USA Powerbook

Hi,

sorry for me writing english but my swedish writing capabilities are just too lousy.

I am planning to buy a 12" G4 Powerbook this summer and I want it with an american
keyboard because I am sooo used to it (I am a programmer).

Sinces Apples policy prevents me from buying it here in Sweden I need someone who
could help me to get it from USA. I can buy & pay if from here but it would be nice if
someone here could bring it back from a trip.

Maybe someone else wants a 12" G4 too and wants to buy it from USA too but really
with a swedish keyboard. We could do this: I buy a swedish version (with developer
reduced price from the Swedish Apple Store) and that person brings in an US keyboard
version and we simply exchange the keyboard. That way, we both would benefit from
low prices (the US versio is cheaper and I get my version with developer reduced price).

Any ideas and/or comments on this?

Andreas Pardeike
(lives in Bromma near Stockholm)

I know that. But the problem is that there isn't just one "english" keyboard. What I want is the US keyboard not the international english one. The big difference is that most keys you use for programming, i.e.

/ ; [ ] \ { } < > =

can be pressed without a second key (or just with Shift) and that makes a big difference in coding
speed - at least for me. I am used to code with an US keyboard since I started using one about 8 years ago. If you do serious programming (Perl,Java,C++ and a lot of advanced handcoded DHTML, CSS) then you will never look back once you switched.

And writing german (I am actually German) and swedish umlauts on an american keyboard is rather easy. I don't have (or want to) write so much than I code so that is not a problem.

Well, that might work sort of but... no, I don't like that. I rather want a real US keyboard. With my current iBook G3, I actually bought a keyboard via AirMail and that worked fine. The price advantage of course goes down the drain...

That's why I am looking for someone that might have a business trip to New York or similar. Shouldn't be so hard. I did that with my previous PB: had a co-worker pick up the already paid machine. It's rather simple.

The international english keyboard is basically the same as the swedish keyboard but the umlaut keys (äö + å) are replaced by some other characters.

The US keyboard is quite different in the area around the return key:

To type an 'ä' you would press alt-u and after releasing all keys you just need to press 'a' to get the final character. It's always alt-u for the double dots and alt-a to get the 'å'.

Well. Look at the footnote:

* designed to fit the Apple iBook (white 2001) / PowerBook G4 15"
(550MHz - 1GHz) North American keyboard layout.

You won't solve the problem with this. They are either transparent or have the same print on them as the original keyboard. Plus, I think I remember touching one of those some time ago in a shop - useless for fast typing...

I can recommend www.thepowerbookguy.com - I have bought one american keyboard from them via mail order. Worked fine but is a bit on the expensive side. Don't know though if you can buy swedish keyboards.

I have found the following link (for Aluminium PB but I guess they have other types of keys too):

http://www.pbparts.com/shop/akbp.html

Cool! It's $7,50 per key.

Interesting. I was under the impression that the US and the 'International English' keyboard layouts were much more different. But after a short google session I found this:

http://starr.net/is/type/keyboard-charts.html
(the international one is at the bottom)

and in fact, it looks like they really are only a bit different. Importent to me is that the brackets and (back)slash stuff is at the same positions. It seems that the only drawback is that the extra printed characters make the keyboard look a bit more 'busy' but that is acceptable.

Cool.

Still, Powerbooks are cheaper in the US than here. I tested it and found out (prices are with Apple Developer Hardware Discount):

PB 12" 1.33GHz, Superdrive, 1.25 GB Ram, 80GB HD

US price = $2099
State Tax (8.25%) = $2272
2,272 US Dollar = 17,493.9 Swedish Krona (www.oanda.com)

Swedish price = 21,796 SEK

So with a developer discount on a maxed out PB 12" the price difference is about 4300 SEK!