Google Event

I was speaking at a Google seminar in Sheffield last week, the event was held at the new Electric Works building in the city and attended by 150 or so business people from the area.

The evening kicked off with an introduction from James Wilson of Creative Sheffield (the organisers of the event) who introduced Paul Scriven leader of Sheffield Council. Who must have one of the best email addresses I've ever seen - leader at sheffield .gov .uk. Then came the team from Google who talked about trends in online advertising, searching and how to create a good website in general.

Next it was my turn to get up and speak. I was there to talk about the business challenges we come across running MoreComputers.com and how we use our website and Google to overcome them. We use a lot of Google services including search, shopping and adwords. I was keen to help people see how we use them so they could relate to the theory from Google.

To round off the evening it was time for questions, some of which where aimed at me, so it was good to expand on what we do and how we do it. all in all it was a good evening and I'm hopeful we'll do something similar with Google soon.

Here's a link to the Google Event page on the Creative Sheffield site

Sheffield Award Winners

The local newspapers and BBC Radio Sheffield have been in touch to ask about our PC Pro award win. Our MD Chris Wheater was invited on to the Gareth Evans radio show to chat about the big win, online shopping and they even got on to Sinclair Spectrums and Manic Miner at one point.

Our local papers The Star and The Telegraph have printed the news, with headlines 'Logging on for award - computer firms key to success' and 'IT firm scoops on-line award'. One paper described me an an 'Internet Diamond', I'm thinking about getting that printed on a T-shirt or at least my business cards.

Here's one of the PC Pro Awards articles that made it online.

Windows 7 versions

I spent a couple of hours yesterday trying to make sense of all the new Windows 7 products. When I started we had 18 different Windows 7 products listed on the site. Half of them were Microsoft's N versions, these are the same price but with Media Player removed. Apparently Microsoft have to produce this version due to a European Commission fine back when XP was launched.

So I've removed the N versions. I then went on to divide up the other options into three categories. The full version for clean installs, the upgrade version for when you already have older Windows and the anytime upgrade for upgrading from one version of Windows 7 to another.

Within all these categories you get to choose from Home Premium, Professional and Ultimate versions.

Here's a few links you may find helpful when choosing which version is right for you:

MoreComputers Windows 7 page
PC Pro's everything you need to know about Windows 7 pages
Cnet's Crave blog about Windows 7 N versions page

I would post some links to the Microsoft site but I can't get on it today - must be a busy day for them. Will update this post when I can get access to their site.

Windows 7 upgrades

If you have purchased a new PC or Laptop after June 26th 2009 (or are planning to purchase - up to January 31st 2010) with Windows Vista (Home Premium, Business or Ultimate), then you may be entitled to the ´FREE´ Windows 7 Upgrade Option.

Windows 7 becomes available on October 22nd 2009 so any upgrade will be available after this date. Please note that some models may not be eligible for the upgrade offer, please check with the manufacturer before purchase. You can order your Windows 7 Upgrade kit from the manufacturers.

Here's a list of links to the right pages on the manufacturers websites:

Lenovo Windows 7 upgrade
Samsung Windows 7 upgrade
Sony Vaio Windows 7 upgrade
Toshiba Windows 7 upgrade
HP Windows 7 upgrade
Fujitsu Windows 7 upgrade
Asus Windows 7 upgrade
Acer Windows 7 upgrade

More products from more suppliers

We've been actively looking to expand our range of products and find alternative suppliers for existing stuff. We're now working with several new UK distributors and our range has grown from 40,000 to 60,000 items.

In terms of new products we've added brands like Cables To Go, Corsair, Freecom, Monster, OCZ, and Swann just to name a few.

The other reason to look for new suppliers is to improve the pricing and stock availability on products we already sell. It's especially relevent at the moment with the recession still making things tough for everyone, all of the UK distributors have been running their stock down, which has a knock on effect for retailers.

The good news is stock availability is starting to improve and I think it's fair to say our suppliers are feeling a little more optimistic.

New look MoreComputers.com

Our site has had some major 'look and feel' developments and feedback so far has been very positive. We decided to do something different from the normal formula for online shops which all seem to follow a very similar format. In our new site we're trying to introduce our own graphical look, to hopefully make us a bit more memorable

At this stage in the development we've kept the features and functions of the previous site and tried to lay them out in a more logical way, whilst introducing the new design elements. Apologies if you find something has moved and it takes you a bit longer to find it again.

We do have a list of things to improve within the new design, not least making it more compatible with the older versions of Internet Explorer. The new design does work much better than past designs on Mac Safari.

It would be great to get your feedback on the new look or simple anything about the site. Please leave a comment here and I'll be sure to discuss it with the team.

PC Pro Awards 2009 Winner

A big thank you to everyone who took part in the 2009 PC Pro service and reliability survey. I'm thrilled to say we won the 'best online retailer' category and maintained our 6 out of 6 stars for customer service for the forth year in a row. Well done to the customer service team!

We beat off some big household names like Amazon, Argos, Dixons and 27 other retailers to win. PC Pro had this to say:
'The online vendors category has more competition than any other, with over 30 companies rated here. To stand out takes something special, and Morecomputers clearly has it, with customer service being key to its success: it scored a 94% satisfaction rating, compared to the industry average of 85%, and it was universally praised for its delivery accuracy and punctuality too'.

It's always nice to win awards, but it's the customer voted for awards that mean the most to us and with 14,000 people taking part in the survey these are the biggest in the IT industry.

You can see more details on the PC Pro Awards 2009 site

Chris Wheater MD at More accepts the award for Best Online Retailer from comedian Hugh Dennis