I see trees of green........ red roses too
I see em bloom..... for me and for you
And I think to myself.... what a wonderful world.

I see skies of blue..... clouds of white
Bright blessed days....dark sacred nights
And I think to myself ....shit! me computers bust I’ll have to go to PC world..

PC world I think they’re great!

If your like me and you don’t know THAT much about computers, but use one quite a lot, sooner or later it’s going to go wrong. It’s at this point that your going to have to look for someone to fix it.

There are an abundance of small adds, in my local newspaper, and probably yours as well, but if you don’t trust one of these one man bands to come round to your house, without any kind of personal recommendation , you are going to have to look elsewhere for your knight in shining armour.

PC world have a service which lets you take in your sick PC, and they will look at it on a sort of PC doctor basis. They will have a quick look at it for you and tell you more or less what is wrong with it, and give you a rough estimate as to what it will cost to fix the poor chap.

There is an engineers report available for a set fee, about £30, which you will need if you intend to claim on the household insurance. Not many policies cover computer repairs as standard, you will usually have to pay a premium and many companies will not cover you at all. They will merely say it is a warranty issue covered by the retailer, or if it is out of warranty you may have to foot the whole bill yourself.

There is only one thing insurance companies will pay out for and that is damage caused due to an electrical power surge, which may have caused, damage to the internal components of the computer, in which case, if you have a friendly insurance company, they will shell out for the repairs or the cost of a new computer.

If your computer just packs up, and there is no power to the computer, basically the power unit has probably blown out. This could be for one of two reasons, either the component has just conked out, and it is a warranty issue, or it was as the result of a power surge caused by a fluctuation in current, which does happen and is why you have fuse boxes, or a lightening strike, ( a bit rarer ). This happened to me and I had to prove to the insurance company that it was due to a power surge that the part had failed and not just old age.

I took the rather lifeless PC, to PC world and explained the dilemma. They were very helpful and offered me an engineers report, and also a quote for a new computer, and/or repairs to the existing one. I didn’t really want to shell out for an engineers report so they just gave, me a free quote for a new computer. They were very helpful, but they wouldn’t just give me a note saying what was wrong with the computer, they wanted to stiff me for a full engineers report, which I thought was a bit of a rip off, when it was obvious what was wrong with it. It would of cost me nearly a third of the price of a new computer, for the engineers report. I wrote my own report for the insurance company, and luckily they accepted it.

It’s a point worth remembering though this point about the power surge thing, because it also applies if somebody, accidentally switches off your computer, and then turn it on again straight away, this also causes, a similar power surge, and knackers your hard drive. This can be caused by children, mucking about with the switches. I know somebody who this happened to and they had to get an engineers report from PC world and the insurance coughed for the lot.

That’s the maintenance department for you, my only dealings with it, but of course they don’t just mend computers they sell them as well. I think that PC world are very competitive when it comes to spares parts and components plus they carry a considerable amount of stock.

I needed to buy an external modem recently for my PC, and I went like an innocent child to Comet, thinking they would have what I wanted...ha, ha...trusting fool, I didn’t realise how little stock they actually carry, when it comes to specialist components. They didn’t have one, or at least they had only one and that was about £50 quid , which is way over priced for a bog standard modem.

I also needed a 5m usb cable, because my printer is housed in a cupboard, some distance from my actual PC. Comet didn’t have one, they could only run to 3m, which was just not long enough.

I also wanted a 4 port usb hub to convert a single usb port in to a four way usb port, to take care of several peripheral devices I want to use which all fight over the same usb port, and I am constantly plugging in and unplugging each time I need to use a different device. I won’t tell you you’ve already guessed, they didn’t have one. Great.............I’m going to be all day, looking for a few piddling cables and connections.

I was aghast when the sales assistant said “you don’t want to buy anything in here mate, you wanna go to PC world, if you want any specialist stuff”, apparently Comet don’t stock any thing unless it’s bog standard, or a complete system, and looking around they didn’t have much to offer in the way of spares and repairs. They don’t really repair things at Comet, if you bought it from them, and it’s bust, legitimately, they just give you another one and chuck yours in the bin. Hence few spare parts on offer.

So off to PC world it was, and on entering the store I was met with aisle upon aisle of computer, parts, components, cables, peripherals, drives, disks , of every description. I was overwhelmed by the choice on offer, and quickly rationalised this, by picking out the cheapest ones, of all the spares that I needed.

They had my 5m usb cable from a number of manufacturers, in an assorted lengths, qualities, and prices, also the 4 port usb hub I wanted, and most important my new modem which I need in order to keep in touch with cyberspace.

There was a good choice of modems from £15 for the cheapest, internal modem, PC Line which I think is an ‘own brand’, from PC world. A good price for a basic modem. The prices went up to about £80 for the most expensive external modem, which are always more expensive, like any stand alone computer unit, as opposed to an internal one which just slots into your existing PC, like a spare part.

PC world will fit these new parts for you, like an internal modem, a cd re-writer, a larger hard disk, any number of things, but of course they don’t do it for free. There is a charge for anything an engineer has to do, ranging from , a detailed report, I mentioned earlier to fitting the latest gizmo, into your box of tricks. My advice is stooge around on the Internet for a bit , and learn how to fit these new parts your self and you will save your self a packet. Even I can do it !, why only yesterday I had to change the hard drive , because some nasty got on to the old one and destroyed it.
If you’ve ever had the back off you computer.......arrrggghhh...gasp....horror.. It’s only held on with a few screws and have a look inside, you’ll see how relatively simple it really is. There is basically the hard drive, floppy disc, cd ROM. drive, power unit, modem, mother board, CHIP, and a few wires joining ’em all together. I’m telling you, you can train monkeys to assemble computers, and here’s proof, there was a series in The Sun newspaper about six months ago , explaining to sun readers how to build your own computer, step by step, with a couple page three totties, showing us the procedure in photographic form. Lets face it if a sun reader can build a computer, anyone can!. I wonder how many of them actually worked?

What I am saying is , basically you can build your own Colossus ( the first electronic computer, see pics) in a biscuit tin if you wanted to all you need is a few cheap components, and where do you get those from, why, PC world of course!!!

Wether you are starting from scratch, or upgrading you already existing, but somewhat pedestrian PC, get your self down to PC world and bag yourself some goodies. The point is that for a little research, and a bit of application, you can build your self a MONSTER comp, for a fraction of the cost they will charge you in the shops for a branded system , and of course it’s much more fun!!!?

The only place I have found similar spec components for less, is at these computer fairs that do the rounds, we have one twice a month up here ‘Northern Computer Markets’, or something, and they really do have cheap I mean CHEAP stuff, the trouble is they are only there once a fortnight, and if you can’t wait your stuffed, so it’s back to PC world. The only trouble with computer fairs by comparison is that, you do get SOME fly by night johnnys who’ll sell you a box of scrap Iron, and you’ll be pressed to get your money back if the stuff you bought is crap. Though these are generally a couples of bad apples in a relatively sweet barrel of granny smiths.

If you want a bit more security over where you spend your money, then stick with one of the major retailers like PC world, you are likely to have a bit more consistent customer service.

There is always something on offer at PC world, I bought a cd re-writer for about £100 quid a few years back, which had a whopping, £50 quid off, and I noticed just the other week when I went in to get this other stuff, it was down to £50, bloomin ’eck I felt sick as a dog, having said that I’ve had mine a year or two and you can’t wait for prices to come to rock bottom every time or you’d never get anything.

In terms of customer service on the shop floor I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with oily sales assistants trying to get their quota of sales for the week, which is a good thing!, in fact most of them looked as if they couldn’t care less. You can’t really generalise a company, over the behaviour of staff in on shop, but they acted like they couldn’t give a toss. Most of them were very busy stocking the shelves, I admit, but I had to lay in wait behind the floppy disks waiting to pounce on one of the unsuspecting fellows as he went past with an armful of cd ROMs. They’re not exactly boffins, but I got the impression they did have SOME knowledge of computers and how they work, and what kind of stock they carried, which I suppose is the main thing. Though I did get the feeling on occasion that I knew more about what I was on about than they did and that isn’t encyclopaedic.

If you don’t have a PC world near you, don’t panic, presumably you have Internet or you wouldn’t be reading this, the PC world web site, www.pcworld.co.uk, is pretty comprehensive and carries all the stock that is available in the stores, and often some Internet exclusive deals as well. At the moment there are SUMMER Super Savers, which is an assorted collection of computer related hardware ranging from, those satellite navigation systems, for those of you who want the voice of a backseat driver, nagging in your ear’ole, about which turning to take every two seconds, and don’t have a wife or a girlfriend to do it, to digital cameras, for those of you who do have a wife or a girlfriend and would like a picture of them, for when you’re apart, to a complete Intel Celeron computer package, £120 pounds off for those of you, who don’t buy the SUN, or are too lazy, or too busy to build your own.

I looked up the items I bought the other day to find they were exactly the same price, the usb cable I bought and the usb hub. The site is relatively easy to navigate, not particularly pretty, it’s on a par with Currys, Comet, Dixons, etc, laid out in the same way, with 9 categories to choose from or, the usual search tools where you can type in a key word, and have several results that match your enquiry.

You can choose categories from;

01. Computers
02. Printers
03. Upgrades
04. PC Software
05. Gaming
06. Digital Imaging
07. MP3
08. Accessories
09. Component Shop

Having located your item you can pay for it in the usual way, there is the bog standard Shopping cart” system , and they will take all major credit, and debit card, including switch and solo, though I can’t vouch for electron it’s seems to be a bit of a bogey card that nobody want’s to take. Does any one know the story to that? Because I’ve just had one foisted on me by my bank.

The delivery charges are as follows:

Order Value Delivery Charge

Under £50.00 £4.99

Orders between £50.01 and £400.00 £9.99

Orders over £400.01 £19.99

Pretty reasonable I suppose but you may want to use the web sites Store finder facility, which will tell you were your nearest branch is, and save you a few pennies if you have one just around the corner. Simply type in your postcode. The actual delivery times are actually at a snails pace, 5-7 working days which is APPALLING service considering many online retailers offer 24 hours these days.... come on PC world pull yer flamin’ finger out I could have built a flippin’ PC in that time!!!!!

I’ve never been knowingly ripped off by PC world, and have never had a bad experience with them, but I’m sure there are some of you out there now cringing with rage , with a horror story of your own about PC world, I can only say it hasn’t happened to me yet.

Anyway I’ve got me a super computer to build so I’ll be off, I’m hacking in to the Whitehouse mainframe to see what chicken George is up to, ... I just need to connect the fingy, to the whotsit................dhurrr.......then, that cable to the doo dahr........der fliberdy bing to dee......bibbledy ding....and .....er....er.....er.................where’d I put dat copy of der SUN......?