What content would you want to see in a computer site?

[cukusa]

What content would you find interesting or important to include in a computer biz site?  Would free video game trials be important to have?  How about lists of drivers of various brands and models of laptops and desktops?  I would really like to get your input from a user's perspective.  Thanks

[DaveLembke]

It would be nice to have 1 place to get it all from.... but at what cost?

Free is good, but businesses dont make money giving stuff away, so in addition to your questions I am curious as to how you will create revenue for a site like this?

A perfect site for me would be one that has:

- All Drivers including Legacy Drivers going back 20 years for all "supported" operating systems that the drivers were originally created for.
- Downloadable ISO images to perform system recovery for systems that people failed to create the recovery set and their system is useless without this. (*This might meet some resistance from the PC manufacturers who charge up to $40 for each set, but on ebay its a thriving business for people to clone recovery media and sell it for a fraction of what the OEM is offering the disc's for. Quality of the cloned media from ebay is questionable.

Then after that, anything else it has is just icing on the cake.

For the 2 key needs I as well as many others have that I listed above, you would need a lot of storage space for all that data and a top of the line high bandwidth internet backbone to allow downloading of multiple Gigs of data per user.

[cukusa]

I'm a marketing director for a computer reseller.  We already have a site but I think its important to figure out what peope REALLY want instead of what companies think people want.  I think it would be great to offer free video game downloads, offer free downloads for laptop and desktop brands and models.  It would offer exactly what you suggested....one place to get it all.  Computers for sale is obvious, but I want to know what else would entice people to come to the site.  I, like you, would rather go to one place and get everything I need instead of hopping all over the place.  But thats just me, I want to know what the rest of the populace think.

[BC_Programmer]

ISO images of system recovery media for systems that are on offer as well as driver downloads for those systems (ideally in a single download, which adds value over going to the manufacturer website) add real value to a computer reseller website. Generally, if you need a driver for some a systems, occasionally the manufacturer deleted their driver downloads. a user with such a system would have to scour through pages of results to find a cached website that has an obscure filename, but for which the download was removed, then take that filename and do a search again to find some deeply-nested FTP folder that has that file. Doing that- and curating the driver software for systems that are being resold, is a real, purposeful task that adds values to a consumer's visit. Being able to download a video game adds no value. They didn't visit the website to play games!

[camerongray]

You need to think about what would actually benefit you as a business.  I'd expect a website like yours to contain the store for the machines you sell and on top of that include support information for the specific machines you sell (e.g. drivers, recovery media and manuals).  Then of course you need information such as contact details, terms and conditions and delivery information.

I don't see where game downloads are going to provide any benefit, I doubt people are going to download a game and think "hey, I'll buy a PC" - All they will do is use your server bandwidth which in the end will cost money.

A website isn't like a shopping mall where you want to have everything in one place.  I'd much rather see a website that does one thing and does it well (PC sales and support for those machines), leave the game downloads to game sites.  If you are looking to go shopping you would likely pick a mall that has the widest selection of stores, websites are different. When people are searching for something on the internet, they go to a search engine and enter what they want, they don't think go to a single website and expect it to have what they want.  Things unrelated to your core business will just clutter the website and won't provide any benefit at all, if I went to a website to buy a PC and saw them offering game downloads, I'd be more confused than anything.