Yep. Fry's Electronics bought-out Outpost.com and made it into their internet store a few years back. I've been going to Frys since 1985, when they only had one small store in Sunnyvale (today they have 29 stores in 8 states).
There are several Frys stores here in the south bay area now, so I don't need to buy online myself (and you find slightly better deals in the store that are not available online).
Plus, I don't have to deal with shipping by walking in.
The new Sunnyvale store is as big as an airplane hangar that could hold a couple of 747's, and even has a "player" grand piano in the middle of the store that plays classical music (via a built-in CD player mounted below the keyboard that reads MIDI and move the keys and pedals). It looks like an invisible ghost is playing it sometimes.
What'S REALLY cool is that each store has it's own theme. The Palo Alto store,(even closer to me), looks like an old wild west saloon when you walk in, and there are western themes everywhere inside. The Sunnyvale location had several glass-enclosed exhibits inside, like an old Apple-1 motherboard (very rare) and all kinds of even older historical electronic equipment from many decades ago.
Here's a list:
Quote:
In Northern California:
- Sunnyvale reflects the history of the Silicon Valley
- Palo Alto steps straight out of the old wild, wild west
- Campbell's ancient Egyptian theme has a 20-foot sphinx and King Tut tombs
- Fremont's 1893 World's Fair theme is a flashback to the first city powered by electricity.
- San Jose pays tribute to the first astronomers, the Mayans, with settings from Chichenitza.
- Concord is the newest addition to the Bay Area market.
In Southern California:
- Fountain Valley hails the ruins of ancient Rome, complete with a flowing aqueduct
- Manhattan Beach takes you to Tahiti with sculpted lava tiki heads and its own rain forest
- Woodland Hills is a page out of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland storybook, with 10 to 15-foot high figurines of the story characters
- Anaheim places you on the NASA flight deck for the Endeavor Space Shuttle, complete with launches on big screens all weekend long
- Burbank pulls you back in time to the 1950's with a retro-space theme from Hollywood, complete with little green Martians and Gort, the robot
- City of Industry pays tribute to the industrial revolution with bigger-than-life gears
- San Marcos takes you to Atlantis, with its aquariums, exotic fish, and waterfalls.
In Texas:
- Dallas allows you to experience the Lazy-K ranch, complete with a herd of longhorn cattle
- Houston lets you view the history of Texas oil, complete with oil derricks
- Austin is a tribute to the city's reputation as the "Live Music Capital of the World"
- Irving pays tribute to its history, which is depicted throughout the store on mural-size photos
- Plano shows how the railroad impacted the development of this thriving area
- Webster's murals depict the history of space exploration together with a scale replica of the international space station
In Arizona:
- Phoenix is a journey into an ancient Aztec temple.
In Nevada:
- the Las Vegas reflects the history of "The Strip."
In Washington:
- our Renton reflects past historical events.
Several years ago, the sunnyvale unit was in a Walmart-sized building that made you feel like you were shrunk down and placed inside a computer. The walls are lined with circuitry, table-sized IC chips and basketball-sized resistors and such. I really miss that store.
![[;)]](./images/smilies/smilie_wink1.gif "Winky")
![[:P]](./images/smilies/smilie_wag.gif "Razz")