Buying printers or other hardware for English OS

[dave]

Looking to purchase a printer to work with my Enlish OS (Office 2000) computer. There are several shops to by hardware for English OS computers, but I was wondering if I can purchase a Japanse model at the local 'Kojima Denki' and just download the English drivers from the makers website to get such hardware to work with my English OS? I've heard both yes and no from staff at various shops, so I'm not ready to spend the money unless I can be sure that it's possible.
I purchased a Japanese model digital camera, and was able to download the drivers and software from the makers US website and everything works fine. Does the same apply for printers/scanners too?
tanks!
dave

[bejiita]

It should work since the only difference seems to be the firmware between the Japanese and English products, and not the actual hardware.

I've even installed Japanese printer drivers on an English version of Windows 2000 when there were no equivalent English printer drivers. Yeah, some of the printer options are unreadable but it still prints correcty.

[cstaylor]

Not that Sony makes printers, but I would strongly suggest NOT buying Sony for anything computer-related unless you want to pay for driver updates.

[kotatsuneko]

dunno if this helps but i use uk xp pro, and recently bought a cheapo canon ixus printer

works fine, but the printer properties are in japanese, good if the wifes around...

also all the bundled s/w wouldnt install, but may do if u run sp1 in xp, in 2k i`m not sure....

if you dont want to spend too much, and use all the features this may be a solution...

and if you dont want to pay out for xp, you can find it for free in pretty much any p2p app..but you need to mess around with it to get sp1 to work..