Our local PC World was never very great, a big shed of expensive technical stuff. But at least they had ‘stuff’ used by techies and were sometimes useful when you really needed a PCI wifi card for instance and needed it now. Otherwise you buy such stuff online at sites like dabs

Not having been for a few years a recent trip was a huge disappointment, they seem to have merged with the next-door Currys(?) to become some hybrid white & technical goods monster and ending up doing neither very well. Lots of machines to buy but very little in the way of components I’d want. They seem to have tried moving up the food chain to just selling and fixing laptops, PCs and the likes. I won’t be going there again, so I’ll just have to plan ahead a bit more and buy online.

The other half of the store seemed packed with massive flat screen TVs. On leaving I chatted with a couple also disappointed because they were looking for a more manageable sized screen for a flat. It’s really not good when two customers can leave critical with both sides of the business. Choose what your doing and do it well, jack-of-all-trades is one of the issues that sunk Woolworths, so I don’t hold much a future for PC World IMHO.

It does raise the issue of a business space for a decent technical shed: lots of components, advice and smooth customer service. Anyone with some millions to invest contact me!