Hi Julia!
I know a few people at Ford Credit in Brentwood; great bunch of folks! What an exciting adventure for you!
As for your computer, my vote is to get the laptop. That for sure works on both voltages and you won't have the fuss of the monitor. Your regular computer, the CPU part, will work, but your monitor won't. The printer, well, even if it works on dual voltage, not a lot of American printers default to anything but US sizes. You'll eventually wish you'd never bothered. You see, paper size is different here. There is no 8 1/2 x 11. Or legal, or ledger size. The two more common sizes here are A4 and A3 (the A3 is twice the size of A4). A4 is close to the US 8 1/2 x 11, but it's still not the same (A4 is narrower and longer).
While I'm at it, I noticed your relating question on another topic area. About electrics. Frankly, I'd suggest you not bother. Even with adapters the life span of your electrical gadget will shorten. It's not worth the risk. Lamps for sure will not work. Might as well give all your lightbulbs away. (Batteries, however, ARE the same.) Bring anything that's dual voltage 110/230 (or 120/240). VHS tapes won't work unless they are labelled "PAL" (NTSC is the US VHS and it won't work unless you have a dual PAL/NTSC player, not the most common thing on the shelves). You'd be okay with DVDs on your computer, but you may have to fiddle with set-ups and coding (which may invalidate your warranty) on a UK DVD player to get US DVDs to work. (I fiddled with mine and it was incredibly easy...shhhhh.)
On the topic of fiddling and lamps, many lamps are just shells with easy-to-change cords fed through. If you love your lamp, it could be really really easy to remove and replace the electrics of it. I've got a few lamps sitting in my garage waiting for me to do this.
Forget bringing your vaccuum. Besides, I personally feel vaccuums are far far better here, great suction! In fact, a lot of appliances here are great and not hugely expensive.
Are you settling here for a while, or just here for a couple of years? Is Ford paying moving costs? (It's just that you might want to consider storage, etc.)
