I am planning to buy an IBM ThinkPad X31 thru ebay. I live in Spain,
and the PC would come from the USA. I have some questions:

- Does anyone know if the american keyboard part can be changed for a
spanish (Spain) keyboard including the specific Spanish letters?

- Is the 3 years IBM warranty valid in Europe too ?

- Are you sure of this two questions ?

Thanks, because tre price is much lower.

Tom

"Tom" <tom@leathercops.us> wrote in message
news:8ad8e5e2.0307101017.71bdcf73@posting.google.c om...
There are two issues: physical keyboard layout (with Spanish keycaps) and the
keyboard driver. The former - I don't know, but see no reason why not (a short email
to IBM support will tell you for sure.) The latter - yes, you ca change it on the
fly. I type in several languages on my ThinkPad but keep the US QWERTY layout (i.e.
have to remember which keys give Spanish, Polish, etc. letters when the appropriate
keyboard driver is enabled. It is not that difficult...)


That depends - IBM offers several warranties. If it says "USA warranty" chances are
that it will not work in Europe. OTOH "International warranty" works worldwide, I do
know that for sure as all my ThinkPads come with such warranties.

gilbertf@netbsd-fr.org wrote:
This is not a good idea. It tends to get stuck in customs for a loooong
time until you pay a loooot of money. It even does that if you let ibm
spain send it away for repairs to ibm america, if it's a us only model
(happened to me and my old old tp500). The only way to get the laptop
through customs is to go on the plane to the US, and come back with it,
the $250 for which may well be worth it.

Sure. But it's not worth it since you can buy it for even less hassle
from any number of TP specialists. Well .. maybe you do take a chance
tehre, since it'll have come off a wrecked model. Yeah - get it from TP
parts.

I insisted on a UK keyboard for my TP x24, which I bought in spain.
Nobody can bear spanish keyboards! To get a | or a ~ or a # you have to
do horrible things with half your fingers at a time. And ' and \ are
hard too. It's sheer misery for programmers. People resort to
sellotaping different letters over the top and remapping the keyoard to
US.

Yes - exactly!!!! Spanish keyboard is just outtahere for programming.
It's a horror.


Peter

gilbertf@netbsd-fr.org wrote:
Anything small might get through (I've had pcmcia cards and memory come
through unscathed). Anything the size of the box they put a TP in will
not.

??

How do you sue anyone in france?

You can't be too paranoid.

Peter

Peter T. Breuer <ptb@oboe.it.uc3m.es> wrote:

Tribunal de Commerce. And they prefered
an agreement and to pay to avoid losing
their "IBM certified" crap and having
their name published on the press (we
asked for that).

Tell that to OpenBSD people

--
Gilbert Fernandes