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Fry's Electronics Going Out of Business?
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mansaxel:
I've been to Fry's twice, once in Palo Alto, 2003. That was kinda cool. I remember they had Everything. Or so it seemed. (I was a bit younger then, but no kid) Went last year in Vegas, because I had to have a USB-C to old USB dongle. They had it, and it works. It's seen lots of use due to the current WFH situation because it's the practical way to connect my headset into the computer.

In Vegas, it was apparent that it was a decline.  Kind of sad. Looking from over here in Europe, Fry's was an important part of our perception of Silicon Valley culture.  Looking at it with slightly more sober eyes, well, back in the days when you could build competitive computers from scratch with jellybean parts they maybe were important, if ever.

I look at my visits there as bucket list tick marks and nothing more.
bson:

--- Quote from: cdev on August 22, 2020, 02:20:29 am ---Also, there is a chain here, that seems to be thriving, (East coast, US) MicroCenter. Why is Micro Center thriving? Maybe because electronics as a hobby is part of it, they sell computers too, and seem to be doing okay. Their prices are good. Their stores are fairly large.

--- End quote ---
There used to be a Micro Center along hwy 101 in Santa Clara.  I think I only went there a few times, once to pick up a rack mount ethernet switch and a couple of cheap rack mount 1U servers.  Handy.  But these days with so many sellers online, including Dell, I think a lot of people would rather save a little over an hour of driving (round trip) at the cost of waiting a day or two.  They shut in 2012, at least in that location off 101.
CatalinaWOW:
The beauty of Fry's and Halted and the like was discovering the things you didn't know you needed.  You can get some of that online but the experience is very different. 

But for buying things you know about already, I agree, online has some strong advantages.
Sal Ammoniac:

--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on August 27, 2020, 02:09:42 am ---The beauty of Fry's and Halted and the like was discovering the things you didn't know you needed.  You can get some of that online but the experience is very different.

--- End quote ---

The same applies to books. There’s just nothing like browsing through a bookstore and looking through books. Amazon has a lot bigger selection than any brick and mortar store, but it just doesn’t compare because you can only look at a book’s TOC and perhaps one sample chapter.

The Bay Area used to have two technical bookstores: Computer Literacy and Digital Guru. Computer Literacy had three stores in Silicon Valley, and the last one closed in 2001. Digital Guru was much smaller and lasted until a year or two ago. I spent untold hours in both places.

Most of the Barnes and Noble stores are gone too.
Ultrapurple:

--- Quote from: free_electron on August 23, 2020, 05:47:55 pm ---The prices in the bay area are nuts. A 2300 sq ft home , literally a box , with just enough land to place 2 chairs

<snip>

I bought my retirement property. Half an acre of land, huge pool and 1800 sq ft home . For 1/5th of a 2 bedroom condo in the bay area. Been working from here for the last 2 months.

--- End quote ---

@free_electron

Did you misplace an order of magnitude on the 2300 sq ft property or have I just misunderstood how things are measured?

Here in the UK, my home of ~1900 sq ft (2 floors, each ~950 sq ft gross) on a total plot of 3800 sq ft is what would be considered lower mid-range, though the plot size reflects the fact that it's >100 years old. New properties have markedly smaller plots, even in semi-rural areas.
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