Micro Center: Best Buy meets Ax-Man

Imagine a computer store that has absolutely everything you could possibly conjure. Everything you would need to build yourself a new PC, all of the accessories, networking supplies, software, games, and gadgets you could ever desire. Now imagine this store as if it were like your local surplus outfit. Just stacks of product everywhere in the most completely random places, power supplies next to mp3 players, video cards next to camera lenses, multiple isles with precisely the same products on opposite sides of the building, miscellaneous items lying around such as printers and computer cases. If this setting is starting to sound familiar then you may have already visited a Micro Center store.

Micro Center is a relatively small reseller with a handful of locations scattered across the US and Minnesota just so happens to have one of these stores just west of Minneapolis. If you’re from Minnesota you may have also heard of the Ax-Man stores which are essentially these surplus shops with everything from military gas masks to motherboard transistors. The Ax-Man store could give you nightmares from the strange array of things they sell but they are known for stocking hard to find gems. Combine a store like Ax-Man with a big box retailer such as Best Buy and you will end up with a place like Micro Center.

Micro Center not only has hard to find parts and accessories that you would otherwise have to order online, their prices are also very competitive. This weekend I wanted to purchase a cheap secondary SATA II hard drive for my desktop. I visited one of my favorite online retailers and I found myself a new 80GB OEM drive for about 40 bucks. The drive I ended up purchasing at Micro Center is a 160GB Western Digital for $57 plus tax. When you figure in the shipping for the hard drive from the online retailer it would cost about the same and I got a bigger and better product in a retail box without any hassle. Heck of a deal if you ask me.

Among the many things I stumbled across at Micro Center today I found something that I truly needed to purchase – Bawls G33K B33R. Nothing would make a nerdy computer store more complete then stocking a favorite geek refreshment and I have to say I’m digging the new flavor. The fact that this store is the only place I’ve seen that sells the new Bawls root beer makes me want to make the trip down there again just to stock up.

It’s a shame that Micro Center is so far away and I waited this long to venture down there, but in retrospect maybe that’s a good thing as I’d go broke from all of the new-found treasures I could blow my money on.