Hi I'm new to Macs and I've got the oppertunity to purchase a Powerbook 5300c. The only thing is it belongs to a Japaneese student and most of the dialog boxes etc are in that language. Is ther anyway of changing it to english? I know this may be a simple task for you Mac oldies. I'm actualy looking forward to getting it if I can change the language. It's got a beautiful colour screen, the clearest I've seen on a second-hand laptop. Unsure of OS late system 7 or early 8 by the looks. Thanks in advance.

Try the appearance control panel to change the system fonts. To check your OS version click about this computer under the apple menu (the apple icon on the top left hand side of your desktop), and that should tell you the OS you have installed. Heres some data on your computer: Macintosh PowerBook 5300c/100 spb5300-100.3       Logic Board Ports Power Processor: 603e, 100 MHz PMMU: integrated FPU: integrated Data Path: 64-bit, 33.3 MHz L1 Cache: 32K L2 Cache: none 2nd Processor: none Slots: 2 Type II PC Card (1 Type III) USB: ADB: 1 Video: mini-15 Floppy: none SCSI: HDI-30 Geoports: none Ethernet: none FireWire: Mic Type: Line in Other Ports: Printer, Speaker, Max Watts: 45 Amps: 1.88 BTU per Hr: 153.9 Voltage: 100-240 Freq Range: 50-60 Hz Battery Type: PB5300, NiMH Soft Power: yes Memory Video Memory Logic Board: 8, 16 MB RAM Slots: 1, PB53xx Min - Max RAM: 8 MB - 64 MB Min RAM Speed: 70 ns RAM Sizes: 8-64 MB Install in Groups of: 1 Resolution Video Memory built-in LCD (512K VRAM) (built in) Video Memory built-in LCD (1MB VRAM) () 512 x 384 n/a-bit n/a-bit 640 x 400 n/a-bit n/a-bit 640 x 480 8-bit 16-bit 800 x 600 n/a-bit n/a-bit 832 x 624 n/a-bit n/a-bit 1024 x 768 n/a-bit n/a-bit 1152 x 870 n/a-bit n/a-bit 1280 x 1024 n/a-bit n/a-bit Physical Software Storage Introduced: 8/25/1995 Discontinued: n/a Form Factor: PowerBook 5300 Gestalt ID: 128 Weight (lbs): 6.2 Dimensions (in): 2.2 H x 11.5 W x 8.5 D Addressing Modes: 32-bit Orig SSW: 7.5.2 Orig Enabler: PowerBook 5300 Enabler ROM ID: $077D ROM Ver: $27 ROM Size: 4MB AppleTalk Ver: 58.1.6 Mac OS Supported: 7.5.2 7.5.3 7.5.5 7.6 7.6.1 8.0 8.5 8.6 9 Floppy Size: 1.44MB Floppy Inject: manual Min. Int HD Size: 500-750MB Int HD Interface: IDE Orig CD Speed n/a Int CD Support:

Thanks Jorge. Where abouts is the appearance control panel? Remember it's all in Nippon. Thanks in advance.

Hehe ... forgot about that. You will find the control panels folder within the system folder,which in turn is located within your HD folder. Control panel icons are quite distinct as they are all square and have a little pretend slider either vertical or horizontal (left side or bottom of the icon). The appearance icon has a vertical slider on the left side and a picture of a corner of a mac window. If you send your email I"ll send you a jpeg of it. I hope that helps

Easiest, Quickest, Most Sure way: Just re-install the OS using the english language version install disk(s). Do a 'Clean install' and throw away the OLD SYSTEM as soon as you are done.

Please send me Japaneese fonts to work on MS-Word97/2000