G55 in the UK - nope, just tumbleweed blowing through the streets

[pootle]

Time for a new laptop I thought in the middle of May.

These new Asus G series look nice I thought - right combination of things for my requirements and starting to be available in the USA and a couple of European countries - shouldn't be long till UK spec machines appear I thought.

Now it's August and the only G55's I see are with US international keyboards (not that it usually tells you this on the web site) or various other language keyboards. The same is mostly true of G75s as well. There is only 1 major UK distributor I can find - they have 1 model of G75 on its web site - but only for pre-order and with no ETA so far.

Come on Asus, why no machines here? I know you depend on local distrbutors, but for whatever reason (theirs or yours) it's screwing up your business. My old laptop is really dying now, so it looks like Lenovo Y580 here I come.

(still plenty of G53 / G74 around - so I can only assume they overstocked and are trying to clear inventory first - well the're not clearing it out on me!)

[kiba]

sounds like a plan.

why not just get the US keybd, the UK still speaks english right? (not counting some of my irish relatives over there)

whats the diff, pounds instead of dollars and.... nope, thats all i can think of

[pootle]

Jsl1ce wrote:
nope, thats all i can think of

could be a a good idea but keyboards differences are a bit more than that:
the # symbol is replaced by the £ symbol and a 102nd key is added next to the Enter key to accommodate the displaced #
@ and " are swapped
the ~ is moved to the # key, and is replaced by a ¬ symbol on the backquote (`) key
the \ key is moved to the left of the Z key
the Enter key spans two rows, and is narrower to accommodate the # key.

given that I use @ " and to a lesser extent # quite a bit while programming, and I touch type, this would be really tedious, not to mention painful when switching back and forth with other computers, so all in all, not an option I'm prepared to live with.

[Zygomorphic]

Definitely a good point. Hey, you almost have to relearn touch typing to work on a Thinkpad...what is Lenovo thinking?!?!? Definitely would advise against buying a US model, unless you can get the keyboard swapped in England. Maybe a retailer can do it, or else buy a keyboard on eBay??