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