I want to thank any of you here who have a Fry's near you for not boasting every chance you get. Today was the first chance I've had to go to a Fry's and I must say it's an insane experience. I don't know if all the stores are like the one in Tempe I just visited, but if they are, I demand they bring one to Northern Virginia immediately!

First of all, it's easily the largest store I've ever been in - I'd estimate it's four times the size of either Costco in my area. Don't get me wrong, I certainly don't like it just because it's big, but I do love that they have nearly every consumer electronic device sold in America. I mean, some stores have an end cap for USB thumb drives. Fry's has an aisle. In fact, one thing I observed is that nearly every type of device had its own aisle. PC Cases, keyboards, cameras, even motherboards! I couldn't believe there was an aisle with every motherboard out of its box and stuck to the wall for you to investigate. Amazing. And when I say "they had an aisle for cameras," sure, you might think that's nothing special. Most stores do. But it's the sheer density of just their point and shoot line that threw me. I'd say it was four rows, 20 feet long, each row with a camera every 5 inches.

The store is like Best Buy, on crack and steroids, with a dose of Office Depot, a side of Micro Center, and then throwing in the stock of Newegg.

Fortunately, I was pleased with the prices, too. It's brick and mortar, so you're not going to get the best prices on everything. They're also going to sell a lot of the overpriced stuff like Monster cables, sadly. But for example, one of the things I needed in there was a simple cable to connect my Zune HD to my rental car's AUX in jack. In Radio Shack or Micro Center, that cable is going to cost anywhere from $7 to $15. And sure, on Monoprice it's probably 60 cents. But for $2.50 at Fry's, that would be low enough to make me drive to the store in a pinch.

Argh, I'm very jealous now. I don't have anything like this near me, and I live in a pretty populated area. I must recommend it to visitors of the west coast. The size is monstrous, but I think the store is exellent.