2nd March 2026
The technology retail landscape in North America is shaped by a tension between convenience, expertise and competitive pricing. From sprawling big-box chains to specialist online stores, the sector contains a varied mix of established names and niche operators, each competing for customers who expect rapid delivery, accurate product information and reliable after-sales support. Five retailers stand out for the distinctly different approaches they take to serving that audience: Tech-America, Best Buy, Newegg, PC-Canada and Micro Center.
Tech-America
Tech-America presents itself as a direct-to-consumer online retailer covering a broad range of electronics and computer components. Its selling points include a large inventory and an emphasis on prompt shipping, with the site targeting a mix of hobbyists and small businesses. Questions have been raised about the company's legitimacy, with multiple consumer forums and review aggregators reflecting mixed opinions on its reliability and operational structure. Prospective customers are advised to research the retailer carefully before committing to a purchase, as third-party assessments remain inconclusive.
Best Buy
Best Buy is one of the most recognisable names in North American consumer electronics retail, and its history stretches back further than many of its customers might expect. The company was founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio speciality store called Sound of Music, operating its first location in St. Paul, Minnesota. It was rebranded as Best Buy in 1983, at which point it had seven stores and around $10 million in annual sales, and it subsequently expanded its product range well beyond audio equipment to become a broad-based electronics retailer.
Today, Best Buy operates over 1,000 stores across the United States and Canada, combining physical retail with online sales in a model that the company describes as omnichannel. A key differentiator is its Geek Squad service division, which provides technical support, repairs and installation services across all store locations, and which has become a recognisable brand in its own right since being acquired by Best Buy in 2002. That combination of an extensive retail footprint and in-house technical services has allowed the company to retain a large and varied customer base that includes households, businesses and educational institutions.
Newegg
Newegg occupies a distinct position as a specialist online retailer focused primarily on computer hardware and components. Founded in 2001 by Fred Chang, a Taiwanese-American entrepreneur who had previously run ABS Computer Technologies, the company was established in California and initially targeted PC builders and enthusiasts who wanted detailed product information and user reviews alongside their purchases. The name itself was chosen to suggest new hope for e-commerce at a time when many dot-com businesses were struggling to survive.
Newegg operates a hybrid model that combines first-party sales with a marketplace for third-party sellers, expanding available inventory without the company needing to hold all stock itself. This approach has attracted a loyal community of technically minded buyers who value the depth of product listings on the platform. However, the marketplace model also introduces variability in seller quality, and some customers have noted inconsistencies in their experiences depending on which seller fulfilled their order. Newegg has been publicly listed on the Nasdaq under the ticker NEGG since May 2021, following a reverse merger with a Chinese special-purpose acquisition company.
PC-Canada
PC-Canada is a Waterloo, Ontario-based retailer that has served both individual consumers and business customers since its founding in 2003, making it one of Canada's longer-standing e-commerce technology retailers. The company offers a broad catalogue of IT products and components, and it holds an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, having been accredited since December 2015. Customer reviews present a more mixed picture, with some praising competitive pricing and fast shipping, while others have reported issues around order fulfilment and pricing changes after purchase. That gap between institutional accreditation and individual customer experience is a useful reminder that smaller regional retailers can face difficulties scaling consistently as their customer base grows.
Micro Center
Micro Center has taken a path that runs counter to the broader shift towards online-only retail, continuing to invest in physical stores and in-person expertise. The company currently operates 30 locations across the United States, with recent openings in Charlotte, Miami and Santa Clara adding to its footprint. Each store carries over 25,000 products and is staffed by associates who are recruited specifically for their technical knowledge, rather than general retail experience.
A notable feature of every Micro Center location is the Knowledge Bar, a dedicated in-store support desk offering diagnostics, repairs, authorised servicing for brands including Apple and Dell, and consultations for customers building their own PCs. The concept was introduced in 2007 and has since become central to the company's identity. Micro Center was ranked the number one tech retailer in the United States by PC Magazine in 2024, a recognition that reflects the premium its customers place on accessible, knowledgeable in-store service.
Closing Remarks
Each of these five retailers demonstrates a different answer to the same underlying question: what do technology buyers actually value? Tech-America and Newegg lean on the convenience and inventory breadth that online retail makes possible, while Best Buy and Micro Center make the case that physical presence and expert service remain compelling. PC-Canada illustrates the particular pressures facing regional players operating in a market where large international competitors set the expectations for pricing and delivery speed. As consumer habits continue to evolve, the retailers that balance adaptability with a clearly defined offering are likely to be the ones that endure.
10th March 2025
Within the last week, I changed my monitor and am without an Iiyama in my possession for the first time since 1997. The first one was a 17" CRT screen that accompanied my transition from education into work. Those old screens were not long-lasting, though, especially since it replaced a 15" Dell screen that had started to work less well than I needed; the larger size was an added attraction after I saw someone with a 21" Iiyama at the university where I was pursuing a research degree.
Work saw me using a 21" Philips screen myself for a time before Eizo flat screen displays were given to us as part of a migration to Windows 2000. That inspired me to get a 17" Iiyama counterpart to what I had at work. Collecting that sent me on an errand to a courier's depot on the outskirts of Macclesfield. The same effort may have been accompanied by my dropping my passport, which I was using for identification. That thankfully was handed into the police, so I could get it back from them, even if I was resigned to needing a new one. More care has been taken since then to avoid a repeat.
The screen worked well, though I kept the old one as a backup for perhaps far too long. It took some years to pass before I eventually hauled it to the recycling centre; these days, I might try a nearby charity shop before setting off on such a schlep. In those times, LCD screens lasted so well that they could accumulate if you were not careful. The 17" Iiyama accompanied my migration from Windows to Linux and a period of successful and ill-fated PC upgrades, especially a run of poor luck in 2009.
2010 saw me change my place of work, and a 24" Iiyama was acquired just before then. Again, its predecessor was retained in case anything went awry and eventually went to a charity shop from where I could go into a new life. There was no issue with the new acquisition, and it went on to do nearly twelve years of work for me. A 34" Iiyama replaced it a few years ago, yet I wonder if that decision was the best. Apart from more than a decade of muck on the screen, nothing else was amiss. Even a major workstation upgrade in 2021 did little to challenge it. Even so, it too went to a charity shop searching for a new home.
This year's workstation overhaul did few favours to that 34" successor. While it was always sluggish to wake, it did nothing like going into a cycle of non-responsiveness that it had on numerous occasions in the last few months. Compatibility with a Mac Mini could be better, too. The result is that I am writing these words using a Philips B346C1 instead, and it has few of the issues that beset the Iiyama, save for needing to remove and insert an HDMI cable for a Mac Mini at times.
Screen responsiveness is a big improvement, especially when switching between machines using a KVMP switch. Wake up times are noticeably shorter, and there is much better reliability. However, it did take a deal of time to optimise its settings to my liking. The OSD may be more convenient than the Iiyama, yet having Windows software that did the same thing made configuration at lot easier. While getting acceptable output across Windows, Linux and macOS has been a challenge, there is a feeling that things are nearly there.
Another matter is the fact that this is a curved screen. In some ways, that is akin to the move from a 24" screen to a 34" one when fonts and other items needing enlarging for the bigger screen. After a burst of upheaval, eventually things do settle down and acclimatisation ensues. Even though further tinkering cannot be ruled out, there is a sounder base for computing after the changeover.
31st March 2007
Since today was to have been the last day of my Office 2007 trial, I headed over to Amazon.co.uk at the start of the week to bag both Office Home and Student 2007 and Outlook 2007. Both arrived yesterday, so I set to ridding my system of all things Office before adding the new software. So the 2007 trial had to go, as did Office XP and any reference to Office 97; Office XP was an upgrade. From this, you might think that I am on a five-year upgrade cycle for Office, and it certainly does appear that way though Office 95 was the first version that I had on a PC; it came with my then more than acceptable Dell Dimension XPS133 (Pentium 133, 16MB RAM, 1.6GB hard drive… it all looks so historical now).
Returning to the present, the 2007 installations went well and all was well with my system. Curiously, Microsoft seems to label the components of Office Home and Student “non-commercial use”. While I accept that the licence is that way inclined, they could be a little more subtle than to go emblazoning the application title bars with the said wording. Nevertheless, I suppose that it is a minor irritation when you consider that you are allowed a three machine licence for what are the full versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. It must be the presence of OpenOffice on the scene that is inducing such benevolence.
Curiously, Outlook isn’t included in Office Home and Student, hence my getting the full version of the application separately. That means that there is no nefarious wording about the purpose for which it should be used. While on the subject of Outlook, my purge of previous Office versions thankfully didn’t rid my system of the PST files that I was using with Outlook 2007’s predecessors. In fact, the new version just picked up where its predecessors had left off without any further ado. As I have been getting used to the new interface, changed from Outlook 2002 but not as dramatically as the likes of Word, Excel or PowerPoint, there is a certain amount of continuation from what has gone before in any case. The three-pane window is new to me as I never encountered Outlook 2003 and that may explain why it took a little time to find a few things. An example is that all calenders appear in the same place when I had expected the association between calenders and their PST files to be retained. Nevertheless, it is not at all a bad way to do things, but it does throw you when you first encounter it. Its RSS feed reader is a nice touch, as are the translucent pop-ups that appear when a new message arrives; that tells you the title and the sender so you can decide whether to read it without so much as having to look at it and interrupt what you are doing.
In a nutshell, all seems well with Office 2007 on my machine, and I am set up to go forward without the headache of an upgrade cycle since I have recommenced from a clean slate. Though I have heard of some problems with Office 2007 on Windows Vista, I am running Windows XP and I have had no problems so far. In fact, I plan to sit out the Vista saga for a while to see how things develop and, who knows, I might even not bother with Vista at all and go for Vienna, its replacement due in 2009/2010, since XP support is to continue for a good while yet.