Staples is selling a big-screen laptop with robust features that belie its low price.
Acer laptop packs a 17.3-inch 1600 x 900 screen, dual-core Intel processor, and 4GB of memory.
As 17-inch laptops go, it's a lot of laptop for the money, compared with higher-priced systems from vendors such as Hewlett-Packard. Big-screen, 17-inch-class laptops priced a couple of hundred dollars above the Acer typically offer slightly faster processors and higher-performance graphics. But for the average user, there's not much difference.
And what do you get for $479? The Acer Aspire AS7736Z-4809 comes with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, a dual-core Intel Pentium Processor T4300 (2.1GHz), 4GB of memory, a 320GB hard disk drive, 8X DVD double-layer optical drive, a Webcam, and a 17.3-inch LED display with 1600 x 900 resolution.
A 17-inch laptop with high-definition screen resolution and plenty of memory to run 64-bit Windows 7--that's nothing to sniff at.
After Best Buy mega-stored Circuit City to oblivion, the hapless retailer has quickly gone to pieces.
On Friday, Circuit City said it was liquidating all of its stores. Then, on Saturday, there was a big liquidation sale at my local Circuit City--up to 30 percent off. The checkout line was almost as long as the lines you encounter on a typical Saturday at Fry's--the mostly California- and Texas-based sprawling electronics warehouse. (The line actually snaked to the back of the store.)
Understand that I'm not giving Fry's any backhanded praise. Fry's is so big, so unwieldy, and, in some respects, its sales policies so lax that, as a rule, I avoid it (unless I need a nuts-and-bolts item like a Torx screw).
But Fry's is still a going concern. Circuit City isn't. The store that I visited on Saturday had been taken over lock, stock, and barrel by the liquidator. I interviewed (very briefly because she was on checkout duty) the "store manager" who said that, as of Saturday, her new immediate boss was the person from the liquidation company. That person, in effect, was now running the show, she said.
My local Circuit City (in southern California) on Saturday had lines inside as long as Fry's--though that isn't necessarily a compliment
(Credit: Brooke Crothers)Inside, it was close to pandemonium. (The manager would not let me take pictures inside the store.) Consumers swarming everywhere: every one of them with at least a few breathless questions and scant employees to provide answers. And consumers seemingly snapping up anything that wasn't nailed down. (I've never seen so many HP wide-screen monitors in one checkout line.)
One male employee in the section I was browsing, spent most of the time I was there (about 15 minutes) pleading ignorance and searching for a manager who never (apparently) materialized.
A female employee I talked to outside (she was on break) said no one knew it would happen--until it happened.
What was ironic (and sad) was that I had been to this same Circuit City a few weeks before and an employee had boasted that this store would not close (in the wake of the limited nationwide store closings Circuit City had announced in November) and would be around for a long time.
My take as a consumer? The sheer scale, selection, organization, and relative attention to display detail that one senses at Best Buy proved to be a huge disincentive for going back to Circuit City--and CompUSA for that matter. Statistics don't lie. I have been to Best Buy dozens of times in the past two years. I've been to Circuit City--even though it's closer--maybe six times, and always as a last resort.
Ask your casual consumer, who is familiar with both stores, why Circuit City failed and the answer is often summed up in two words: Best Buy. Others will say Amazon--but that's another story.
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