Possible to buy mainstream consumer laptop with US/ANSI keyboard layout in Europe?

See difference: ANSI vs ISO - Deskthority wiki

Most come with national layouts (and ISO layout); so in Germany you can buy the German layout (with QWERTZ; ouch).

Apple sells US layout wherever they operate via their website but I ask about Asus/Acer/Lenovo/HP/Dell/Toshiba/Fujitsu/Vaio/Samsung and the like. (Did I miss a brand?)

 

That will depend, if it's a custom order as in customized Latitude, Precision, Thinkpad, etc. it may be possible if you ask a rep while ordering via phone or it may not. Also, depending on where you are located, legal issues may arise that would prevent this. For example, buying a laptop in a physical location in québec from the store stock means that you'll get the canadian multiluingual or a french canadian layout due tolegal obligations. However, if you order from another Canadian province or the US, US Qwerty may be an option. IT will depend on whether the manufacturer decided to provide canadian multilingual country wide or didn't mind having two different keyboard layout. It varies from manufacturer to manufacturer.

You'll have to check with each laptop manufacturer/reseller I expect.

 

The alternative is to buy a notebook with an easily swappable keyboard and then put in the keyboard you want (they can usually be found on ebay).

However, the increased use of separated key style keyboards that are integrated into the top of the chassis (and need major disassembly for a keyboard change) means that finding those notebooks that use a separate keyboard unit requires some effort. Business notebooks designed for ease of maintenance are the first place to look.

John

 

I'm with John here. I deal mostly with Lenovo and Fujitsu laptops. Out of those, most of them have pretty easy to change keyboards. Problems will rise when laptops become thinner, then the keyboard is often part of the chassis and is harder to replace and more expensive to buy.

HP and Lenovo provide service/parts manuals for most of their models, they contain instructions how to change and also keyboard part numbers (to look for the prices and buy them online). Fujitsu manuals aren't public, rest of the brands aren't my deal.

 

So basically you suggest if I prefer a more international keyboard layout and I am outside of that geographical area (heck, I am a foreigner abroad; which should be not a big deal today) - but still somewhere in developed Europe with a developed market but in a country with some unfamiliar local language - I should either buy:

- A powerful, expensive business laptop (which I don't need; other than the international keyboard)
- An Apple laptop from Apple's website (where you can configure it with an international layout
- Otherwise I am out of luck?

Fine

 

There are alot of consumer models that can swap the keyboard.

narrow down your search and see if a us layout keyboard is available.

 

Or a cheap, not necessarily so powerful one. Something like L-series Thinkpad or HP Probook.
Companies and goverments buy those in thousands, not all of them are top-of-line expensive ones

 

I would add the Dell Latitude range to the list. (ex-) Dell Outlet stock is available in many countries at about half of the list price for a new order. My E7440 came with good specs (if looking at this then get the FHD version and not the substantially inferior 1366 x 768 panel) at a reasonable price.

If you find something with suitable specs then get the User Manual (which includes the instructions for replacing parts) from the Dell support site to check the steps to change the keyboard and also search around for the keyboards in the layout you want.

There are also plenty of suppliers selling US spec Dell notebooks on UK ebay. They would probably be willing to ship to elsewhere in Europe but you should note that you have to pay taxes on import (in UK this is 20% VAT - other countries may be slightly different).

John

 

Thanks; but the ThinkPad L and similar are not options as I want to buy a think and light, machine w/ a 11.6" screen.

 

In that case...

http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04400176.pdf

Pages 4 and 5, part number 3. Also has the instructions how to change the keyboard.

 

I recently had a conversation about this with an Italian colleague. She managed to get get a Dell laptop with an American keyboard in Italy, but according to her, Dell is the only one of the major manufacturers (i.e. manufacturers recognized by the Italian university system) that does this. Depending on where you are in Europe, you might be able to get away with a local layout. For example, the UK layout is different from the US one, but you really have to look for the differences to notice them and they're smaller than the typical variation in American laptop keyboards. On the other hand, the French AZERTY layout is extremely different.

 

Superficially, the differences between the UK and US keyboard layouts are not big.

However, I have learned from experience that the differences are significant. For example, the UK layout has a small left shift key and a large right shift key but the US layout is the other way round. Plus a number of the other keys have shifted. For anyone who has semi (or better) touch typing skills these differences cause significant problems.

John

 

Not to mention the amount of keys is different UK layout can be used with pretty much all the other EU layouts. Just add stickers or use a permanent marker.

US layout has a missing physical key, to use that keyboard with other layouts they need to be customized.