Report: Fry's Electronics going out of business, shutting down all stores
Fry's Electronics, the decades-old superstore chain with locations in nine American states, appears to have gone defunct. Bay Area TV station KRON-4 was the first press outlet to confirm the news late Tuesday, saying that Fry's will shut down all 30 of its American locations. The retailer will reportedly make an announcement at some time on Wednesday via the Fry's website.
Rumors began flying on Tuesday in the form of anecdotes from alleged Fry's employees, who all reported that they'd been summarily fired earlier in the day with zero notice. One anonymous report posted at The Layoff alleged that every remaining Fry's store in the US was "permanently closing tomorrow," and that sentiment was echoed hours later at a Fry's-related Reddit community. The Reddit post included the allegation that one store's staffers were tasked with shipping any remaining merchandise back to suppliers during their final day at work.
From the Fry's web site:
After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry's Electronics, Inc. ("Fry's" or "Company"), has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Company will implement the shut down through an orderly wind down process that it believes will be in the best interests of the Company, its creditors, and other stakeholders.
See the site for contact details.
Also at The Verge and Newsweek.
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There were a lot of folks chiming in with alternatives due to the sad demise of Fry's electronics.
So what are we all doing with all those fun components?
What's your project, Soylent?
Doesn't need to be related to electronics, if you're painting a portrait or drafting a treatise on the heliocentric nature of the Solar System let's hear about it!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Subsentient on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:12PM (30 children)
The one near us closed last year, I've already missed them. Where are you supposed to go if you need specialized parts on the same day?
Only thing left is Best Buy, and they only sell shitty normie consumer electronics, no parts or components other than $60 gold-plated HDMI cables.
Sigh. Until more retailers offer same-day shipping, this will be an issue.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:28PM (10 children)
Move near a Micro Center. Or Akihabara. Or, uh... Radio Shack?
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:35PM (5 children)
Microcenter for the win.
They sell anything you could want computer related. Prices are good, too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @09:58AM (4 children)
Prices are good for Microcenter, not for the buyer. Way overpriced electronics.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:40PM
You are, of course, free to do business with online businesses, and wait for delivery.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:44PM
So go scour the internet and buy from who knows who to get who knows what, and spend days looking for it and weeks waiting for it to arrive. I will spend a couple of bucks more to be able to look over the merchandise before I buy it and walk out the door with it in my hand. If it's busted, I just walk to the store and instantly exchange it and get my money back.
Extreme cheapness leads to a race to the bottom for customer experience. For what it's worth, I don't find Microcenter's prices high, and if an item seems expensive, guess what, I don't buy it--unless I really need it NOW. Microcenter has deals if you care to look.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:45PM
I live in an area with both a Frys and a MicroCenter, and I never noticed that the prices at Frys were any lower than the prices at MicroCenter.
At one time (10-15 years ago), Frys had a much better selection of "oddball" Maker stuff, but that situation reversed itself in the last decade. Now, MicroCenter (at least the one near me) is well stocked while Frys was mostly empty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:06PM
Microcenter is selling Zen 3 at MSRP, RPi Pico half off since launch, and open box deals all the time. They have some overpriced items but they are outweighed by the consistent deals.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:21AM (3 children)
Where do you find a Radio Shack now?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:41AM (2 children)
More places [radioshack.com] than Fry's, somehow.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:17AM (1 child)
Did someone buy the Radio Shack name? Where'd all those stores come from, given that they died a couple years back?
And are those old 70's and 80's Shacks, or are those the modern "we can sell you a new cell phone or a cheap Chinese robot dog, but don't expect to buy solder or components or a breadboard anymore" Shacks?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:32AM
Some of them are listed as "Authorized RadioShack Dealers", which might be an indication of small electronics stores. But maybe they only sell cell phones and toy drones, not electronics components.
Others are listed as RadioShack Express @ HobbyTown [wikipedia.org]. From this search [hobbytown.com], it seems like they sell some useful stuff.
In comeback bid, RadioShack partners with HobbyTown to sell electronics in 100 US stores [cnbc.com]
General Wireless Operations sold the company. From November 2020:
Left for dead, twice, RadioShack gets another shot online [go.com]
That 400 number might be referring to the "Authorized RadioShack Dealers", I'm not sure.
Tai Lopez is known for a viral YouTube ad buy, "Here in my garage".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:45PM (7 children)
Actually, what's the go-to place if you want those specialized (electronics) parts mail-order?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday February 24 2021, @11:16PM (3 children)
There aren't any, unless you want to buy everything in bulk quantity in multiples of 100. Amazon and Newegg will both sell you cheap counterfeit Chinese shit that will fail within the month if it doesn't explode right away. The only difference between the two is that Newegg will make you wait a month, Amazon will make you wait a week.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:45AM (2 children)
Check this [digikey.com] out.
That's but one example of DigiKey selling in lots smaller than 100 units.
That's a 1k ohm, 1%, 1/4w, through hole resistor, purchasable in single unit (one resistor) quantities for ten cents each.
In a lot of 25-49 units the price drops to 5.56 cents each.
In a lot of 50-99 units, the price drops again to 3.08 cents each.
That's three different bulk levels that are smaller than 100 units in size. And if you really do want just one resistor, they will sell you just one for ten cents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:05AM (1 child)
Plus shipping. Never forget the shipping. On the other hand, even with shipping it was still much cheaper to buy a few capacitors from them than a replacement power board from Amazon when my monitor died.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:22AM
So, provided one is willing to go old school order form it is possible to avoid the shipping charges on all but "heavy/oversize items".
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:09AM (2 children)
DigiKey
(Score: 2, Informative) by hemocyanin on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:18AM (1 child)
Seconded. Also Mouser.
I've ordered small quantities from both places, no problems.
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 25 2021, @05:54PM
In the hobbyist space:
SparkFun
Adafruit
And I just discovered Pololu for more robot-centric stuff. I just wanted the tires for a servo wheel but not the actual wheels. Only place I was able to find that.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:51PM (8 children)
It does suck. Us East Coasters have been in this position for years now. All we had were Radio Shacks, and they've sucked for YEARS. If you are luck, you might find a small local outlet in a business park. I ended up turning to online and living with the fact that you won't necessarily be able to do that project when you were hoping to. Digikey and Mouser have everything and are quick, but you obviously need to know what you need. Years ago I needed about a buck's worth of electrolytic caps to repair an LCD TV, but I had to wait the better part of a week for them to come in because all my other options sucked.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday February 24 2021, @10:55PM (6 children)
Digikey and Mouser are expensive as fuck and they require bulk purchases for their small shit like resistors, simple ICs, crimp terminals, etc. They're great for when you can skimp from daddy's corporate account, but still you're paying retail prices multiplied by wholesale volume and without the convenience of getting your parts then and now.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:12AM (2 children)
Have you shopped DigiKey lately? With rare exception, you can buy just one resistor or IC or crimp terminal. Yes, the price for "one" is higher than the cost per unit for ten or for a thousand, but not so much higher as to make any real difference to a hobbyist who has little need for 10,000 resistors.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday February 25 2021, @05:49PM (1 child)
Is DigiKey Jewish or something? I don't understand why Eth's so insistent on lying about what they do.
You absolutely can buy individual parts from them. I just received a bunch of single parts from them literally yesterday.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @02:31AM
Maybe he's had so much alcohol he's forgotten which company he's talking about?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:35AM (1 child)
Jameco has all sorts of weird electronic stuff, singles or bulk, and fair enough prices (far as for stuff I know about). Been around since forever.
https://www.jameco.com/ [jameco.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:02AM
Anonymous Coward here checking in to vouch for Jameco.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:28PM
They both have changed. I bought the handful of caps I needed from Digikey for a few dollars. I did have to wait 3-4 days for the order to arrive. At both sites you might look up a component and find a half dozen or more listings for it. Some of the listings are lot sales where you'd have to buy in some minimum number, presumably because you are buying them by the package/spool/etc., but other listings will be for individual components where you can actually by three resistors at 7 cents each, and they'll arrive in their own little bag. The only downside, as I mentioned, was if your stuff broke on a Saturday (like my TV did), you have to wait a number of days to get it in: in my case I placed the order on Saturday and picked the cheapest shipping, so I didn't get it until Wed or Thurs, so I had my TV sitting on my kitchen table for the better part of a week.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:56AM
Indeed. And Radio Shack of the 1970's through 1980's was much different from the Radio Shack of the twenty years or so leading up to its closing. It went from "maker fare" to "latest cheap chinese toys and cell phones" which was not at all the same place.
And now, even my local business park outlet's gone. So all I've got left is mailorder from DigiKey or Mouser or Jameco. So I just grit my teeth and put up with the wait and the delays to accomplishing much.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @11:56PM
Amazon, of course, the cui bono of the democrat lockdowns.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday February 25 2021, @12:58AM
They were already fucked years ago. You used to be able to get all kinds of electronic supplies, but then those started to disappear too.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @09:37PM (15 children)
I used to go to Fry's monthly when I lived in the SF Bay Area. Built a lot of computers, bought a lot of parts. Even a TV.
I've been to a local Fry's twice in the last 5 years. The last time 2 years ago. It was painfully empty even then. Minimal stock on shelves. Not many people there. It was like visiting a summer resort town during the off season. You can see how crowded it was last summer, but now it's just empty and sort of sad. That was Fry's 2 years ago. I can only imaging what it was like recently.
Oh, and it's also a bit of karma. Fry's killed a lot of small electronics shops. Probably was part of the reason Radio Shack died. The Walmart effect. Now, on-line has done to them what they did to others.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @10:18PM (8 children)
yeah and they were too damn stupid or cheap to invest in the web back when they were strong and amazon/ebay were young. Like sears. too dumb/greedy to live.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @10:44PM
And would not let the name in "Galaxy Quest".
Fry's stated as an off shot of Fry's Food Grocery Stores. Brothers sold of Fry's Food and invisited the money into Electronic Store ran like a Grocery Store.
Then in the 90's the "attack the customer" started. Take your product to check out. Then fight with teller that you know what you wanted and oh yeah 4x 4MB DDR. Then stand await for that to delivered. Pay then Sign. Then fight with security guard that you paid for your product.
Now that was Customer Service!
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Thursday February 25 2021, @12:15AM (4 children)
My Jewish friends taught me a good trick back then: Stores matched "online prices" but their own managers were too Jewish to allow their employees internet access because precious pennies would be lost in the form of productivity, or something. Anyway, the trick my Jewish friends taught me was to print out an "online" ad so that the store would match the price. Except that, before that, we would edit the HTML or even photoshop different numbers on the ad before printing, so that the store would sell us the item at that cost. So we'd get $100 hard drives for $80 bucks. Every once in awhile my Jewish friends would get too greedy and their discount rejected, but the pennies we all saved more than made up for the hassle.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:11AM
I have a devious mind I suppose, because this is the kind of shit I've thought of on more than one occasion, I'm just too ethical to actually do it.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:18AM (1 child)
Regular little Hitler there, aren't you. Scared of people that are different than you. Must be a pretty small world you live in.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @08:29PM
Hitler was a racial hero, and the good guy in WW2. Noone is scared of Jews.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/GL9oYftKUtKY/ [bitchute.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:25AM
I don't believe this story. You don't have any friends.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:10AM
But the MBAs told them to maximise their quarterly profit by minimising expenses like investment!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @08:40PM
it's kind of sad though as i got my first computer there. they had linux computers there with the unfortunately named lunix distro, IIRC. I asked why the lunix computers were $100 less? were they no good? he told me that linux is good but it might not have everything i expect it to have and that you kind of have to know what your doing or be willing/have time to learn. i didn't know my ass from a whole in the ground and needed it for my first computer trade school class that was starting right away, so i got the windows one. i did nothing but get that computer infected for months but never forgot about linux. after i got out of the MS centric school and felt like i could handle it, i started looking up linux stuff. that computer was a $350 emachines but it lasted like 10 years, with replaced pwr supply and momentary contact pwr switch . They had good prices on lots of stuff you might not be able to get elsewhere, back in the day anyways. CEOs/Upper management people are asshats.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Booga1 on Thursday February 25 2021, @12:18AM
This was my experience a year and a half ago. Went for some ratherr basic computer components. They were sold out of the $7.99 standard case fans, but had plenty of the $30 RGB disco rave party fans.
Bare shelves all over the place. They were obviously not replacing stock that sold out. Hardly any staff left. Video card shelves had nothing but the lowest end cards, and only a handful of those. Hard drives 90% cleared out, etc...
When I was checking out there was no line at all. The cashiers were just idle, twiddling their thumbs. I asked the guy at the register what the deal was. They said they were "in the middle of changing suppliers" and weren't getting new stock until a new contract had been finalized. I went back three months later to see if things had changed...nope. They no longer stocked what I needed so I stopped going. They were my go-to shop when I needed something right then and there, but what's the point if the shelves are empty?
It was like Radio Shack all over again.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:40AM
An old piece on Fry's, completely consistent with my experience:
https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/1103/6010086a.html [forbes.com]
Poor customer service, and the fact that it was less a store than a permanent swap meet, with many independent vendors (which was why you couldn't get help except for the counter you were looking at). The Fry's I'm familiar with had at least one dealer in "used" (obviously hot) laptops.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:56AM (3 children)
Late 1980s, we had several retail outlets that specialized in not just consumer electronics, but computers. Best Buy and Federated were among the consumer electronics stores that carried a few computers. There was Soft Warehouse, the mega mall had a video arcade and a computer store that sold Amigas, a few Apple stores were in strip malls, and there were a lot of small computer shops that dealt with PC clones. Used to shop them all frequently. Very exciting and thrilling to master the tech, build your own PC, and swoon over all the goodies. 1M RAM sticks for $30 each, the new 14.4Kbps modems that were a big jump up from 2400, all kinds of VGA graphics card vendors-- these were all the gritty details towards the goal of making the world a much, much better place with computers. Networking existed then, but was so hella expensive, and applications for it so few, that most people skipped it in favor of plain old sneakernet.
Couldn't quite imagine how the revolution was going to unfold, but there was no doubt it was a revolution. Soft Warehouse was always crowded on weekends, with geeks filled with excitement and wonder. Yet even then, there were hints. It was cheaper to mail order floppies by the hundreds, and got even cheaper as floppies became obsolete, replaced by CD-Rs. A fairly instructive moment was the one in which the 80387 math coprocessor took a huge drop in price, going from $600 to $200 in the space of one week. The 80486 was coming. We, the consumers, beat Intel on that one. Collectively told them to stick that business strategy where the sun don't shine.
And now? In hindsight, the whole idea of a retail store has a lot of problems. The notion of selling copies of software, on disks all packaged up in a shrinkwrapped box, is especially silly. Remember when Netscape Navigator 4.0 was sold that way, for $60 per? The book, movie, and music retail stores have the same problem. (And what was with the recent weirdness over GameStop stock?) These days, stepping into a Barnes and Noble feels like stepping into a time machine and traveling back to the late 1900s. Yes, yes, lots of people say they like the feel of a printed book. For me, the deal killer was the space they take. Compact though print is, it's nothing on the compactness of digital storage. In the days of the floppy disk, the difference was not gross. Today, it is. I also have a heck of a time not losing books. Not a problem with digital storage. Print is doomed. What has retail got over mail order? Faster, mainly, for what they stock. Perhaps better service. And that's about it.
I guess this trend may go a lot further. The shopping mall as we know it may wither away entirely, or reduce to basic necessities such as groceries. And good riddance, I say. Originally, malls were places for social gatherings, and the commerce was decidedly secondary. They weren't called "shopping malls", they were called simply "malls". Perhaps with this change in the retail landscape, malls can go back to that.
Another major change that's in the works is the auto parts and repair business. Electric cars require far less maintenance. And further, we may travel less in the future. Replacing the daily commute with the telecommute takes a lot of cars off the roads. Driving can be fun, yes, but is there anyone who still enjoys a drive when it's rush hour? So there's another kind of store that has a doubtful future.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:25AM
"(And what was with the recent weirdness over GameStop stock?)"
Short form: Some corporate vampires got greedy and over-shorted GameStop's stock as part of a campaign to put the company out of business so they could pick up the scraps for pennies on the dollar. Some people on Reddit noticed and realized that if they each bought a few hundred to a grand of GS stock and then held it like their lives depended on it, the resulting short squeeze would make the above mentioned vampires scream like their balls were caught in a vice. The only problem with this little scheme was that the broker they were going through (Robinhood) has ties to the above mentioned vampires and decided to kink-shame, because apparently only the rich and well connected are allowed to play those kinds of games.
(Score: 2, Touché) by hemocyanin on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:29AM
... the 90s rolled in and AOL kept everyone swamped up to their necks with free 3.5" floppies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @08:50PM
" Perhaps with this change in the retail landscape, malls can go back to that."
Not without racial hegemony in a given area it won't. Not unless you consider gang warfare "social gatherings". When most people think of America what they are really remembering is White America.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @10:01PM
...Fried
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @10:37PM (1 child)
Use to live in Bay Area 25 years ago and drove the hour and half, every weekend to one of the 4 in San Jose area. Going to Egypt Temple (S.J.), the BIG IC (near old National site), the Computer Box (Hayward) and final the really large Aztec Temple (S.J.)
Then was in Eastern US and best I could was shop at EggHead (had an auction site) for bulked "old" parts to support my local LUG. Intel ISA 10base-2 and 10base-T network cards. We gave them out as people had us load Linux.
Then moved to Chicago Area and a BIG BOX Fry's opened. Was great but not existing.
Moved to Mississippi and nothing there, but once a year, we would go on holiday to Atlanta. My wife favor spot was IKEA. Me the Frys. Kids the CNN center (has Hanna Barbara) and Aquarium.
Now live outside of Cincinatti and got IKEA for wife, by nears Frys in Indiappous. So Micro Center has filled the void (but SMALL).
Planning for a summer trip to West Coast and was looking forward taking my kids to the REAL Frys, in S.J. area. Showing what a electronic store REALLY means.
Now what to do for a Summer Vacation? Disney? 6 Flags? Universal? Not the same.
I guess they do not sell fresh carbs at Fisherman's Wharf any more. The Explorimum has moved from North Beach. What left?
WIFE's response: Is signs out front of locations... "Future Home of BASS Pro Shops". They did take over the Pyramid in Memphis.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Wednesday February 24 2021, @11:37PM
The Fry's in Atlanta has been dead for a while now, complete with weeds growing up through the many cracks in the parking lot.
If tumbleweeds were indigenous to Georgia, the Frys and the mall next to it would have them.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 24 2021, @10:54PM
no more complementary proctology exams on the way out.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:28AM
I'd heard of them for years but had never been to one. In the early 90s took a biz trip to the bay area. my boss took us to the local Fry's. I think it was the one with the aquarium theme. I bought a red laser pointer for if memory serves closer to $300 than $200.
Flash forward a few years, they opened one in San Diego. Based on Ars Technica build guides I built 2 computers over the years, buying most everything from Fry's.
Last time I was in one was about 3 years ago, think I was looking for a router that I needed yesterday so Amazon was out. Bare shelves. A few routers, most no-names I'd never heard of, the rest obvious returns.
Over the years I managed to get to several Fry's, the themed stores made them a destination.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:47AM (2 children)
Microcenter now is what Fry's used to be. It sucks that Microcenter isn't in every big city, but Fry's wasn't either. Whenever I go to Microcenter, business is booming. The line at the checkout goes halfway around the store (but some of that is due to distancing rules, and it moves fast).
Before Fry's there was CompUSA or even Computer City. Why do these stores fail only to be replaced by an essentially identical store? I don't know.
I do know that Microcenter just works well. There are a few things that you can't get there, but they're pretty specialized. But the prices are the same as Newegg or only a couple of dollars more, the selection is good, and you can get the stuff immediately and return it without any hassle. And you have better odds getting stock on shortage components than you do racing against a scalper bot online.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:07AM (1 child)
Case in point. My nearest Microcenter is now fully stocked with 5600x and 5800x, and it had a decent supply of 5950x recently. Microcenter will sell you the 5600x at $300, Amazon at $406. Only the graphics card selection is severely lacking. Nobody can find a decent graphics card without putting in the work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:33AM
Yeah, mine has 5600x and 5800x more often than not, and recently had some 5900x as well. I haven't seen a 5950x yet, but I'm not camping out to get one either.
I asked an employee and he said they get GPU shipments in three times a week, but they usually all go to people waiting in line for the store to open. Still better than scalpers.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday February 25 2021, @01:55AM (9 children)
It's very annoying, there are some things that you sometimes you find that you need like now when you are working on something. Not an option anymore. I don't even know which is the closest store any more. Everything has to be ordered online. There isn't any store that I know of around that even carries basic components and equipment (such as soldering stations and not just the cheapest piece of shit Chinese soldering iron). Nowhere to go if you run out of solder or wick or when you just need like that one resistor to finish something.
If that happens you better just call a friend and ask if they have some spares (for me it's usually capacitors). Otherwise it's over to the big sellers like Mauser or Digi-Key, there are some local (national) versions to but it's not really any difference. It's mostly a matter of it you need or want to talk to them, but I usually don't so it doesn't really matter. Then there is Ali-Express etc, I guess you get what you pay for. Sometimes it's great and you made a bargain, and sometimes it's not and then you regret ever ordering from there.
That said I do find it ok to order online, it's just that you sort of have to bulk order. But that said it's not like you are just going to get 1 component and then ever never get anything ever again. So for common things you might as well just get a bunch of them and have around.
Still it's sad that there isn't a store around anymore. It was kind neat.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:35AM (7 children)
That problem is caused by there being too few of us left who do any of this stuff anymore. Most of the public is barely aware of which button to press on their ipad to turn it on. Thinking they will fix or build something is just out of the question. And for every one of us now, there are a few hundred thousand of them who simply don't. If it quits, it gets tossed and the latest "shiny new object" is purchased on the credit card that is already carrying 57k of debt.
And unless there's enough of us in an area to keep the local stores in business, the stores have no way to pay their overhead, and the stores disappear.
It's a PIA to have to put aside a project to mail-order some components and wait for delivery, but it is the reality we are left with now.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Tork on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:23AM (4 children)
Back in the 90's a $500 upgrade to your computer meant you could do things you couldn't previously. Today the equivalent upgrade would make a modern's game's graphics a touch prettier.
You're not some dying breed of rugged electronic frontiersman whose eventual departure will signal the end of smart people roaming the Earth, tech's just reached the point that don't have a bunch of hard-to-explain limitations that occasionally made us useful to pretty people. 🧠
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:46AM (1 child)
I used to build stuff because I liked doing it, but also because it was cheaper. Right down to etching the circuit boards.
Now the BOM for home built stuff is far more than just buying a commercial equivalent and that doesn't even count the time. Nowadays I only build stuff that you cannot buy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:14AM
Unless you just enjoy doing it as a hobby, in which case it is not about the time, or the lower/higher cost.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:12AM (1 child)
The comment is specifically referring to folks who will open up a "broken" electronic device, find the bad component, and replace that failed component (as in the three swelled electrolytic capacitors on the output rails of the power supply for an LCD monitor because the maker used the cheapest won-hung-low brand that dry out after a few years and go bad.
Stores like Fry's were useful for that type of work (you need two 50V 2200uF electros plus a 25v 1100uF electro, for the monitor's failed power supply), plus they had full component swap upgrades (newest Nvidia card replacing last year's Nvidia card) on their shelves as well.
For those of us who simply enjoy the craft as a hobby, the loss of a local store where one can open up a monitor that's showing "leaky power supply caps bars" across the LCD screen, check out what size caps one needs, run to "the store", get those caps, and have the monitor running again before dinner on the same day is a bit of a pisser. Now it is open the monitor today, add the caps to one's DigiKey cart, and then decide if one has enough to justify an order or should wait for adding more stuff. Then wait 3-5 days for the package to arrive, which often then rounds up to another weekend before the repair can be made. That's the pisser. We now have to have pre ordered most of the common sizes of most of the components to avoid the 2-3 week latency between "open" -- "buy" -- "replace". And even of one pre-orders most of the common values, the next item to be poked at is almost guaranteed to have a failed component that is one size unit we have not pre-ordered.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday February 25 2021, @09:43AM
Look at it this way: you're stocking up on common components so that you'll be ready when the next turn of the screw happens and those components become difficult or impossible to get. The bright side is that resistors and capacitors don't take up that much room even when you buy them in bulk.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @03:46PM (1 child)
I'll tell you when I threw in the towel with DIY electronics: when all components had been miniaturized to the size of a dust speck. When components were through-hole DIP, you could pick them up with your fingers, stick them in their place on the board, and unleash that pencil soldering iron on them. The components could be removed from the board using the same techniques plus a solder sucker bulb and a little flat head screwdriver.
DIP hasn't been used for decades. Quad flat pack was bad to work with, but possible if you really tried until the lead pitch shrank too much. Then surface mount came out and I said forget it. It's too miniaturized, too painful. And as someone else said, the cost of DIY is absurdly higher than just buying premade. Plus the functionality is in software now so hardware hacking doesn't do anything.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:19PM
I tend to shy away from when it becomes to much SMC, one component or so of reasonable size is ok but when there is a board filled with them I rather pay some to do it. Gettings stencils and paste and all that isn't really my thing. I guess another thing that bugs me is the component consolidation, I disliked it when corporations did for cost cutting measures and I dislike it for hobbyist projects to. I don't have a need to make things smaller. I would prefer it to have things reasonable sized instead, after all I'm not trying to create spy equipment or a new cellphone. No need for miniaturization. I like it when I have a board with lots of components and you can sort of follow a long and not "it goes into that one big black behemoth over there and the magic happens!". Mostly cause it's annoying as heck to hand solder one of those 184 (or whatever) pin chips into place -- even drag-soldering it in place sucks. Sockets for up to 40ish pins or so is ok I think, over that and it's a drag (in all ways). I guess I just preferred it when it was many smaller components (not necessarily physical) and through-hole components instead of SMC.
That said I do think sometimes about actually buying a proper microscope to use, still it might be more about that my eye sight will eventually get diminished but then I guess my hands won't be as steady so it might just make things worse.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:47PM
The curse of optimization is that when you're repairing a 1930s vacuum tube radio the chassis is cavernous like working under an ancient car hood, so you can bodge some ridiculous series parallel arrangement as long as the voltage ratings and wattages and so forth are respected. If the highest frequency of operation of the device is 15 mhz in a radio then foot long wires running to some remotely mounted capacitor don't matter, but you can't do that with HDMI signals in 2021.
In 2021 you want to ever be able to screw the monitor case back together you need the exact replacement model, not "something with about that value and equal or higher wattage thats bodged in place".
There are also circuit tolerance things to consider where a gadget engineered with +/- 20% drifty carbon comp resistors from 1930 will be perfectly fine with an intentionally installed resistor thats 10% high because thats what I had in my parts bin, but that don't fly today with modern switching power supplies and stuff like that. The days of ignoring power supply cap ESR or diode switching speed ended with the transformer and linear regulator era.
"in the old days" the IRS reimbursed like 10 cents per mile because driving was CHEAP and people thought nothing of driving 30 miles round trip to retail to "avoid those expensive same day shipping charges" or to spend a 25 cents off coupon, but now a days the IRS mile rate is like fifty cents and my wifes big van is more like a buck a mile and the idea of driving 40 miles round trip to spend $40 on the car to save $30 on next morning fedex delivery from digikey is kinda foolish. It economically made sense to be your own logistics company in 1985 or even 1995 but now a days its faster and cheaper to have fedex or ups be your logistics company.
Finally in 2021 everyone's always connected all the time and only timers have that memory of sitting down and building an 80 meter amplifier in one sore butt of sitting, but in 2021 I got family and clients and stuff to do so its easier to leave something on the shelf until tomorrow morning because I'm already used to having to do that because some client has a bug up their butt about doing something ahead of time or some family member is coming over to visit (surprise!). COVID was kind of a vacation where everything slowed down for a bit but its been over, at least where I live, for some time. If I have to wait until tomorrow or even three days, eh, worse has happened I'll be fine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 25 2021, @02:54AM
Because they're not from around here. Watch those laptop batteries!
(Score: 4, Informative) by Pav on Thursday February 25 2021, @10:40AM
...but in Australia we had Dick Smith, which was like a cross between oldskool Radioshack and Fry's (Dick Smith actually stocked a lot of Radioshack branded stuff back in the day). Dick Smith was sold by the man himself (ie. Dick) to a PHB conglomerate who turned it into a laptop and phone purloining outfit, and they went out of business except for a web shopping front end. Fortunately a new electronics specialty chain called Jaycar sprang up and have been going great guns until covid... though I think Australia has tamped down the virus enough that business life is mostly normal, so hopefully they're still doing as well.
(Score: 2) by SDRefugee on Thursday February 25 2021, @04:56PM (1 child)
Up to 1996, I lived in San Diego, and until that Radio-Shack owned "Incredible Universe" store in San Diego imploded and Fry's took it over, I'd frequently made drives up to LA to hit the Frys up there. I was thrilled that, finally, San Diego was going to get a Frys. Then in 1996, I moved to Las Vegas, and everytime my wife talked me into driving the 340 miles back to San Diego so she could visit her family, I'd take the car and head over to Frys, with a list of stuff to buy, both for me and my friends back in LostWages. Time passed, and I started hearing rumors that Frys was going to be opening a store in Las Vegas. You might say me and my friends were VERY happy. Lately, since I'm retired, I don't get over to wander the isles of Frys very often, but the last couple of times, in the last few months, its been like a ghost town, endless empty shelves and other than the one or two checkout clerks, no employees to be seen. RIP Frys, you WILL be missed by MANY of us.
America should be proud of Edward Snowden, the hero, whether they know it or not..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @08:37AM
We had the luxury of 2 Fry's locations, the Northgate Incredible Universe (It was labelled 1 Tandy Avenue for it's entire life. Not sure if it's changed since they shut it down last year), and the South Sunrise Avenue one. (It's actually more of an easterly direction, but I believe it's called South Sunrise instead of Sunrise once you switch counties. It came to be much later in a brand new location to cater to the wealthier Roseville/Rocklin/Folsom region, with a much more upscale design reminiscent of the other 'tailored' stores.)
Anyways they started getting weird about their videocard stock and stopped doing motherboard sales around 2014 or so, but it wasn't until the altcoin mining boom where things got strange. They ran out of all high end and mid range video cards. For a while they still had some good low-end/low-mid video cards from the prior generation, but those quickly dried up, leaving them with the odd XFX, ASUS, EVGA, and I think eventually Powercolor cards. You were stuck with a huge game in the peak purchasing market. Either you could get shitty years old HD6450 or rebadged Fermi cards (often with the same model number as the few worth-buying Kepler cards) or you could get crippled R7(5?) 240 cards with DDR3 in either 64 or 128 bit memory busses. Nothing that really was compelling for a good 2 years. At some point they got in a new rush of Kepler GT720/730 cards, as well as a small number of GT1030/1050 cards, but always the 'bottom of the line' model and almost always at a markup compared to Amazon/NewEgg. Sure you could get a price match, but they were hardware that nobody building bespoke systems was going to waste money putting into their box. Eventually even those cards started to disappear from shelves, a few ultra high end cards showing up to take their place, but leaving the actual 'volume market' entirely empty.
In place of this you saw a huge swath of bitcoin mining power supplies, PCIe riser cards, and other stuff, marketed at premium prices until it became obvious they wouldn't sell and then slashed to almost at-cost prices. I actually picked up some of the riser cards for a variety of PCIe projects, which they have been useful to have (although due to some hardware limitations in non-riser 'active' components, not as useful as I'd hoped.) This and the other crappy merchandise (like rhino branded pink battery packs and usb SD card adapters) had issues like leaking batteries, failing connectors, and eventually rock bottom marked down prices. Slowly everything that wasn't moving off store shelves either got marked down to be sold, or sat there at the same price it had 10 years before like a stoic immoveable rock.
I last went into a Fry's in Jan or February of 2020, just after covid was getting bad but before we went from 'everything will be open next month' to 'You should wear masks and social distance and we're going to run all these quarantines because of how many of you are ignoring our requests/regulations." The ironic part is Fry's using that as an excuse for why their businesses failed when /r/frys has stories showing you how obvious this was even 15 years ago. The managers should have known it, the employees (at least the ones worth employing) knew it and either got better jobs, quit, or in a few cases made large disturbances before getting fired and escorted off the premises. But somehow they never bothered to look at all the other companies failing around them and go 'we have to change, because we're becoming just like them.'
In case you guys hadn't read it from the green site or fry's subreddits: There was a 200 million dollar embezzlement by the #5 at fry's around 2012, that lead to a default on 9 figures worth of inventory/vendor debt. They chose to continue sitting on that debt rather than restructure to pay it back, in large part because the Fry's brothers had restructured the company in 1998 into a property management and retail LLC arm. After the embezzlement they effectively chose to dismantle the company by funneling all the liquid assets that could repay their debts into rental fees for the properties, bleeding the retail company dry. During that time their vendors, realziing they would never get their money back, had the good sense to cut Fry's off from their merchandise and when they tried to get a consignment deal going for in-store items, promptly told them to fuck off, except for the deperate 'no-name' chinese resale companies that were clamoring for marketshare. The shift in merchandise during this period was a mix of warehoused product getting shipped to stores and chinese consignment goods filling up now empty shelves trying to make them look alive. But really it was already a zombie shambling, the profit coming not from the company itself but leaking through the literal floorboards to the financially and legally insulted property management corporation, which allowed the owners of the company to get off scott free when all was said and done. With the last of the liquid assets going into the limited final paychecks for employees they shuttered the company, leaving a big fuck you to all their debtors who will effectively never reclaim their multi-digit debts from the hucksters who once ran Fry's Electronics (into the ground.)
Having said that, go read up on the parallels between Chuck and Fry's Electronics on reddit, they make some good arguements for why, despite everyone thinking it was a Best Buy store, that Fry's was the actual basis for the BuyMore.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday February 25 2021, @07:44PM (3 children)
Were my experiences that unusual? After repeated bait and switches, and even a failure to issue a rebate, I was completely avoiding them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @06:06PM (2 children)
The Sacramento locations were terrible about putting open box items back on the shelves, although by 2005 or so they were already doing open box stickers, even if they didn't discount the item, which made refund/warrant claims pretty straightforward. They definitely could be a hassle when stuff broke, but if you compared them to the places they pushed out, Computer City (because CompUSA had actually been pretty awesome until they got bought up by CC), Computer Warehouse, and about half of the mom and pop shops (All the good shops had already died out between 88 and 96 or so, except for Halted Specialties Co. for 'junk' purchases.) Fry's warrant claim policy, while not as good as Walmart and some of the other big box stores, was light years ahead of their competition, even as other aspects of their business waxed and waned. Quite frankly the last 2-4 years customer service actually saw an upswing. I assume the managers saw the writing on the wall and didn't really give a fuck about their usual mismanagement of the employees, because the majority of workers were increasingly helpful with less pressure, although the turnover rate except for a few holdouts made it obvious things weren't going to last. I discreetly told any new employee I ran across if I thought they were good and to make sure they had their resumes in elsewhere. There were some truly memorable employees at Fry's, many of them only for a visit or two, but a few, like the I think she was Mexican, cashier(she might have even gotten up to a shift lead or manager, but she was almost always on the registers even when there were 4-6 people fucking around at that little desk they had over to the side of 'the cage') that worked the front registers at Fry's Northgate from like the early-mid 2000s until I assume it closed in 2019. She was helpful, polite, and unlike many of the others there she got quite fast at the registers and handled a couple of fuckups between the printers in the tech department and the product they were handing over to me over the years. I hope she in particular had no trouble jumping ship, because she was, in my experience at least, a calm and professional employee unlike many, primarily the management and sales guys, there.
As an aside: I'm pretty sure one of the fat white pieces of shit who were managers at Computer Warehouse made it over to Fry's after the business was sold off to CW.Net for the ISP side. In the past I had thought that explained why the management there was so shitty, but reading the /r/frys subreddit indicated that was Fry's corporate culture, not any accidental hiring of shitty genuinely sociopathic and business ruining short-term gain managers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 26 2021, @11:08PM (1 child)
Your post was interesting, but marred at the end when you just had to inject pointless racism. Lay off the racism crack.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 27 2021, @06:54AM
And those fuckers need to burn in hell. Anyone who had to deal with a return at Computer Warehouse will know what I am talking about. Fry's return policies on the worst of days were better than CW's on the best of days. And they were shining examples of the sort of sleazy used car salesman management that ruined CW, Computer City, Fry's, Sears, Goodguys, and countless other companies over the years.
There are plenty of good managers who are also white men, but there is a very valid and very shitty stereotype of them that seems to cover most of the ones bringing down businesses left and right. You can add in a few hatchetmen of other genders and races, but they learned it all from these shining examples. Thank you WW2 America, for giving us the MBA and associated middle management.