While I lived in Edinburgh, I largely stuck with local PC part resellers such as Ideal Computing or Silicon Group for my PC building needs. My move south to Macclesfield changed that and it was only later that I found a counterpart to these in the shape of the now defunct Heaton Chapel outlet of MicroDirect, a short train ride away.Now that MicroDirect has concentrated all its activities at its Manchester outlet, I’ll be keeping an eye out for something like the Heaton Chapel one again.
Online retailers have seen a certain amount of custom from me too though the delivery arrangements haven’t been the most convenient. My current job allows for working from home and this does help but the sight of Saturday and evening delivery still retains its attraction even if this is a more expensive option. The last thing that I’d like to do is go annoying neighbours but traipsing around the country to courier depots isn’t so great either. That’s why having a handy well-stocked store not far away from me is the better option.
15 years of making purchases does have you encountering a few computer equipment resellers and many of those companies listed below have seen some business from me from time to time. Being easy to please means that I rarely have cause for complaint with any of the ones with which I have had dealings though delivery is a constant bugbear with online outlets. This should be a living list and, in these more testing times, some of the listed businesses may fail or others may take their place but I’ll be keeping an eye on whatever happens.
This surely has to be a strange entry to have at the top of this list yet they seem to have a greater range of laptop computers than PC World! My HP Pavilion dm4 came from one of their stores and it has been a successful purchase too. Otherwise, various items such as mobile broadband modems and even an external Seagate 2TB hard drive have been acquired from them. When it comes to computing hardware, it seems that all that’s missing are PC components such as internal hard drives. It’s amazing how mainstream computing has become these days.
My first purchase from these people dates from a time when I didn’t possess a debit or credit card and was a graphics card that I struggled to get working before eventually retiring the thing. Since then, orders of software and other items (an iPod Nano included) seem to come to mind from this Bolton-based survivor in the reseller arena.
It seems that PC Pro readers like this Yorkshire company a lot and I once had a work colleague who swore by them. Recently, I ordered a 2GB Western Digital hard disk from them. Service was prompt and the price was competitive too. So far, the disk is doing what’s asked of and that’s all anyone needs. Before that, there was an AMD Athlon CPU from a good few years ago and I seem to have the same recollections of their service from then too.
This was literally minutes away from me when I lived in Edinburgh so it was a regular haunt. After I moved to England, I veered towards online emporia and more local establishments but that’s not to say that I have stopped doing business there completely. For instance, I brought away a noisy Optiarc SATA DVD drive from the place while on a Christmas shopping excursion late last year. though the thought has crossed my mind. While I still was up north, I built the PC that was a key weapon during my campaign to enter the world of work using various components acquired here; the heart of the machine was an AMD K6 400 MHz CPU, 64 MB of RAM and several tens of gigabytes of hard drive space, more than acceptable at the time. Many of those purchases have been superseded with the passage of time but there are some that remain in use like the computer case from that first self-built PC. It is now over 12 years old now yet still doing what I ask of it, having outlasted a few PSU’s along the way; thrift is good.
This Tottenham, London concern escaped my notice until I decided to read a PC Pro review of laptops offering long battery life. Aside from laptop and desktop PC’s, they also deal in both photographic and audio/visual equipment. Interestingly, they are Apple resellers without being exclusively so. That means that PC’s capable of running Windows (or Linux) are stocked too.
For a while, these had a sales outlet in Heaton Chapel (straight across the road from the McVitie’s factory near Stockport and more like an annex to a warehouse than anything else) but you now have to travel to their Manchester one if you wish to buy over the counter. When they were located at the former, they are not so far away from me and I had come to value the convenience of the location with its proximity to train station on the same line as Macclesfield. However, that is no more and the loss is a shame and I’ll need to look elsewhere for a handy nearby provider of computer parts.
The Heaton Chapel shop saw me make a number of purchases from there, starting with a very useful Octigen Hard Drive enclosure for less than £20. That proved its worth when accessing files while my home computing systems went through a rough patch. That was followed by a TrendSonic PC midi-tower case, a DVD writer and an ASRock motherboard that have been used in the machine on which I am writing these words. The Iiyama ProLite B2409HDS 24″ screen that is my main PC display is another acquisition from there and looks as if it has been the last one too.
This bunch have a branch near me in Macclesfield and they are also in Manchester. An HP inkjet printer and a hard drive have been among the more notable acquisitions from them.
Formerly known as Simply, I had them supply me with a 1 TB Western Digital hard drive at the start of the year and there’s a lot more than that sort of thing that they have in stock.
I bought my first ever piece of RAM from these people (16 MB for a Dell XPS 133, if you are interested) and it proved to be a satisfactory purchase. After that, my patronage has been occasional rather than regular, the most biggest purchase from them being a bare bones PC set up that ended my home PC disorder. Seeing that Saturday delivery is available, even for a premium, I may be giving them more custom. Prior to the new box, the more mundane acquisition of a 2 GB USB drive was also something that I put their way but a memory upgrade was aborted due to incompatibility; the return was handled without toil. Recently, I got an 8 GB USB drive from them for backup purposes.
Every retail sector has had its pervasive names and here’s one for the PC sector though they have encroached on other complimentary areas as well these days. Expensive delivery charges mean that I have dealt with them through their bricks and mortar stores rather than online and the list of what I have purchased from their stores in Edinburgh, Stockport, Manchester and now Macclesfield rather does shock me but I have had dealings with them for more than a decade. Thinking about now, items bought there have included a Toshiba laptop bought in a January sale, an Epson printer and a now retired Canon scanner. Evening opening has ensured that an actual store can become a source of emergency purchases and that’s how it has been with PC World on a number of occasions like when a power supply has failed.
Formerly Watford Electronics until that company collapsed, these are the people to whom I tend to turn when my HP LaserJet 1018 needs toner (not too often since I don’t print very much at all these days). Otherwise, various items like a Guillemot Maxi Sound Muse sound card and Iiyama Pro Lite E431S 17″ LCD screen have come from there.
This is a Birmingham-based operation that gave itself an eye-catching name. It came to my notice as a result of perusing a PC Pro review of laptops featuring long battery life. Having to work away from home a certain amount these days, the short battery life (around sixty minutes) of my Toshiba Equium is grating and it’s not light either. Therefore, getting something a little lighter and with much better battery life would appeal. Given the selection that is available on this website, I’d be tempted to give it another look should I decide to make an investment. Netbooks are part of their offer and, perhaps surprisingly given the name, so do desktop PC’s and televisions.
Another reseller that was a short hop from my erstwhile home in Edinburgh and one that I have not revisited since, they have supplied me with a now dead modem (an electric storm saw to that) that got me onto the Internet at home for the first time and a 6.4 GB hard drive that served me well on the move from university to work remains in storage under the stairs these days.
I seem to keep passing this Macclesfield town centre store without actually going inside. Now that I have had a look at their website, that may change given an opportunity.
One more Macclesfield purveyor of computer goods and services, this one didn’t see my footfall until recently and purchases an internal IDE DVD writer and an external USB DVD writer became successes for me, proving that products from less well-known manufacturers have a place in the world too.