As part of the normal trade show routine I buy a monitor. It’s usually around $175 to rent one vs. $250 to buy one, so the first time we do a show in a town we buy a monitor and the local rep gets to use it for the rest of the year. We even do the same thing with some 40 inch monitors where we have bigger shows.

I hit the online fliers to see who’s got the best sales, this week it happened to be Office Max, although I chose a monitor based on the fact that it had internal speakers - which completely suck.

I’ve heard about Fry’s Electronics, but I had never been to one so I decided to swing over there just to see what they were about. The place is geek heaven. It’s about 4 times the Best Buy near my house and has the same stuff they carry plus a lot more components, toys, and other random stuff like pepper spray.

On top of that there’s a whole Raiders of the Lost Ark temple theme going on in the place. Worth a trip just to see, or if you need a $799 case for the next computer that you are going to build.