Tottenham Court Road – 31st March 2012
Well we’ve made it, despite the fuel shortages we’re at the fair today! I can’t help but be baffled though by the lorry driver I was acosted by this morning as I filled up with an almighty £10. According to him, in all seriousness it’s people like me who caused the jams by only filling up with a mere £10 a time. I couldn’t quite get through to him that changing my usual buying habits would constitute PANIC BUYING! He also told me that £10 was not enough these days to get to London. All I can say is he should’ve bought a Golf!
Aside from that this week’s big issue is the lack of security in ‘that other big brand operating system’. Having spent nearly a day and a half weeding out the SysWOW64 virus from a laptop I have to admit to being thoroughly hacked off with Windows! As I sat there installing the system for the second time in a row I couldn’t help but reflect on how everything that was being asked of this laptop could easily be handled by Ubuntu and how that install could be done in literally less time than it takes for the Windows 7 installer to boot off the CD!
It turned out in the end that when Windows installs on the system it notices the previous install and saves the whole thing in a directory called windows.old, viruses and all. The result is a system that comes pre-infected and so is utterly useless. Why oh why do people keep paying for the farce that is the Microsoft product range? I mean on the Xbox 360 if you do something they consider to be naughty on their gaming platform or get caught tinkering with the hardware they ban you, not just your account but your hardware too. ‘We’re sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Johnny has broken the T’s & C’s, you’ll have to pour more money into our profit margin and go out and replace your perfectly good console’. We wouldn’t stand for this in any other product would we? Imagine accidentally missing the deadline on your parking ticket and finding out your brand new £50,000 VW no longer starts as a result, would you just go out and buy another? Or would you be outraged? What if you dared to flick your TV over to the adult channel, or worse, big brother? Only to find out yout 50″ widescreen no longer turned on.
Why do Microsoft have the ability to treat their customers like dirt and deliver them shoddy products at a premium price and yet still stifle the competition? It’s beyond me!
As for the fair today, the recent run of low takings continues and I’m having serious thoughts about other business models. Expect to find a more local based focus in coming weeks involving b2b networking to promote the PAT testing and IT support in the small business arena. We will also promote IT to the home market as well as the console repairs. These things can be done very cheaply and the potential for repeat business is exponentially higher. Over the next two weeks we will be focused on car boot sales, just to see how they go.
