So I wanted to get a gaming laptop a while ago because I run a lot of LANs and lugging around a full size tower case which weighs over 20kg along with all the peripherals was making it more of a chore than a joy. Also hopefully starting next year I'm going to be working in Antarctica and I'm going to go mad if I don't have a computer with me. I've checked out the m11x laptop they've got and the fully decked out version is more than capable of running the games we usually play and it has HDMI out so I can plug in a bigger monitor (the laptop itself is a piddly 1366x768).

Here's the problem: Dell has a region based store, so I need to buy it from the Australia store which makes it run $AUD1799 which is $US1935. For the exact same laptop from the US store it's $AUD1068. It is over $700 cheaper, 39%, to buy it from the US, but it's not viable because of the shipping restrictions.

Simply for this item, it's worth buying a proxy US based address on the west coast and paying twice for shipping to get it from Dell to the proxy address, and from the proxy to Australia even though the shipping is probably going to be $200, it's still cheaper by far.

Something is very, very wrong. It's late and I wanted to vent, but feel free to share tales of woe.

I looked up the prohibited items for Australia on the and I don't see anything specific to computers but there are some odd items:
Goods bearing the name “Anzac.”
Used Bedding
Registered philatelic articles with fictitious addresses
Seditious literature

I'm sure there's logical reasons for them, but they do seem quite strange.

Huh I know I guy who worked for Dell support, he came to the uni to fix parts of the computers I could try asking him. I'm pretty sure if you register the service tag with Dell and announce that it's in a different region, they will still support it.

And as for Apple... no. Just no.