Thursday, February 01, 2007

The Time Machine

I came to Korea with an 18-month old Dell Inspiron 9300 notebook which had some top-end specifications, but unfortunately it's CPU wasn't one of them. For three months I've struggled on with trading but recently its speed has grown slower as I've begun to run a few more things so it's cost me money. It was time to start trawling through Hacker and PCDaq to find a replacement.

Navigating Korean websites is no easy task when you can't speak the language, and it's an activity only made more frustrating by the inability to fully access some sites using the Firefox browser - there's really no choice but to switch to Internet Explorer for the duration. It's interesting that considering that 99% of computers here are apparently Windows-based PCs, it isn't common to find Windows bundled with new computers, whereas in the UK, it's almost impossible to find a new PC without it. It seems that Koreans find 'other ways' of putting Windows on their new machines.

While it was possible to buy a copy of English-Windows from Hacker (who got the eventual order) to go with the new computer, it was significantly more expensive than buying Korean-Windows so I'm taking the plunge and going native. This may prove to be a reckless move - I certainly won't understand the endless error messages Windows generates - but perhaps it will spur on my language studies out of necessity. While I've long since purchased a Korean keyboard to plug into my laptop, switching between English and Korean remains a somewhat fiddly affair, so that should be another bonus point in my language switch.

The usual flurry of text messages followed our ordering of the computer, and despatch is scheduled for tomorrow because we ordered it late afternoon.

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