, will Vista ultimate change the language of that or will I need to hunt down the english version?

Anyway, hopefully I`ll be doing some serious window shopping this weekend (though with no PC web shoppings a little difficult)

They make games for computers these days??

They keep making more powerful PC`s for anything else???

[kryss]

Just for the sake of it as far as I remember.
Why do they continue to make faster and faster cars?

[Richard.John]

Buy a Mac. No need for language packs and all that Vista crap.

[kryss]

And good luck if it screws up like my sister-in-laws did.

Mac store in Ginza = a terrible waste of a day off.

Ubuntu.

[hoyteamx]

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

I finally settled on a customised Japanese dell inspiron 1720. The reviews were all good and I ordered it from a place that will set it up with English and Japanese Vista, provide English recovery CDs and offers other kinds of PC support in English. Should be here in about 2 weeks.

Cheers