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Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

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Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#231

Post by afavour »

michaelcampbell wrote: post #222
shawn-furyan wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a possibly former employee (who among us can recall every place they've worked in the past?) who may not have looked at any number of prior employment agreements in an awfully long time, and completely apropos of nothing, I just want to note that endemic is such a good and relevant vocabulary word for current events. I mean, there's the global pandemic, and other things people are talking about, all kinds of uses!…

> who among us can recall every place they've worked in the past? I'm in my mid/late 50's, and I can. Even one gig I had for 3 1/2 hours. Not bragging here, but I suspect MOST people can remember all their jobs. Am I wrong?

In my 30s here but I think I more or less remember. For a year or so I worked as a temporary admin assistant in a few locations, the details on some of those are getting a little fuzzy these days. But if anything I remember the feeling of working there a lot better than what the workplace looked like.

Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#232

Post by afavour »

joncrane wrote: post #201
BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #3

I’m not surprised, but this makes me feel incredibly sad. I built my first PC using parts from there. I’m going to miss it. But once Fry’s pivoted to be a consignment store that was mostly empty and selling pallets of bottled water and perfume, it was obvious the business was about to die. Curiously, Microcenter has managed to live on and seems fairly robust. I can’t help but think Fry’s tried to sell too many differ…

I was pleasantly surprised by Microcenter in November of last year. I was looking for a laptop and apparently Microcenter has a house brand called Powerspec. It turns out they are a very user-focused brand that a) has no bloatware preinstalled and b) has high performance and every single port you could possibly want . When I went, there was a little bit of hovering but overall the staff were nice. Protip: whenever yo…

I was also pleasantly surprised by MicroCenter recently. There's one in Brooklyn I had no idea about until I was searching online for places to buy a Raspberry Pi and accessories. Walked in there and it was like a (pleasant!) throwback to the computer store of the 90s.

Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#233

Post by watertom »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #118

I graduated college in 1985 and moved cross country to Sunnyvale for work. Fry's was a supermarket chain, and at the time there was one and only one location that was trying out carrying computer stuff, on the east side of Lawrence Ave I think, before they moved to the west side of Lawrence. They weren't yet fully committed to it. Half the store was produce and such -- milk, eggs, lettuce, etc, and the other half was…

Wow, Computer Literacy I completely forgot about them. As an east coast geek they they were like a unicorn.

When I joined Sun Microsystems in 1990, and I went to orientation training in Mt. View it was like visiting heaven when I got to walk in the door of Computer Literacy.

I also bought a few books from them via email, ah, the beginnings of eCommerce. Jeez I'm old.

Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#234

Post by meowster »

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #151

No! I always loved browsing the isles at Fry’s, awesome memories. I’d been asking the network engineers at my employer to set up a rack of routers and for months and the response was always no, too busy, can’t get parts, etc. So I bought a bunch of $2 Ethernet cards and a passive hub from Fry’s, wired it up with bright red Ethernet cable, told them I had a network now so they could take off. Four hours later a guy co…

They processed the return and shelved it faster than he could walk from customer service to the shelf?

They had CPUs sitting on the shelf for anyone to grab?

Fun story, but maybe your coworker was pulling your leg?

Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#235

Post by tapoxi »

sokoloff wrote: post #198
wegs wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same-day shopping, returns, being able to look at things, and talk to people count for something too. I can't count the number of times when I bought a motherboard, and didn't realize my old AT power supply no longer worked with an ATX motherboard, or some other random standard, connector, or form factor changed. You can ask an employee "Will these five parts make a computer?" and get an answer, or even configure one…

My local microcenter (Cambridge, MA) is clearly taking basic safety measures and seems more or less similar to the local grocery store practices.

The last time I went to the Cambridge Microcenter (~1 month ago) they were spraying your hands with sanitizer the moment you walked in. I haven't seen any local grocery store do that.

It's a fantastic store, but it very clearly hasn't had a remodel since it opened.

Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#237

Post by bitwize »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #230
ericbarrett wrote: post #125

Lots of nostalgia about Fry’s here. Well, I have a different take. Fry’s was my first job, and my first introduction to wage slavery. They never at any point cared about employee health or well-being. Breaks were the state minimum. Pay was the state minimum. The entire staff (and there were hundreds back in the day, when the checkout line would back up into the store even with 20 registers open) shared one 7x7 beige…

Worked at Best Buy, same exact experience.

Geek Squad personnel are paid FBI informants.

Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#238

Post by stonemetal12 »

brundolf wrote: post #94

Lots of memories of Saturdays spent wandering the aisles of Fry's with my dad. He mostly wanted to look at the big TVs (this ritual started around the dawn of HD/flat TVs); I mostly wanted to look at the games and computer stuff. It was something we could reliably do to spend time together. My home store - Plano, TX - was themed after the history of the city itself. Lots of hundred-year-old photos, blown up to 10 fee…

The fry's near NASA in Houston was really cool they had giant models of the Shuttle and the ISS hanging from the rafters.

Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#239

Post by mbreese »

solotronics wrote: post #106
mbreese wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for parts for a last minute electronics weekend project, Microcenter is a mess. (I am closest to the Cincinnati location). I still found what I needed, but it was a mess. Don’t get me wrong, you can find a lot of parts, but mainly things from companies like Adafruit. But the section was so disorganized it made it take forever to find the one specific part I needed…

I usually just ask one of the kids working there, you let them put a sticker on what your buying and they get a commission so it's a win-win to me. I go to the one near me every couple weeks and buy something mostly because I can't imagine living without a decent computer parts store to browse in. Heck I bought a DJI drone there it was the same price as on amazon so why not? Support a physical store or they will disa…

> Support a physical store or they will disappear.

Exactly. Even though finding the part I was looking for (a LiPo charging circuit) was a pain, it was still priced the same as if it was online, and I could get it fast. And yes, the kid that helped find a locked up RPi pico for me was extremely excited to tag the rest of my stuff.

If I want to make sure that the store is still around, it’s important to keep supporting it. That’s been my basic COVID lesson.

Re: Fry's Electronics is closing all stores

#240

Post by jcranmer »

tapoxi wrote: post #235
sokoloff wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My local microcenter (Cambridge, MA) is clearly taking basic safety measures and seems more or less similar to the local grocery store practices.

The last time I went to the Cambridge Microcenter (~1 month ago) they were spraying your hands with sanitizer the moment you walked in. I haven't seen any local grocery store do that. It's a fantastic store, but it very clearly hasn't had a remodel since it opened.

Trader Joe's also sometimes does the spray-your-hands--there's one in the same parking lot as the Microcenter.
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