Vista - Chinese language pack or software for Vista Home Premium

Hi,

I recently bought a low end laptop. It came with Vista Home Premium edition.
My parents would like to learn how to use a computer. Unfortunately, they
can't read or understand English very well.

Is there a Chinese language pack for Vista Home Premium? They just want to
do very basic things such as surfing the web and maybe read email with
Chinese characters displayed. I'm not sure if they will need to type anything
in Chinese characters. I'm guessing that when they go to any website, they
can have Chinese characters displayed or translated.

Is there any software available from Microsoft for this type of thing? If
not, can someone recommend an alternative? (Preferably low in cost).

Thanks in advance for any help provided!

You can only change the language of Vista if you have Vista Ultimate
or Enterprise.

With Ultimate, you can download the language packs for free.
Just open Windows Update, choose "view available updates",
and check the language pack you want.

Afterwards, from Control Panel (categories view), just choose
"Change display language" under "Clock, Language and Region".
Pick your language, log off, log on, and done.

If you have another version of Vista other than those two,
such as Windows Vista Home Premium,
you'll need to purchase a "full Chinese version" of Windows
Vista and perform a "clean install" or install it on a separate
partition or drive (dual-boot).

--
Carey Frisch
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

If they only want to read webpages and emails that are in Chinese, all you
need to do is make sure that the extra fonts for East Asian languages have
been installed.

While I was studying architecture at university, there were a lot of Chinese
students who managed to use the English XP CAD machines to still type in
Chinese, by using IME.

I do not know if there is IME for Vista yet, but this is more information on
it:
http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/h...IME_Paper.mspx

ss.

Hi,
Thanks for the reply. Would there be an alternate solution for Vista Home
Premium? I just bought this laptop recently and it's only two months old.
Upgrading the operating system wouldn't make too much sense for me.

I know having the language pack installed would be the right way to go. But
I don't want to spend anymore money on this laptop if I don't have to. Can
you suggest a third party software that can do a similar job?

Thanks again in advance for any info that you may be able to provide.

Hi,

I own a Lenovo z61t notebook with Vista Business installed. I am able to read Chinese and Write Chinese without problems. In fact there is a setting somewhere buried in the Intl.Cpl that can display Chinese (Simplified) on the menu and stuff, i will test it out fully with a Chinese Program in the next day or two to see if it can display Chinese fully or not.

To input Chinese, you just install "east asian lanugage" from intl.cpl surprisingly the notebook came with it installed already.

Hope this helps as i don't know if Vista Home Premium can do the things i described above as it's different from Vista Business!