Since I live stateside I have had to adjust to the currency exchange and shopping habits of enthusiasts in the UK in order to be of any use around here. I've been seeing a lot of people posting advice and prices in one currency/marketplace and it being of absolutely no use 1000+ miles away. The purpose of this thread is to share some tips I've learned since I started posting here more often. Like helping someone in the UK find a product when you live in the US. Like bookmarking a currency exchange calculator to make price comparison easier. These might seem standard to much of you but there are plenty who can benefit. http://www.xe.com/ucc/ The Universal Currency Calculator at xe.com is one of the nicer calculators I've found and it is accurate. Though prices may differ from country to country, and taxes vary, I find it very useful. Some very basic advice would be to know these two sites... Newegg and Scan. Newegg.com is one of if not the most popular site for computer parts and customer review in the USA and Canada. Scan.co.uk serves the same purpose in the UK and is a great place for US residents to start when helping friends overseas. Beyond the calculator and knowing the more popular tech sites I would recommend knowing how to use the Google Advanced Search to find items and information in a different world region. The link for Advanced Search options is on the Google front page. On the Advanced search page you will find a drop down labeled "Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more" toward the bottom. Clicking the drop down reveals the "Region" option. Changing this will allow you to search for pages in regions of the world other than your own. I have used this multiple times to help others in the UK find products and retailers. Once you know what you are searching for and have the appropriate region selected you simply hit "Advanced Search". Sadly the product search function of Google still only returns local prices and retailers so you will have to search through the provided pages yourself. Aside from that... all I can say is please let everyone know where you are from when you post. That alone will make us all a bit happier. Cheers.
noticed sometimes the prices in europe are higher than they should be.. like they get ripped off on certain things- same price here in the states
If you want to visit a foreign Google page (not your own) and just type it in, you'll get redirected. To skip the redirection, add "ncr" to the link. Eg: http://www.google.fr/ - If you aren't french, this'll redirect you. http://www.google.fr/ncr - This one will not. Ehh, lol, just tried the and the effect is not exactly what I expected. But I think it can be useful anyway.
It does actually. I just hadn't thought to do it. And the product search even works. Much easier. Many thanks.
Traditionally, the method for pricing in the UK market is just to replace the dollar sign with a pound sign - so something that costs $50 in the US will more than likely cost £50. This was particularly galling when the exchange rate was almost $1=£2. The situation has improved recently, but products still tend to be slightly more expensive over here. And I hate to say it, but bit-tech is a UK-based site run by UK-based staff with a predominantly UK-based forum population, so there is always going to be UK/European bias here. That said, most reviews will contain prices in both pounds and dollars where applicable.
