A friend of mine was impressed with the Dell Inspiron 1010 that I am
using so he got one. The problem is everything he types is in French.
Can the default language be changed to English?
Generally no: the language of the WinXP Operating System
is hard coded, is set at installation and cannot thereafter be
changed.
Applications handle this separately, e.g. MS Word can be
configured to have either English or French (or a dozen others)
as its default language.
Typable characters are a third class, governed by keyboard
driver (selectable for various languages under Windows): both
the OS and (most of) the apps call such code, if loaded. As you
probably know, Alt + keypad lets us enter characters not in the
default alphabet, e.g. accented vowels.
If your friend bought new a Dell set up in French when he
wanted one in English, he ought to be able to exchange it
if he acts promptly.