[ale] Fry's Opening

[Charles Shapiro]

I went around 09:30 on Saturday morning. Hours are 08:00-21:00 M-F,
09:00-21:00 Sat, and  12:00-19:00 Sun.  It's located  at the
intersection of Ring Road and Commerce Avenue outside of Gwinnett Place
Mall. I dragged one buddy along and  met up with another friend while
there, so the three of us explored the place for about an hour and a
half.

The place was packed, with lots of people rolling shopping carts around
containing the Sharp 25" TVs on sale for $99.  I guess that was a good
price for TVs. They also allegedly had a Deal on Linux PCs at $100 each,
but I think they were gone before we got there.  

It's a huge box store, with everything from RJ-45 crimpers and cable
ends to electric shavers. Among the things that jumped out at me were a
whole _wall_ of motherboards, the largest library of Gameboy Advance
software I've seen (most at $19.99), a strong selection of sound cards
(including about 4 different Creative Labs offerings), water-cooling
kits for overclocking your computer, and a large selection of computer
cases and modding equipment. They also were selling some refurbed goods,
including several pallets of refurbed HP computers (80 gb hard drives,
256 mb memory, I forget the rest, $400) and some refurbed old Palms 
($50 after rebate).

Over in the software aisle, I saw several interesting offerings in the
operating systems department, including a couple of boxes of Red Hat,
three boxed packs of software for Lindows -- if you want to _pay_ for
Open Office -- a couple of different versions of OpenBSD, and both the
'Professional' and the 'Home' versions of Suse linux. I saw no Open
Office for Windows boxes, bummer. The Apple machines are in a different
part of the store from the IBM PC stuff, so you have to look for them or
ask around. They had several models on display, but I'm not really part
of that culture and can't make an intelligent judgement on buying an
Apple there. The store also features a coffee shop and a long aisle of
junque food near the checkout counters.

The book section was mostly a dreary sea of Visual Basic This and
Microsoft Access That. They did have some discount O'Reilly books there
for the sale though.  For computer books you might do better at Micro
Center or Barnes & Noble. 

>From my buddies, I gathered that the prices were pretty much in line
with local market. You might be able to find stuff cheaper if you look,
but if you need a DB25 M-to-M connector late on a Sunday afternoon, this
might be the only place in town and you probly won't be  screwed _too_
badly.  It ain't Bulldog Computers or Tech America, but I guess it'll do
while it's around.

I managed a couple of photos before a store clerk caught me --  the
bystander I handed my camera to for the ALE Picture couldn't figure out
how to work it, so all I have are random shots. I guess I'm glad that
they didn't smash my camera and throw me out on the curb. I'll try to
get what I have on the TWiki in the next couple of days. 

Plus, I conquered my Debian system and actually burned my first
MP3->Audio CD Saturday! W00H00!

-- CHS