Sorry, PC Industry: You’ve Apparently Managed to Perfect the PC

Bertison said:

Jimbo your words about Cadbury's are spot on, the relevance to the PC market is very clear.

Kraft was simply not the company that Cadbury should have got into bed with, here in the UK we are all watching the product and waiting for it to get *smaller/more expensive/taste worse/ or move production to the USA or some Eastern European country.

* Take your pick from one or more of these.

It's been happening for so long to so many British products, some mega-company comes along and swallows up one of our favourite brands, then manages to take away the factors that made it a favourite. One (if not all) of the causes, is UK management of the companies involved, which just wants to unload for mega bucks, then head off into tax exile.

Your mention of cheese, reminds me of a holiday I took in Canada in '82. I bought a Cheeseburger in B.C. which was smothered in some tasteless pap advertised as Cheddar cheese. "This ain't Cheddar" I told the guy who served it up. "Sure it is" he said " Do you know where Cheddar comes from buddy?" I asked "Yeah, it's made down the road at _____ (some Canadian Dairy place I cannot remember)"

When I pointed out that Cheddar was in fact a place in the beautiful county of Somerset, England, the guy was dumbfounded. He actually produced an atlas of the UK and I pointed out Cheddar to him.

There are many different foodstuffs like this from UK sources, which are sold under their original UK names all over the planet. Cheese is a good case in point, as there are literally thousands of named cheeses in the UK and very few get to keep the original name as a brand name. I live in Lincolnshire and we have many different "Lincolnshire" foodstuffs, one of which is the Lincolnshire sausage. The producers are struggling to get the EU to recognise it as a brand name, only to be produced in Lincolnshire.

French cheese, by the way, is regarded here as almost all semi-liquid rubbish.

Hi there
I like a lot of UK cheeses -- Caerphilly, Leicestershire red, Cheddar (as you mention), etc. The French also have a load of "Hard cheeses" if you don't like their "soft" ones -- I like Brie , Camembert etc.

The UK should export a lot more of these - it's very difficult to find any of this stuff outside the UK - we can get some where I am but it's hideously expensive.

I absolutely LOATHE all those "Pappy manufactured processed" bits of Goo --a la Kraft. Proper Cheese is really fine with decent wine or after a decent meal. -- Even the Thought of a Macdonald's Cheeseburger(???) would probably send me running to the bog to throw up.

One thing I learned when visiting the USA was on the whole unless you are in some parts of NYC where you have some really old Italian etc neighbourhoods and some really fine dining even in "cheap looking diners / Deli's" don't attempt ever to eat Cheese or their Bread (which rather looks like Cake) while in that country. - Fish etc can be great but the culinary taste of a lot of people from that great Nation apart from in NYC as I've mentioned leave IMO a lot to be desired.

However that's for another Forum.

Cheers
jimbo

Faladu said:

People poorer in general, not helpful, yet car prices go way up!?!

Are you an economist?

I think a very large part of the problem right now is the Windows 8 DEBACLE.

The bottom line is that most MS users do NOT like or want to be bothered using the Metro GUI, and they are equally pissed off that they are forced to boot to it as the default instead of having a choice. The start button is also another huge issue.

My personal experience is that when I speak to folks about buying a new PC (laptop or desktop) they are balking at having to get Windows 8, many would like to buy Windows 7 because of their dislike for the metro interface.

I am now using Linux Mint and am very pleased with it. If metro hadn't been forced on the consumer I would have purchased a product with Windows 8. They lost at least one customer because of forcing Metro for sure.