ncmark wrote on 2024-09-04, 17:37:

BUT you can't deny it's not at all like it was in the 90s

Oh, it's definitely not like it was. There used to be dozens of independent computer stores where I live. Nowadays, there are a handful at most.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-04, 23:43:

I don't get really why Canada Computers came out on top, they're alright, but they weren't cheaper, they weren't flashier, maybe it's coz they actually kept stuff to look at in the store?

I think size - I first discovered them in 2001-2 in Kingston, and they had a store in Kingston, a bunch of stores in the GTA, and it wouldn't have surprised me if they had other stores in southern Ontario. Expanded to Ottawa and Montreal years and years later. Most of the other outfits, I think only had 1-2 stores.

My guess is that their size let them get mildly better prices on stuff, and if they are paying $376 for a given video card and the guy across the street is paying $384 for it, over time that adds up.

Plus, especially in the Internet era, being bigger means that you split the cost of your web site and all those fixed costs across more stores.

Also, one other thing I just thought of - a lot of computer parts buyers in those days were university-aged or so. I don't know when they opened their first stores in London, Hamilton, or Waterloo, I know their Kingston store was open by 2001, but that covers a lot of the universities that GTA folks, especially, would go to. And it goes both ways - if you know their brand from home, you're more likely to go to them than to go to Kingston Computer Planet (the independent store three blocks up the street); conversely, if you know them from school, you're more likely to go to them rather than some other place at College/Spadina.

I guess maybe it's they feel like newcomers to me as they didn't spread much west of Toronto until 10 years or so back.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-09-05, 00:17:

I guess maybe it's they feel like newcomers to me as they didn't spread much west of Toronto until 10 years or so back.

I think they did a big huuuuuge expansion in the late 2000s. Trying to remember when they turned up in Ottawa - it was around then. Before they turned up, the dominant player had become an outfit called PC Cyber, which was gone within a year or two of CC's arrival. They launched Montreal ("Ordinateurs Canada") around the same time.

I thought their southwestern Ontario presence was older, but maybe not.

bloodem wrote on 2024-08-30, 13:05:

Anandtech is shutting down...
https://www.anandtech.com/show/21542/end-of-t … ndtech-farewell

"we’ve reached the end of a long journey – one that started with a review of an AMD processor, and has ended with the review of an AMD processor." :-(

The only constant is change.