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Chicago Geeks Hit With Low Blow

By Shannon in News on Mar 1, 2007 6:30PM

Being as nerdy as we are, we tend to buy a lot of tech stuff, usually online. But sometimes, we want something now. Maybe we figure out we could reconfigure our comp to churn homemade ice cream right at our desk if we only had that one cord, so we just pick it up on the way home. No fuss, no muss, no waiting, no shipping charges. Kind of like how even though we use Netflix, we still skip out to Blockbuster sometimes when “Sylvia” sitting in our mailboxes feels like too much of a pick-me-up.

compusaOur go-to place is CompUSA right off the Red Line Chicago stop. Sure we have to walk a few more blocks, but it makes up for the pizza-laden LANs that come later. Only now, it looks like those carefree geek days are over: CompUSA’s shutting down all of its Chicagoland stores, and they’re doing it within 90 days. (They’ve even taken Chicago store locations off their site; the closest hit is 98 miles away in Rockford.) Five stores total will be affected: the Chicago location, plus stores in Schaumburg, Highland Park, Skokie and Geneva. The beleaguered computer chain is hoping to cut costs by eliminating over half its stores across the nation.

Apparently Best Buy, Circuit City, Staples and the like are cutting into CompUSA’s slice of the market a bit too much. So what?! We know the bottom line is all that counts, but we can find fucking everything in that store. They’ve got it all, from consoles to routers, digicams to Mac stuff, top-notch video cards to game guides and business software. It’s been a rare experience to go to CompUSA and not get what we needed (or, more accurately, what we wanted). Plus – and this makes a big difference for us – their staff actually seems to know what they’re talking about half the time. What a concept! Nothing like getting some actual help from customer support.

Our one consolation is that because of this, CompUSA’s gonna have some bitchin’ sales between now and closing time. We just better not find our newly-bought HDTV there for $500. Oh, the hell to pay. More importantly, whatever shall we do? Wherever shall we go? The only place left we can think of for the hardcore geek is Microcenter. Fellow nerds, where do you spend your hard-earned dough?

Image via ericsenf.