MacBook air 2010

MisterNick

My son was thinking about buying the new MacBook air 2010, but we have seen that in america it's significantly cheaper, the 13.3 inch 128 gb version is £1,099 in England, but $1,299 which converts to £828. He's 16 so if he was going to buy one in England, he would use a student card which i think is 14% off the price here. Which would still be £945. Would the laptop be able to read region 2 DVDs because of the region 1 DVDs they use in America ? Would there be any problems with the Internet, e.g if he decided to buy a wireless internet dongle ? Are there any other problems. this is obviously a lot of money to him so he doesn't want to commit to buying one in america if he's going to experience problems over here.
Many thanks for any help

cooldaz

The Macbook air doesn't have a DVD drive so if you want to be able to read them you will need a Macbook Pro

busenbust

as above; u could buy an external drive (usb) but that might defeat the purpose. thread on Air here -- although slightly skew-whiff

KierNet

I looked into this, but you need to pay customs charges, and some delivery places charge £11 just to show it to customs, so might not be best deal.

almillar

Looks like you've researched this big purchase well!
As well as the above, note that State in the USA all have different rates of tax on different products, so prices you see there don't include tax (VAT in UK speak). Never mind getting it here, paying customs and getting a UK plug adaptor (just the end bit, the chargers are universal).