“We wont be beaten on price” and “Stamping down on prices” - two key phrases used in all of PC World’s advertising which means very very little.

Yesterday I was at PC World with Andrew when we decided to have a little fun with their shiny demo Mac Book Pro (which they hide behind a plastic thing so you really don’t get a good idea of display quality)… anyway, they claim that they won’t be beaten on price so I can only imagine the look on the faces of staff (and other customers) when they looked at the screen to find a web page displayed showing a lower price from a very nearby Apple reseller… (on a macbook pro that isn’t connected to the internet in PC World :P)

Also, on the wont be beaten on price. PC World and Staples are right next to each other at Finneston.

NETGEAR WGE111 - PC World Price - £79.99
NETGEAR WGE111 - Staples (an office supplies company) Price - £49.99

You only have to walk about 12 feet to find a better price on most of their networking gear.

As you all know I have a habit of photographing signs that either amuse me, or make no sense, or are just bizarre in some other way… This one is a recent biscuit-taker

It’s a recovery company, that advertises (prominently) a 24 HOUR CALL OUT service with an 0141 number… then underneath has printed “Out of hours, please call” and two mobile numbers. So, when exactly is out of hours for a 24 hour call out service?

(in past experience things like 24 hour technical support seem to mean you’ll wait 24 hours for it more than anything else :P)

I really don’t like this new message that appears at the start of every film now (and I’m not alone in photographing them!). The message reads;

You are not permitted to use any camera or
recording equipment in this cinema.
This will be treated as an attempt to breach copyright.
Any person doing so can be ejected and such
articles may be confiscated by the police.
We ask the audience to be vigilant against
any such activity and report any matters
arousing suspicion to cinema staff.

Well the first part of that is fair enough - you can’t use a camera in a cinema… But the second part I object to “We ask the audience….” great, you make me pay £5.70 or whatever for a ticket then expect me to do your job for you!

The cinema staff should be vigilant and deal with “any matters arousing suspicion” by themselves, leaving us law abiding paying movie-goers free to enjoy the movie. But then again considering any time i’ve reported other things (like the WRONG LENS ON THE PROJECTOR! - hence silly aspect ratio) i’ve had a less than useful response, I don’t fancy my chances much at getting them to eject someone taping the thing. Besides - most piratae copies now originate from the PROJECTION BOOTH - i.e. their own staff are responsible for it.

Anyway, join this wonderfully ironic silent protest that various people over the net seem to have started simultaneously - photograph the message!

Whilst the old “Where in the world” adverts seem to have finally gone the sillyness that is PC World hasn’t really changed one bit.
I reluctantly had to drop by there to purchase a switch and for obvious reasons couldn’t help be nosey at our competitor’s Apple offerings….

Firstly which of these two iSight cameras worth £99 would you steal if you were a theif… The alarmed one or the two alarm-free ones beside it? Why not leave the alarmed ones out, and hide the others behind glass as they seem to do with everything else (including laptop screens, which makes it impossible to evaluate the characteristics of the display!)

Next up, the iMac. There are two iMacs currently available and admittedly due to the impending move JustMac doesnt have either on display, however at least we provide honest and accurate information on them. PC World currently has a 17″ Intel Core Duo iMac (at the standard Apple price) and a 20″ iMac G5 (at the old Apple price) - presumably they have some sort of stockpile of these that they have to shift, but still, it’s now an EOL (End of Life) Discontinued Product. They could at least offer them at clearance price or mention that there IS a new iMac!!

They don’t have a MacBook Pro (which we do, but I think we’re the only people that have one on demo locally at the moment!) or even make any mention of it’s existance and the iBooks on demo have the obligatory missing keys (although remarkably the remotes haven’t been stolen from the side of the iMacs!)

Throught their store they have the old rainbow colour Apple logo everywhere, with text relating to Apple products including on their little information sheets (which all look as if they’ve been printed on some really old printer with a dodgy paper feed) set in the old Garamond typeface.

Not to mention the staff know nothing about Macs, and the OS on the Macs themselves are regularly defaced by bored kids renaming the Hard Drive, deleting Applications etc. Why oh why don’t they lock them down in the same way as their Windows machines, or at least use a NON-ADMINISTRATOR user account for demonstration.

No wonder people who buy from PC World don’t consider the Mac platform properly, I think it’s about that either the staff at PC World or those within Apple that are responsible for keeping an eye on them, think different.

We are sooo unprepared for this weather in Glasgow. Last night apparantly there was no taxi service in the city centre so thousands of people who’d been at clubs etc as this unfolded were stranded in the city for hours!

This was my street this afternoon at around 2.30 with rather more cars on it than usual as most people were probably more sensible than us, however we proceeded to try and dig the car out of over a foot of snow (worsened by the fact the road had been ploughed I’m guessing) to go to the supermarket for a cooked chicken!!!

Parking however was much more fun point the car at the side of the road and hope we stop before we hit something, I’ll say one thing for my car - it has no issue with driving THROUGH snow, just getting out of it that seems to be a problem.

We recently took delivery of a number of the older G3 iMacs at the shop, well more accurately I drove them there in a Transit which is not exactly the most fun vehicle to get down the lane.

The arrival of the iMacs did give us an interesting storage problem which was met with some interesting reactions from customers.