Electrical Stuff

Electricity varies from the UK (and Europe) in two ways. First, it is lower voltage - 110v, versus 220v, and second, it's got more hertz (60 versus 50).

Will this matter?

Depends. The smaller, the newer, and the more electronic the item, the more likely it is to work without adjustment. Some things say on them what voltages they will work with. If they say they will work, chances are they will. If they don't say, they still might. The subwoofer (Harman/Kardon) that came with my Dell PC says 240v on it, but it worked. One PC had a switch on the back to change it from 220 to 110 volts, the other just didn't work. Two monitors (one LCD, one CRT) both worked.

My stereo and CD player didn't work.

Things which are larger, and more mechanical will work, just slowly. Hairdryers, for example, will work but will go slowly and won't get very hot. There might be very good reasons not to use them.

Transformers

Fixing the volts is easy, you get a step up transformer. You can buy these in lots of places (including Amazon , but I haven't found one that I liked yet, so I'm not going to make a recommendation. The thing about transformers is that you need to make sure that they can produce enough power, and the more power you need, the more the transformer is going to cost. You should only consider getting a transformer if the thing you have is expensive, and doesn't draw much power. A new vacuum cleaner is possibly going to be cheaper than a transformer to run your vacuum cleaner. You also need to read about the Hertz, below. We run our 4-slice Dualit toaster on a transformer which cost about $100.

Power Adaptors

For small electrical things, which have a power adaptor, you can get a new power adaptor. I've used this one.

Hertz

The number of Hertz is the frequency of the alternations in alternating current. Even if you have a step up transformer, Hertz might matter. Hertz are used to determine the speed that some things go at. Some clocks keep time by counting alternations (these are pretty rare nowadays), and some motors use the Hertz to set their spin speed. If you get a step up transformer, you might find that the motor goes 20% too fast - which might not matter, but we never tried it. This will affect things like food processors, vacuum cleaners, electric drills.