I was sad to see that Micro Anvika has gone into administration

Micro Anvika Store on Tottenham Court Road
I always found Micro Anvika trustworthy and knowledgeable – unlike a lot of “box shifters” on Geek Alley, who seem to know very little about what they are selling but will say anything they think the potential customer wants to hear.
Apparently, Micro Anvika’s administrators are hoping to sell off the stores as a going concern but, even if they succeed, what’s the betting that the reincarnation is staffed by the same calibre of personnel that you get in PC World. It’s not too hard to see the problem, though. Computers and their bits and pieces are complicated and ever-changing. It must be very difficult to get good quality, technically-minded staff if you only pay them normal retail staff rates. I never minded paying Micro Anvika the full retail price for the goods they sold me as I valued the technical help they provided and never had any problem if I had to return anything.

Apple it isn’t, but the Tottenham Court Road computer fair provides a valuable service
Maybe this is just a sign of increasing maturity of the computer industry. Nerdy people used to buy all kinds of add-ons and bells and whistles from these fairs that were either unavailable elsewhere or that were twice the price in places like Maplins and PC World. These days, all computers come with all the bells and whistles you could want. It’s not very often these days that I need to crawl under a client’s desk to take the cover off a desktop computer (and it’s even rarer on laptops). The only hardware upgrade I ever seem to undertake for clients these days is to increase the memory – and that can easily be bought online. The major retailers, such as PC World, have now also become much more competitively priced for some things (eg external drives and USB drives), so perhaps the normal shops are pricing the computer fairs out of the market. Mind you, it would be really painful paying Maplins or PC World prices for things such as cables. A standard USB cable, for instance, can cost under a pound in the computer fair but £8-£10 in a shop.

Apple in Regent Street

Interior of Apple in Regent Street