Use 220 Volt Appliances in 110 Volt Countries

For those who travel frequently, facing a different voltage supply problem is very common. One might be wondering whether he can use a 220 voltage appliance in a country that run on 110 voltage power supply. To give an appropriate answer to this question, one must know the kind of device being used. There can be multiple voltage appliances like most of the computer supplies, the answer is ‘Yes’. But for other electronic equipments, a durable voltage converter is required.

There is a comprehensive answer on wiki.answers.com  from which the excerpts are being taken:

It depends. If they are multiple voltage 110-220v appliances (such as most computer power supplies are) they obviously can be, taking special care to check if a switch has to be flipped to use the other voltage. If they are 220v-only devices, you need some sort of a converter to use them. That can be for instance a 110v/220v transformer, but if WILL be bulky and heavy as hell, and available for relatively small power only. Or you might use an electronic 110v/220v power converter, if you can find one, which might be considerably lighter and possibly available for higher power, but it probably won’t be that cheap either. If the appliance is a fairly generic one, buying a new 110v model is probably the easiest and cheapest way to do it. It should be noted that a lightbulb- or heating-element-type appliance should still work with the smaller voltage, just weaker, as opposed to the reverse situation of supplying 220v to a 110v device, which would certainly burn out. It is however rather pointless to try to do it, and HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED.”