We’re here to support you over the festive break.

We can’t believe it, another year has passed. December is a really exciting month for us, with many of our clients closing for all or parts of the holiday break we work hard in the background carrying out maintenance and planned upgrades to the networks we support.

We do however take a few days off – but don’t worry – we’ve strategically placed these to ensure you still have access to support on the working days during the period.

Please see the dates and times that our help desk is available:

Monday 24th December – 9am until 6pm
Tuesday 25th December – Closed All Day
Wednesday 26th December – Closed All Day
Thursday 27th December - 9am until 6pm
Friday 28th December - 9am until 6pm

Monday 31st December – Closed All Day
Tuesday 1st January – Closed All Day
Wednesday 2nd January – Closed All Day
Thursday 3rd January - 9am until 6pm
Friday 4th January - 9am until 6pm

We ask that you notify Sion Griffith, Service Director, sion.griffith@pcrbusiness.co.uk, if you have any special requests. We’ll do our best to accommodate.

From all the team at PCR, we wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Debra joined the team in April 2012 and provides a bookkeeping and payroll services to PCR through her own business, Bluejay Office Services. When not working with PCR or other clients she spends time networking. And, of course, having 3 daughters and 1 grandson all living at home keeps her very busy – but she still finds time to read, socialise and loves music festivals.

Robin joined the PCR team in February 2012 as Diary Manager. His main objectives are to cleanse customer data, source new customers, arrange appointments for potential IT Support Contracts and deal with Nick’s diary appointments on a daily basis. Robin has also been actively involved in Am-dram for over 30 years and has appeared on stage at the Kings Theatre, Theatre Royal, Palace Theatre Kilmarnock, Gaiety Theatre Ayr and Eastwood Theatre.

We’re Moving!

The PCR team are excited to announce that as of Monday 23rd July we’ll be in our new office.

We’ve come a long way since our managing director Nick Cohen started the empire from his own bedroom in 2004. As of Monday 23rd July, our sister services, PC Repair, will be sold following a successful eight and a half years. It was this very business that pathed the way for our business services which opened in 2009. Nick says “I’m really proud of what PC Repair and my great team of IT experts have achieved over the years. Time has definitely come to part with PC Repair, allowing my team to focus on our business services”

Our new address as of Monday 23rd July is:

249 High Street
Glasgow
G4 0QR

All contact details remain the same. To log a fault, email support@pcrbusiness.co.uk or call 0141 644 8960. Over the coming weeks and months we will be welcoming new clients and new services. We’re excited about our new telecoms services, coming your way in 2013. The team thank you for your continued support over the years and we look forward to fixing your ITproblems in the months and years to come.

Kind Regards,

The PCR Geeks
Your IT Department

Commenting on the judging, Suzanne Shinnie, President of JCI Edinburgh, says: “It has been incredibly difficult this year as we’ve had entries across many different sectors and industries with very new businesses and quite established businesses all competing for this award. The standard of applications get higher every year so it’s a great achievement to be shortlisted.”

The Award will be announced at a glittering ceremony in Edinburgh next week, with our Managing Director Nick Cohen in attendance along with family members. The timing couldn’t be better, as Nick points out: “My brother is visiting next week from Australia so I’m really happy to make it a bit of a family occasion as well as a welcome chance to celebrate recognition for the business.”

The national winner will automatically go through to the JCI international competition and the Scottish judges may recognise up to two others to be put forward as being representative of good Scottish Creative Entrepreneurism. Keep your fingers crossed for us!

You may find that sites are directing you more obviously to their privacy policies, even introducing a policy at all – or more obviously, incorporating a pop-up information box referring to ‘cookies’.

So what’s it all about? Well the EU issued a privacy directive last year regarding how personal data is collected and the control of how it is used, and this is now coming into effect for UK websites. Many websites drop a ‘cookie’ – a few lines of code – onto the user’s computer in order to personalise their browsing experience. You might see this as a ‘Hello again’ message on a website, or as remembered goods in an online basket.

The effect of the EU directive is that a user should now be informed when a cookie is being collected, why that cookie is there and when that cookie is being used.

In the majority of cases cookies are nothing to fear – they enhance your online experience and are more commonly associated with being able to provide general reports about what pages of a website are popular or searched for most often – these are called analytics.

You have probably noticed we’ve introduced our own cookie policy. When you land on our site please take a moment to read through it.

And by the way, cookies are a very different thing from viruses – which are malicious programs designed to affect your normal computer operations. These are often accidentally downloaded to a computer through the user clicking on a link or email attachment. Our advice is, don’t click on a link or any attachment if you don’t trust the source. And make sure you install good antivirus software such as Kaspersky and make sure it’s kept up to date.

We can help if you have questions on any of the above – just get in touch!

The day wouldn’t have been a success without SIFE, with students from Strathclyde University helping us promote the Treasure Hunt all across Glasgow, as well as looking after the young participants on the day. Likewise, Find Me Glasgow were fantastic at arranging the prizes and organising the hunt. At the end of the day, the remainder of the chocolate eggs were donated to Yorkhill Hospital. We hoped to spread some Easter cheer there too and we absolutely succeeded!

PC Repair has come a long way since our managing director Nick Cohen started the empire from his own bedroom in 2004.
Eight years on, Nick manages a staff of eight, two PC Repair shops and of course PCR Business – and offers a huge additional range of services, not just the repair of PC desktops.

Nick says “I’m really proud of what PC Repair and my great team of IT experts have achieved over the years. But – as our picture shows – we’re definitely too big for the bed now so thank goodness the days of repairing from my house are well past!”

Celebrations are in full swing at PC Repair’s Glasgow South Side and City Centre locations this week. Nick adds: “We can’t promise there’ll be any birthday cake left but want to say thanks to all of our customers for supporting us and helping us to grow.”

What does this mean? Well – from March 1st Google can share any data it has on your searches, site visits etc with its other products – such as YouTube or Google+

Search data isn’t just about that important work-related desk research, as we all know – in fact it could reveal your location, sexual orientation, health concerns and, well, just about anything else. Bearing this in mind you might want to consider stopping Google from recording your web history in the future. It just takes a couple of minutes, here’s how:

1. Sign into your Google account.

2. Go to https://www.google.com/history

3. Click “remove all Web History.”

4. Click “ok.” and your history is removed and left in a paused state.

5. Do this for any of your Google accounts.

But as he’s currently travelling in Asia, he’ll be hooking up the mobile technology to keep an eye on the Scottish Business Awards results and – of course – will be wearing his virtual dinner suit to mark the occasion!

Nick has been nominated in the Young Entrepreneur of the Year category and the PC Repair and PCR Businesses have been scrutinised over the last few months by a prestigious judging panel chaired by Duncan Bannatyne.

Nick says “We are delighted to be at this stage and among some of the best known Scottish businesses also shortlisted for the various categories.” He adds “It’s disappointing not to be there for the event but I’ll be looking out for tweets and web announcements and I know my technology won’t let me down!”