A big thank you once again to all our customers and the readers of PC Advisor for voting for us. Not to mention a big thank you and well done to the MoreFrom customer service team. Proving once again they really are something special.
It was a great night and I'd like to say thanks to PC Advisor for putting it together.
The doorbell rang at MoreFrom HQ the other day and a lecturer from the local Wisewood School & Community Sports College started to apologise. He apologised for dropping in un announced, but it turned out he had good reason. One of his students, 16 year old Connor Plant, was in the process of building two very unusual PCs in a bid to win a national competition.
His lecturer explained that Connor was working on new designs for the final and that they were hoping MoreFrom could help out by providing some internal components. It sounded like a great achievement to have made it to the final and we were only to happy to help.
The new cases, one a in the style of a traditional piece of wooden furniture and the other, an ultra modern sculpture. Both designs take advantage of the Intel Mini-ITX motherboard at 17cm2, about the size of a Mac Mini, it's incredibly small and has CPU and graphics built-in.
We were also able to loan Connor some monitors and keyboards so he could demonstrate his new creations at The Big Bang fair. The Big Bang 2011 was held at ICC London ExCeL from 10 - 12 March, 25,000 people attended. The headline shows included Sky 1's Brainiac Live!, BBC's Bang Goes the Theory and BBC's Wallace & Gromit 'World of Invention' roadshow.
Connor didn't manage to add the overall title to his impressive list of awards, but he looks set to follow in the footsteps of previous winner Ruth Amos, also from Sheffield. Ruth won the 2006 competition and has since gone on to set up her own company StairSteady as a result of her success.
We wish Connor every success for his future and who knows one day he may be challenging the British designer Jonathan Ive for Apple's top job.
In today's economy, saving money on your office equipment is so important to make your annual budget go further.
Samsung have recently announced they are extending the warranty period on selected printers from 1 year to 5. This means your investment will be covered for a large part of it's life.
The offer will save you around £200 - based on the fact a 2-year extended warranty normally costs £100.
The MoreFrom Group websites list all of the qualifying printers and I have added a link to the Samsung terms on each product page.
Like most offers, there's an expiry date - for this one it's 30th June 2011. If you have already purchased one of these selected units after 10th January 2011, you qualify too! You must however register your warranty within 3 month of purchase.
This is a great offer, and will hopefully save you a lot of money.
With rumours of the iPad 2 media preview due to take place on Wednesday, I’m taking a look at all that the Apple Rumour Mill is churning out, and what we can potentially expect from Apple over the next year…
iPhone 5
Well… there’s not too much hot gossip on the iPhone 5 – only this; an apparent leak of the new screen for the next Apple phone. It’s the bezel of the new potential iPhone 5 screen, which is much bigger than the one of the iPhone 4. Whether or not we will see this on the next Apple phone, who knows – I will keep my ears to the ground for the next set of iPhone 5 rumours the Apple grinder kicks out.
Is Apple’s head designer heading home?
Head of Industrial Design and the man behind the iPhone, iPod, iPad and the MacBook, British born Jonathan Ives is rumoured to be leaving the Apple HQ and heading home to the UK so that his children can attend school here.
Whilst I think it’s sweet that he wants to educate his kids in England, this teamed with an unwell Steve Jobs would create a cloud of uncertainty for Apple, which could impact their future products and share prices. I hope he does stay a little longer as, being the Apple-a-holic that I am, I want him to continue producing more fantastic gadgets for me to play with… and of course, review for all of you.
iPad 2
At the International CES technology conference, mock-ups of how the new iPad 2 will look have been leaked – the next model has a flatter back and will be slimmer at just 9.8mm, which is 4mm sleeker than the original model.
Matching the iPhone 4, there are front and back cameras to enable facetime and back left of the new model hosts a huge speaker to play the 128GB worth of music and films you can store on it. We'll also be getting a USB port and enquiring minds would really like to know if we can run Microsoft Office on this version. Is it any different aesthetically? Not really… Will the technology behind the new model blow us all away? I hope so…
It may be lighter, there is talk of a white version and expect a retina display iPad to blow away the competition. The thinking is it will be dual-core as all the tablets are taking this road in 2011.
Unsurprisingly the media launch in San Fran, is on March the 2nd - the UK event is set to take place at the BBC Television Centre in London on the same date. The press invites see an Apple iOS calendar peeling away to reveal the top right hand corner of an iPad, tantalisingly not showing evidence of facetime or..... anything.
However, there is a chance that this mock up is just to throw us off the scent, rumour also has it that this iPad 2 is the new ‘Big Thing’ to come out of Apple HQ, fully equipped with new apps such as iMilk, iFire and iMotivator:
In case you didn't believe us, this is me picking up our award for Best Specialist Online IT Retailer at the 2011 PC Advisor Awards. You can see the full rogues gallery on PC Advisor's Facebook page. Including what could well be my worst photo ever (not going to put it here).
