I live in the UK and I've been desperately trying to find a way to find a US/International keyboard configured (S-Series) Vaio (from Sony UK) but have hit a brick wall.
So, why don't you just use a UK keyboard?
I have my own reasons for requiring a US keyboard laptop, not least because when spending £1,500 on a laptop, I'd like to be comfortable with the keyboard and as I work for an international company which uses US keybarods and hotdesk, it would be awkward for my personal laptop to have a different keyboard to the desktops I use on a daily basis. I now find UK keyboards very difficult to use.
A summary of my situation.
- A keyboard is a modular removable lightweight component.
- The UK Sony site allows Italian, Spanish, Dutch, French and German keyboard to be allowed as an option, but not a US keyboard.
- The UK store shows an image of a Series S laptop with US keyboard from the UK site (.
- I spoke with a Sony sales representative and they informed me that a US keyboard is not an option in the UK.
- I asked if I could pay a premium to have a US keyboard installed on a Viao purchased in the UK and the answer was no even though other European Sony websites offer the US keyboard as an option. I explained I would pay extra for a US keyboard but the answer was still no.
- I raised this up to manager level but the answer was the same.
- The German, Netherlands and French Sony websites allow a US/International keyboard as an option but they will not ship to the UK, nor will they accept credit cards not registered in their own respective countries, nor will they configure an English language version of Windows.
- The US Sony site of course offers a US keyboard but will not accept a non-US shipping address nor will they accept a non-US based credit card plus there would be local sales taxes & import duties, additional shipping costs and warranty considerations to take into account.
My solutions at present seem to be:
- Buy from the US using a pre-credited paypal account together with a shipping forwarding service (not cheap) and sacrifice my warranty, pay double sales tax (US sales tax + UK VAT), pay shipping, pay forwarding service and receive laptop with no guarantee if will work and no comeback if it doesn't.
- Buy from other European store using a pre-credited paypal account and use a forwarding alias address (also not cheap). I would require Windows 7 Ultimate option as the Windows language would be from the local country and only the Ultimate edition would allow me to set Windows back to English language. The warranty would also be sacrified.
- Buy a laptop with a UK keyboard and then hope I can purchase a US keyboard from somewhere at a later date and then risk my warrenty replacing the keyboard.
I chose the Vaio S as the best alternative to a Macbook Air (which does have an option of a US keyboard in their UK web store). The laptop is much much better price/performance wise and an 1600x900 screen which trumps the 1440x900 screen of the air. I personally prefer Windows as an OS and Sony's laptop keyboards so it is extremely frustrating to find out that a sensible keyboard option is inflexibly omitted when it acts as a gotcha.
If someone could let me know where I can buy a US keyboard for the S series or if someone from Sony could offer another solution to my problem, I'd very much appreciate it.
I love the build quality of the Vaio brand and I really don't want to have to choose a Macbook air as the only 13 inch laptop with a competitive screen and US keyboard option (in UK) however if I can't find a satisfactory solution to this problem then I may have no choice.
Note the attached image of a Vaio S Series laptop with US keyboard comes from the UK Sony site (click S-Series then photo gallery and scroll to image 14 to see it). The US keyboars has the '#' symbol on the '3' button and the backslash and pipe charactor are above the enter button.
