I have always been, and will continue to be an advocate of online shopping. I get most of my stuff from one site or another, love the concept of shopping comparison (t’is the Indian in me), but, yesterday, when my motherboard deep fried itself, I couldn’t wait for replacements to arrive.

So: the walk down Tottenham Court Road, and inspection of a few shops. The prospects didn’t seem good: everything was significantly more expensive than the online prices I was aware of, and none of them filled me with the confidence that they could put the pieces together I needed. Then I got to a shop called Yoyotech: they were friendly, helpful, professional, competent, and actually quite charming. I spent half the day in there for one reason or another (some of the parts in the first build they gave me ended up being faulty but they resolved it for me seamlessly) and I was really rather impressed. You can imagine the stress losing a PC would cause a Technophile like me…

But I’m all back up and running now, and grateful to Serge, Courtney, and even Brian the wandering pro poker player (see you at the Gutshot!). Even Microsoft’s Product Activation helpline was particularly helpful for Vista’s inevitable hissy fit. I’m now I’ve got a shiny, eco-friendly Core2Duo powering the beast…

For the geekily curious, my ‘control station’ is powered by an Intel E6600, 3GB of RAM, Nvidia 7950GT graphics with dual monitors, Audigy2, and about 700GB of delicious storage)