And to drop myself in it, I'll also admit to buying injket cartridges from
PC World, but only because they charge the same as John Lewis and have more
in stock.

They don't try to sell me an extended warranty (on a printer cartridge?),
but do insist on demanding to know if it's for business or personal use. I
tell them "both", just to confuse their system.

Everybody say "Awwww"...

The Dixon's Shops  no longer Have a market. The rest of the group Have P C
world Have all the computer stuff and digital. Curry's all the Audio range
and video + digital
Link the Phones. So Dixon's who started it all is no longer a necessary part
of the group.

Time to get back to one of my pet hobby horses - I reckon that anyone basing
a large part of their business on selling digital cameras specifically aimed
at consumers (as opposed to people who would describe themselves as
"photographers", be they amateur or professional), is setting themselves up
for a very big fall, and soon. I'm convinced that there is no future in the
stand-alone digital camera as a consumer product. Models aimed at amateur
and professional photographers will continue to sell, but the so-called
"point and shoot" models that people buy to take pictures of the kids, pet
dog, etc. are doomed.

And the reason I think they're doomed is because pretty soon, 3-5
megapixels, possibly with optical zoom lenses, will soon be standard
specification in mobile phones (at least in Europe and the Far East - north
America might take a couple of years longer to get there). If someone whose
only requirement from a camera is that it take occasional snapshots, which
they either print at a kiosk, or email to their friends already has one in
their phone, why on Earth are they going to bother buying a digital camera?

The traditional photographic manufacturers and retailers are in for a huge
kicking in this area. Low end, snapshot-type photography is going to belong
to the consumer electronics and phone giants in the next few years, and the
decline we have seen in 35mm will most likely happen to consumer digital
cameras as well, only it'll happen much faster this time. The photography
industry is trying to sell typewriters in the era of the word processor, and
it's going to suffer for it.

Don't forget that Dixons is much bigger than the eponymous shop - they own a
number of "pile 'em high, get spotty youths to talk bollocks about 'em and
sell 'em expensive with an extended warranty" chains, such as PC World and
Currys. Still, it has to be said that they're very much the Ratners of
consumer electronics retailing, and look what happened to them...

I sincerely hope you are not wrong.

;-)