For those that live in states that have Fry's Electronic's computer and electronics superstores, you'll understand my rant.

I know computers, I've been dealing with them for over 20 years. I know what I want, and I certainly don't go to a Fry's for advice - I go there for selection and price, thats it.

The biggest problem with Fry's is the fact that they don't completely test items returned by customers before they re-tape em and shove em back on the shelf.

I bought a CDRW/DVD drive recently, that had been returned and restocked. Now normally I NEVER buy items such as this, but it was such a good price I figured maybe the person that returned it didn't know what they were doing. Maybe they aligned the red stripe on pin 40. Who knows? Either way, I was determined to make this drive work.

To make a long story short, I should have stuck with my instincts and not bought something previously returned to Fry's. In this case, it appears the previous customer that sent this drive back to Fry's returned it for a good reason.

The drive appears to work just fine, until you get a "Cannot find file" error while installing an OS on a drive with it. When you search for the cause of the error on Microsoft's website, they tell you the drive cannot spin up quick enough for Windows setup to detect it.

Great, the drive is defective, but not in a way that anyone testing returned equipment at Fry's would ever catch. I'm sure they took it out of the box, plugged it in, booted up a machine with it plugged in, saw the ready light and shut it down. Blammo, its good and user error, back on the shelf it goes!

This is an inherent problem at Fry's and I've been shopping there for many, many years. I wish they paid more attention to the product they place on their shelves, or I may just decide to start spending more money on my computer parts at Best Buy or CompUSA, yeah!

Wait a minute, did I just say spend MORE money on Computer parts? Ok, nevermind, I'm nuts. I guess Fry's has me locked in with their great prices.

I suppose, this is just one of those "prices you pay in order to get the prices you want to pay", eh?

Until next time,

-AdamV