I’m going to Canada this summer (next to Toronto), and it would be a GREAT occasion to buy a MacBook at an interesting price (regarding the price here in Europe: 1.649 CAD Vs. 1.519 EUR, namely a difference of 440,18 EUR!).

However, there are still 3 problems:

1. The keyboard: I can only choose between a Canadian keyboard and an American keyboard. And the keyboard doesn’t seem to be easily replaceable on a Mac… They seem reluctant to exchange (or even buy) you a keyboard different from the one you got originally with your Mac…. Surely to prevent people like me to buy their Mac in other countries! Bastards… Happily, alternatives exist, like covering the keyboard with a thin latex keyboard with a custom layout, or painting new letters on it (the hardcore way… ).
2. The power adaptor: that’s only a minor issue. Converters are available everywhere.
3. The OS: for sure, Mac OSX is a terrible OS!!! But I want to be able to boot Linux. Once more, a solution already exists: some folks wrote a wiki about installing Gentoo on a MacBook. And the good news is that almost everything work fine: the iSight webcam, the remote control, the special keys, the suspend mode, … Thanks to them!!!!

So it’s almost 100% sure that from September on, I will be running on a Mac.

I’ve just bought a new printer: a HP Deskjet F380. It’s a cheap (76€) multi-functional printer: color-print, scan and copy.

I guess that the cheap price is justified by the low ink cartridges capacity: only 5ml. However, I’m no great ink consumer. I only print some simple stuff (mappy itineraries, text e-mails, … ) and most of the time in draft mode, and surely no high quality color photographs. I prefer to count on foto.com to print my pictures.

From the little tests I’ve performed, I’m quite happy with it: it prints fast enough in draft quality, scanning an A4 picture in 300dpi resolution only takes about 30 sec, and the copy function works very good and very fast as well. A really good product regarding its price!