Adios CompUSA

CompUSA recently announced that they were closing a bunch of their stores. I heard on the radio that 4 of them would be in the Bay Area, and of course the Pleasanton store (closest to me) was one of them. Now, I don't shop at CompUSA very often because they price things way to high in comparison to Fry's and Newegg, but its nice if they have a decent sale going on, or if you need something in a jam and don't want to wait for shipping.

Last night I stopped in to see if I could pick up an Nvidia card on the cheap, and wouldn't you know it, they were putting up all of their going out of business prices. I went into the store almost sure that I would find what I was looking for and maybe something extra. Of course, I walked out of the store empty handed.

There's a sad irony in the fact that even while trying to liquidate their merchandise, they still managed to be way over priced. The most they were giving in sale was 20% off. Of course this was in all of the crap that they probably have a horribly high mark-up on. You know, iPod accessories, cables, and some Apple peripherals. However, all of the good stuff, like computers and TVs were only marked down 5% - not even enough to offset the CA sales tax! Video cards and some networking gear were marked down 10%, but even then that didn't really make the prices any more competitive than Frys.

David mentioned something about people picking up MacBooks for $700, but if that's the true, its certainly not happening here because I would have picked up one in a heart beat.

Oh well, the 20 minute drive to Fry's isn't that bad.

Felt my first earthquake since moving to the bay area. USGS says 4.2 about 32 miles North of here. I didn't even realize what it was until my wife and her friend told me that it was one.

Wasn't really a big deal, but the local news is making it into a bigger deal than it probably was.