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Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

sfchronicle.com

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Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#321

Post by rblatz »

ansible wrote: post #281
mod50ack wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microcenter has worked for me in NY. And they match Amazon pricing.

Since I first saw the on-going demise of my local Fry's, I've been attempting to buy any computer parts from my local Microcenter, even if it is a little more expensive. I don't want them to go out of business too!

7 years ago I moved from a place with a microcenter to a place with frys. I was really excited since I heard so many great things, I was instantly disappointed. It just doesn’t compare.

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#322

Post by lightedman »

takeda wrote: post #211
nilram wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is not legal in many states, unless they have 'probable cause' or you pay a membership and agree to it beforehand (c.f. Costco).

Are you sure this is illegal? I saw other stores to do it as well, for example Home Depot in California. It's not like they are paying your down, just look at the receipt and your cart.

Technically, since you aren't letting me leave the store until you've performed some act, I'm being kidnapped. So, yes. Illegal.

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#323

Post by volkl48 »

tombert wrote: post #172
mod50ack wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microcenter has worked for me in NY. And they match Amazon pricing.

Second thumbs up for Micro Center. I like that they have a combination of consumer-level electronics, mid-level stuff like Raspberry Pis, and low-level stuff like resistors and whatnot. It's a bit of a pain for me to get to MicroCenter (about an hour one the train), but it has always been useful for me when I'm in a pinch. When I visit my parents in Orlando, there's a smaller place called "Skycraft" which has a lot o…

Tinkersphere Electronics, 152 Allen St (Manhattan) - as the name indicates, hobbyist focused.

Allstate Electronics - Jamaica Queens - Old school distributor, has basically every electronic component under the sun.

If you head out to NJ, there's a couple big shops as well (Wayne Electronics, Green Brook Electronics) but they're not transit-accessible or closer to the city.

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#324

Post by DonHopkins »

hobojones wrote: post #26

Once I became aware of Newegg and other online retailers, and trusted shopping form them, it was the end of Fry's for me. The Fry's close to me always had terrible products - off brand motherboards, orange stickered components, etc. For a period Fry's was my place to pick up emergency Cat 5 and other random components, but Home Depot/Lowe's sells quality product at far more convenient locations. I last visited the Re…

>In the mid-1990s, before high-speed internet connections made software easy to download, the stores served as a teenage hangout, allowing customers to play video games and try new hardware.

>[link:] PAGE ONE -- '90s Kids Find New Hangout -- Computer Store

https://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/PAGE-ONE-90s-Kids-F...

>Harrison's one complaint is that the game manuals are not near the demonstration computers. "You have to figure out what weapon to kill what people with on your own, and that's hard to do without the manual," he said.

In the late 70's - early 80's, I used to hang out at the mall Radio Shack after school with a few other regular kids, where we played games and learned to program BASIC on the TRS-80's.

They had a similar attitude about kids hanging out there, and gave us a place to store our cassette tapes, because it helped sell computers to the adult customers, who we would demonstrate the computers to all the time.

Plus we got to listen to great music (like "My Sharona" by The Knack, who were supposed to be the next Beatles) as the Radio Shack sales people sold stereos and speakers to customers.

Kids these days know "My Bologna" better than "My Sharona" and Weird Al better than the Beatles. (And JavaScript better than BASIC!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hxLaFJf9Jk

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#325

Post by ninguem2 »

williamstein wrote: post #287
ninguem2 wrote: post #24

I wonder what that means for the American Institute of Mathematics ( https://aimath.org/ ). It is partially sponsored by John Fry.

Having worked with AIM a lot over the years, I'm also very curious about this. In my experience, the people who work at AIM fulltime are very professional and experienced at putting together high quality grant proposals, and already receive substantial NSF funding. I'm thus optimistic that they can survive longterm without the direct support of John Fry.

Yeah, but right now their location is in Fry's headquarters and their promised permanent location (that Fry was building) is far from finished.

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#326

Post by chrischen »

linguae wrote: post #107

I usually purchase my computer components from Newegg. However, whenever I was impatient or pressed for time, I used to go to Fry’s. I remember one time in 2011 driving from Santa Cruz to Campbell to pick up a hard drive to replace one that suddenly failed; having to wait days for shipping would have been more inconvenient. Fry’s is a great convenience in these cases. It’s unfortunate to see Fry’s in the zombified st…

Everything in Tokyo is because of density.

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#327

Post by adrr »

spookthesunset wrote: post #213
LaMarseillaise wrote: post #72

I visited Fry's last week. The shelves in most of the store were empty. Much of the store was blocked off with caution tape, with buckets out to collect rain water dripping from the ceiling. I looked for graphics cards, but the aisle was completely bare. There were very few workers in the store, and even fewer customers. In the front, I found fragrances. DVDs and Blu-rays were mainly obscure or poor films priced as h…

> The only computers I could find were antiquated machines for the workers running Windows XP (or possibly Windows 2000) with 4:3 monitors. Somewhere there will be a chapter in the book of Fry's demise about how they never modernized their point of sale system. That thing is fucking ancient and looks like some kind of weird homebrew monstrosity that the owners nephew (you know, the one who "knows computers") cooked u…

They never focused on online sales. Bestbuy was facing a similiar decline But Bestbuy modernized their online experience and added a price guarantee which made them competitive against amazon and other online merchants.

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#328

Post by testingworks1 »

kabdib wrote: post #88

The Fry's in Renton, WA doesn't have much stock, and what they do have is mostly very bad quality off-brand stuff (e.g., the keyboard section has just one or two brands of keyboards, I'm guessing from suppliers that weren't smart enough to ask for cash up front). They had a section of garden tools at one point. Employees appear to be well trained not to say anything negative, mumbling vague promises of restocking soo…

Used to love Fry's in Renton. Was great to go down and see what they had and browse all the items and options. I went to buy a new Ryzen build for my stepdaughter after the old AMD bulldozer I donated to her bought the farm (turned out to be the video card, all other parts recycled into my other ancient AMD bulldozer. Long story short, I had $2500 in my pocket to spend on this build so we could build it together. The MOBO shelves were empty. So were the vid card shelves. I walked out with 50 cents worth of shrink tubing for a different project. Told the cashier "you just lost a $2500 sale". She was indifferent. Stopped at costco on the way home and found an acceptable HP gaming machine for ~1000. The fire for a big build was gone, but the step daughter is happy. It's truly sad. I used to love ComputerStop and HDNW back in the Microserf days. I'm also of the point of view that I don't want to order thousands of dollars of parts without holding them in my hand in the store. Gen X here. We're the last to appreciate that experience I think.

(Before anyone gets snarky about substituting an HP for a true custom build... it was my money not hers and she's happy, so I did save $1500 in the deal. That makes my wallet happy) :)

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#329

Post by samstave »

linguae wrote: post #107

I usually purchase my computer components from Newegg. However, whenever I was impatient or pressed for time, I used to go to Fry’s. I remember one time in 2011 driving from Santa Cruz to Campbell to pick up a hard drive to replace one that suddenly failed; having to wait days for shipping would have been more inconvenient. Fry’s is a great convenience in these cases. It’s unfortunate to see Fry’s in the zombified st…

Back in the day, I had an expense budget at Intel that allowed me to purchase anything I needed for my lab from Frys...

I used to buy gear there and often would find failures...

I would return them to Fry's but in doing so would mark the box with a sharpie in a known place (to me)

I would always check back in the aisles for my returned items and would frequently find them replaced on the shelves to be sold again - knowing that they were bad items.

So Frys would be wasting multiple peoples time, plus their own resources on throwing shit that I tested bad in my lab at Intel back on the shelves...

One time, I went through ELEVEN returns of some SuperMicro mobos that were all bad... (SuperMicro had a REALLY shitty run in the late 90s, early 2000s)

Frys is dead to me know though, for the most part.

Re: Is Fry’s Electronics in trouble?

#330

Post by testingworks1 »

testingworks1 wrote: post #328
kabdib wrote: post #88

The Fry's in Renton, WA doesn't have much stock, and what they do have is mostly very bad quality off-brand stuff (e.g., the keyboard section has just one or two brands of keyboards, I'm guessing from suppliers that weren't smart enough to ask for cash up front). They had a section of garden tools at one point. Employees appear to be well trained not to say anything negative, mumbling vague promises of restocking soo…

Used to love Fry's in Renton. Was great to go down and see what they had and browse all the items and options. I went to buy a new Ryzen build for my stepdaughter after the old AMD bulldozer I donated to her bought the farm (turned out to be the video card, all other parts recycled into my other ancient AMD bulldozer. Long story short, I had $2500 in my pocket to spend on this build so we could build it together. The…

(Before anyone gets snarky about substituting an HP for a true custom build... it was my money not hers and she's happy, so I did save $1500 in the deal. That makes my wallet happy) :)
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