My daughter wants to replace her dying Zen Micro with an iPod Touch. Since we're going on holiday to the USA in July, we could probably pick one up a bit cheaper in the States than here in the UK.

The question is: are there any differences between the iPod Touch as sold in the USA versus the UK?

There are not any differences other than a volume cap that is placed on all UK model iPods. You can get rid of this volume cap rather easily with a simple fix. You should purchase the iPod touch in the cheapest location. A 16GB iPod touch goes fore $399 US in the states which translates to about 204 GBP (United Kingdom Pounds). A 32GB iPod touch goes for $499 US which is about 255 GBP (United Kingdom Pounds). I am not sure what the iPod touch pricing is in the UK but that will give you the cost of an iPod touch here in the US.

If the US model is cheaper then purchase it here, if it is about the same then go ahead and get the UK model and have a look around for help removing the EU volume cap.

Thanks for the info.

Maybe a volume cap would be a good idea for my daughter!

Typical price here in the UK is about 245 GBP. But she only wants the 8GB model, which is 180 GBP here (and looks to be $280 = 150 GBP in the US).

I guess the only other thing that concerns me is what happens if it goes wrong. Buying it in the UK means we'll have a proper warranty. Have there been any reports of reliability issues with the iPod touch?

The iPod touch seems to be a reliable unit, more so than the buggy iPod classic. You shouldn't have any warranty issues though as all iPods come with a one year world wide warranty. This means that Apple will repair your iPod no matter where you purchase it. You can even take it into UK stores and get it serviced.

I highly recommend going with at least the 16GB model though. 8GB may seem like a lot to her now but I can assure you that she will want to put some videos on her iPod and they take up quite a bit of space. Not only that but 8GB can hold about 1,000 songs with some videos. 16GB will leave her a lot more room to grow especially when it comes to videos (a 3 minute music video takes up about 30MB).

One question: do those US prices include sales tax?

Michael

who finds the US practice of quoting prices w/o tax confusing, at times.

Without tax. The tax charged varies by location, and some places may not even charge any sales tax.

Wow - I'm pleasantly surprised that Apple would be so enlightened. I always got the impression that grey importing was seriously frowned upon by just about every global manufacturer.


Unfortunately she's going to have to stretch her budget even for the 8GB model. (I personally think it would be more sensible for her to go for the 8GB Nano, but she says she doesn't like it. 15 year-olds can be a pain sometimes, eh?)


Shouldn't I be able to fill in some sort of form declaring that it's going to be exported in order to avoid sales tax? We'll be touring California and Arizona with a stop over in Las Vegas. Is one state a better place to buy than the other? (I'm guessing that if we do have to pay it, sales tax is probably lowest in Nevada).

Sales tax is not national, it is local. You're using California's roads, benefiting from their fire, EMS, and police protection - why should you not pay sales tax?

I wasn't raising this from the moral point of view, but the legal. Here in the UK, if a tourist buys something and takes it home with them, in some circumstances they can fill in a form so they don't have to pay our sales tax (VAT). I've seen a similar arrangement in Canada regarding their GST. I just wondered if perhaps the same thing is possible in the USA.

If you want to get around paying the tax the only way would be to try and buy it online and have it shipped to where you're going to be at. If an online company doesn't have a point of presence in the state it's shipping to it usually doesn't have to include sales tax. I don't know if you'll be able to find a reputable online dealer though that doesn't require sales tax in Nevada, Arizona, or California. (I live in Oregon where I've never had to worry about sales tax...)