Since the electronics of fry in February 2021, silicon Valley has become Nard Lonalier in the middle of the epidemic. The electronics store chain was an avatar of technical roots of the valley.
But Subtle centerOhio’s electronics retailer, has opened his 29th store in Santa Clara, California. And so the Neerad Empire has returned. I see it as a big thing, after the inauguration of the Nintendo Store – the second in the country after New York – earlier this month in San Francisco. After years of poor economic news, it is good to see that the Bay Area is coming back.
But this is not just a store. It is a symbol – a sign that shows that there is still a physical appearance in Silicon Valley, Buck’s restaurant, Denny’s where Nvidia started, in addition to places like Intel Museum, Computer History Museum, California Academy of Sciences and Tech Museum of Innovation, in addition to places such as Silicon Valley. Other historical hangouts for technology such as Walker’s Wagon Wheel, Attari’s headquarters, lion and compass – even Circuit City – such as Circuit City – have long been closed for technology. But hey, we have got the micro center store, and the apple spaceship is not far away.
The grand opening week is going well and I got a tour of superstore from an experienced tech journalist Dan Acmanman, who is Editor-in-Chief in Micro Center News. As I moved into place, Ekmanman was finishing a chat with a technical repair publication IFIXIT, with its place for podcast inside the store. It was unpredictable, because I never saw a store on social media in this way.
There was knowledge bar nearby, where you can get answers to all your technical questions – a lot like a genius bar in Apple stores. And there were repair tables in the open.
There are many things for technical enthusiasts that can prefer a micro center. First of all, it is not as spacious as fry, with a strange mixture of tons of household appliances, cosmetics, magazines and snack foods, along with ancient Egyptians such as zani themes and electronics items. (Egyptian Campbell, California fry shop that I often run was 156,000 sq ft, and now it is home to a pickle court complex). Fry was a store that stereotped Nurds and Silicon Valley, which also had its HBO television shows that used to take stereotypes.
In contrast, the micro center store is shorter than 40,000 sq ft and is stocked with many more practical Neerad items. For the grand opening, this store had a very practical product of more than 4,000 graphics processing units (GPU) in the stock from Nvidia (who has just launched its 50 series GPU) and AMD, Ekman, told me. Some of those graphics cards cost $ 4,000.
“There people were waiting to go to GPU,” said Ekmanman.
There was a gold-plated graphics card on the performance that was being auctioned for charity. It was signed by Jensen Huang, CEO of NVidia.
“I joke that whoever wins the dialect should also get a Jensen leather jacket,” said Ekmanman.
And this micro center store has a good place (5201 Stevens Creek Boleward in Santa Clara) which is just six minutes drive from the Worldwide Headquarters of Apple and (perhaps yet yet) is a one -minute walk from the Korean Hair Salon.
The micro center had a previous store in Silicon Valley near the headquarters of Intel in Santa Clara. But the store closed in 2012 as the company could not talk to the landlord on better terms. For its return to the Gulf region, the micro center gave its time and returned when several other retail chains were failing. This proves that once a proud region – the birthplace of electronics – still has the property of its own electronics store.
Sure, we have a goal, best buy and walmart are selling lots of electronics gears. But there is nothing like Akihbara Electronics District in Japan, which is full of multi-story electronics stores and gaming arcade.
But this store is loaded with today’s modern top gear, such as AI PC, omnipresent home networking gear, and dyes for multi-colored water-cooling systems. Vendors such as Razor and Loditech had their own sections. Ekmanman was happy to show me the USB-C for USB-A adapter in stock among several vague objects. And he showed me the inventory machine that can rotate his stock of 3D-primary filaments and give you an accurate SKU that you scanned with the bar code.
“This is super funny. I call it Mr. Filatens,” Acmanman said about the inventory robot.
There is a section for hobbies that like single-board computing and DIY projects. The content is a set of videos, audio and digital content creation tools for creators. All said, there are more than 20,000 products and more than 100 technical experts who can help. Even it has a counted cashier location, where you can see – the same type of checkout that was near Fry.
Customers can receive authorized computer service for brands such as Apple, DELL, and HP, benefiting from the same day’s diagnosis and repair, thanks to more than 3,000 parts on the hand through partnership with the leading OEM. I only want this to be a help desk for comcast.
The micro center began in 1979 at Columbus, Ohio. It is surprising that there are not more stupid stores, given how there is omnipresent technology worldwide these days.
But Ekmanman said, “These people are really correcting it, picking, choosing and choosing, looking for the right cities, looking for the right places. That’s why Cherlot is great. Miami is a big tech hub, especially for health technology. And we are literally five minutes away from Apple Headquarters and we are many people.
“Even though this store is large, the CEO (Richard Marshad) is actually in curns, making sure it is the correct mixture of the stuff. He is making sure it does not go far. So you are not going to come here and find, you know, hair dryer or lawncare equipment,” said Ekman. “You are going to find computers and home entertainment stuffs, and DIY gear. There are such components, such as in a radio hut, that cares about hobbies.”
For Micro Center News, Ekmanrman told me that he has about 10 regular contributors and 20 more freelancer gadget reviews and other stories about Tech Gear. This is a kind of refuge for that fading breed of professional technical journalists. No wonder I was about to visit the micro center.
