Secondhand MacBook with Japanese OS...can I get it transferred to English?

Question

My computer quest goes on...

I have seen a very reasonably priced MacBook in my local computer shop. However I live in Japan and my Japanese isn't strong enough to ask if the OS (Japanese) can be reset to English. The computer is a recent model, less than 1 year old.

Can I switch the OS to English? If not, does the start-up disk with the OS on it come with English? How can I get the new OS when it comes out in a few weeks?

Thanks a lot to all you kind Mac fans!

Warren.

Answer 1

If your OS is Microsoft windows and you can understand Japanese then proceed thru the steps:(idon know Japanese so in english)
1.click "start"
2.click "settings"
3.click "control panel"
4 click "Date, time ,language and regional options"
5.click "Language and Regional options"
6.in Language and Regional options dialog box click "language" tab then select your desired language
7.click "Apply" buttun
8.click "ok"
if you cann't understand Japanese, then you can ask someone who knows Japanese to help you to change the language of your OS.
If someone is not available then you have to install a new clean copy of your OS.During the installation period you will see various steps. Keep attention to those steps. At somepoint setup will ask you to select your date,time, timezone.language and other preferences. Then you can select your desired language (which is English (United States) ) by default and setup will configure your OS to your selected language.

Answer 2

Hi Warren M,

I think that you can change the language on your MacBook, if they loaded English into it when they installed Mac OS X. Let's try to change it. Get into your System Preferences settings.

Under the Personal heading is the International icon. It looks like a blue UN flag. Click on that. Now click on the Languages tab. On my English Macintosh it's located at the left of the tabs. English should be one of the languages listed on the side bar on the left. You can drag and drop the languages in the order that you prefer, so drag English up to the top.

There's an "Edit List" button that you can push. Hopefully, English is listed in there and you can click on that to access it in the side bar list of languages again.

I'm not sure whether you need to mess with the Formats section because you may need to still deal with dates, times, numbers in Japanese incremental units. Maybe not.

Also, in the Input Menu tab (located at the right), I've checked the U.S. flag (or it could be British if you prefer) to change the keyboard layout and inputs.

I hope that this works for you, Warren. Best of luck to you, and congratulations on your great deal on a MacBook. ;-)

--Rick