In the past buying hardware in the US has saved a considerable amount for me as I do tend to travel to the US 1 or 2 times a year with work, and have friends who can receieve and store packages until I arrive.

Now however…. it appears to be not so attractive as it was - in the Apple US store the basic macbook is $1099.00 - the UK macbook is £699 for the same spec. Now my maths puts $1099.00 at £614.91 with a 2.1 dollar to pound ratio and adding VAT at 17.5% (which would be required to be paid when coming through customs if doing this legally and declaring at border). The difference = not enough overall to make me go this route! (not that I am considering a basic Macbook - this is just an example).

When comparing prices of the Asus eee PC recently (same model) I noted the same was true here. $399.99 on newegg vs £220 on Dabs. With VAT, the US model would cost more to import than the UK one would cost (including shipping!)…

This similarity in the market is certainally something I havn’t experienced before - it may be just on the items I am looking up.

Certainally earlier this year I picked up a Nikon 18-200mm VR lens for my SLR in Hong Kong for half of the UK cost, which even when the import duties were added saved a considerable amount on the UK price (more to the point I could buy and inspect in HK, where the lens has a 6 week wait in the UK to purchase).

When I’m saving 50% or more on new hardware I don’t mind losing a warranty buying abroad - though it is a bonus if the warranty is global (ala Nikon lenses). With current prices I think I’m going to be sticking to buying items in the UK however..

What are your experiences of buying hardware abroad ?

I don’t understand how traditional retailers of Books, DVD’s, Games can survive these coming years - Christmas especially.

They have as of this year lost my Christmas custom entirely - in fact I just placed an order with Amazon for what is £200 of presents for my immediate family. The other gifts are similarly going to all be ordered online/from telephone ordering. I now have 2 gifts left to buy ontop of the Christmas spending for this month - these will also be brought online.

Last year I did do 75% of my shopping at the shops due to missing the deadline for Christmas orders at many etailors due to having to work in the USA during late Nov-mid December. What surprised me was the stock situation - I had to look around for some DVD’s due to certain retailers being out-of-stock. The only win for me last year courtesey of pre-ordering was with the Nintendo Wii which I was one of the first people in the country to receive.. I avoided online due to guessing the preordering for online customers would be over-subscribed (which I was correct in!). This year I picked online as it was simpler to do, and does not require me taking a day off work to avoid the crowds.

This is of course good news for e-retailers, and courier companys but bad news for the high-street. Whats more insulting to me is most high street stores currently have their goods onsale at high street prices, and to insult me further charge me for delivery (making it more expensive than going to their shop). Whereas the new-world of Amazon, Play.com and similar shops is generally cheaper than their old-world establishements. If the old-world retailers want my online business they simply have to lower their prices - and have better systems!.

Example of functions being generally useful and not present on many old-world retailers - being Amazon saved basket/Wish lists. Over course of this year I have been building a saved shopping basket full of the goods I want to get people for Christmas, allowing me to finally push the button on the big order last night (after seeing that the majority of prices had moved downwards during the 10 month period the list was built up in). If only all on-line shops had such a facility.

In my opinion the shops that will survive the online war will be clothes shops (If buying an expensive suit for example - I need to try it on before buying). My big issue with the current high-street is in many cases I use it purely to check out what I’m going to buy online (in case of electronic items)… If I could do the same with clothes I would - I just have not found a online retailer thats cheap enough to justify it - yet! Any ideas?

I’m in a dilema on whether to buy a Macbook or Asus eee PC - or both.    If I got a Mac I’d still have to keep the work PC for use at work - but would work from home using Citrix just fine on the mac.

Reason for mac:
1/   I really want to move to a Mac - the form factor isn’t massive and the kit is reliable (unlike the Dells laptop work have issued me that I currently suffer with.    It seems to need constant maintance).
I’m doing a fair bit of JAVA/SOAP programming at the moment (at home) - and although OSX doesn’t currently have JDK/JRE 1.6 - that isn’t a big issue as everything I write is JDK 1.5 based anyhow.    I’m sure not all Dell laptops are as bad as the D610 I use (certainally at work with 5 of us with them I’m the only one who has had a new mainboard, system disk, memory, battery, and screen within 2 years) - and I’m sure my experience isn’t typical.

2/   With parallels/bootcamp I could run and develop/test the few Windows apps I have written in the past still using my spare MSDN XP license, but stay in a BSD environement the rest of the time as most of the kit I work on  just needs a serial console/web browser nowadays.

Downsides:

1/   The mac isn’t ulta portable.    eee basically is.
2/    I already have a work laptop - so when travelling I already take this - the personal laptop would be taken for personal photos etc whilst on road.     Would need a 2-laptop bag for the airport!

Upsides to the eee:
1/    It is ultra portable - wouldn’t need a 2-laptop bag for work trips.
2/   It runs linux.
3/   Excellent battery life.

Downsides:
1/   Small screen - too small?   Will need to see one first!
2/   Small keyboard - is it too small?
3/   Would NOT be able to run Windows apps on the box.    This could also be an upside.
4/   Limited ram/storage.    With my photography from one weekend sometimes taking 3Gb - I would need ot leave photos on mem cards when travelling rather than dumping to laptop - especially on an extended trip.
5/   Unsure whether I could do any Java work whilst on road.

So as the above - the macbook will do everything, but maybe be to big.   The eee is the right form factor, but won’t do everything!     I am not doing personal work on the office laptop - as experience ref: its reliability means I don’t trust it with my personal photos/data - let alone code I have toiled hours over.

Any suggestions on other things I should consider?    I don’t want the super mini Sony I think it is that I’ve seen with the tiny screen/tiny keyboard…    The OLP laptop looks interesting though once it is realised to the public - I’m just concerned how usable it will be for adults - its certainally a good rival to the eee.