Circuit City: A Not-So Tearful Goodbye

Circuit City has always been a sort of odd man out in terms of electronics stores. I see far more advertising for Best Buy and I see more press, both good and bad. Fry's has relatively no advertising on television or on the internet, and yet it's no doubt it has a large store with a wide range of products and prices.

Circuit City to me was the middle child. No outstanding characteristics, but safe from most exposure with it's brothers receiving more attention.

Here was my last, unfortunate experience with Circuit City.

It was another lazy Sunday afternoon. January 25, the day before classes resume, and I had finished my textbook shopping on the Friday before. I had been following Circuit City's liquidation like a hawk over it's prey, though I guess a vulture on a dying animal is more accurate. What I wanted was an external hard drive. The drive on my laptop had been filling up with videos and misc applications and games, so I needed some new space.

Hopping over to my nearest CC in Huntington Beach, I peruse the aisles for it's external memory storage aisle. My location, unfortunately, was just another location like all the others. 10% discounts on most with 30% at best on a random assortment of pcs. It was big disappointment as the $99 hard drive I had my eye on for the longest time had only a 10% off tag.

I leave bitter and angry, and decide that out of spite, I'll drive to Fry's. The nearest one was 5 miles away from CC; 2 more miles when taking my drive from home into account. I had classes to get ready for, so it probably wasn't a good budget of my time, but I was determined to find something of worth today.

Here is the Iomega 160GB external hard drive. It was $60 at Fry's, but $55 since it was opened. It works perfectly, and has offloaded 50 gigs of data off my laptop.

In all honesty, I don't remember how large the capacity of the hard drive from Circuit City was. However, 160GB is more then enough for me, and I definitely saved a ton of money. Moral of the story? Always shop around before making a purchase. You never know how much money you'll be saving on the next great price.