Fry's Electronics (aka Geek Heaven)

I don't have school tomorrow night, so today has been pretty stress free. This morning, Corbin and I got packed up and headed over to the grand opening sale at the new Fry's Electronics. It was awesome! I thought it was going to be another Best Buy knock-off, but it is so much more than that. It has all of your electronics store fare: PCs, movies, games, audio, video, etc. In addition to all of that, they also carry component parts and lab equipment. It sort of like a Radio Shack, a Best Buy, and a Barnes and Noble all rolled into one, and then pumped up on steroids. They had a wide selection of motherboards, Tektronix oscilliscopes, movies, games, and other great geek stuff.

I had avoided coming in earlier in the week because I knew I needed to control myself. Sometimes I go in a store like that and I just completely lose consciousness and come out with a very light wallet, and very little trunk space. Today I was on a mission. My mission was to get all of the equipment I would need to transfer VHS tapes to my PC, and then burn those tapes onto DVD. This is for a little project I'm doing to transfer all of my parents old home movies over to DVD before the tapes start to rot. They were caught in a flood last year, and we're not sure how long they will last. So in order to complete this project, I needed a couple of things:

• VCR
  
• DVD Burner
  
• DVD Media
  
• DVD Authoring Software
  
• Video Capture Board

Our old VCR bit the dust a couple of months ago, so I needed a replacement. I was looking to get a DVD/VCR combo so I could put it in the arcade cabinet and watch just about anything I wanted. I found a nice Panasonic model for a shade under $100. As I browsed through, I found a copy of Quicken WIllMaker Plus 2005. Jenn and I need to get a will put together, and the WillMaker software was marked down to $30, and with the $30 mail-in rebate, was effectively free. So then it was on to the DVD Burner. I found a Memorex multiple format DVD burner that was $89.99 with a $20 mail-in rebate. There are way too many recordable DVD formats, and this one seemed to support just about everything out on the market. In the same isle, there was a pile of DVD-R media. A 50-pack of blank DVD-R media was marked down to $12, and included a $12 mail-in rebate, so that was another freebie I tossed in the cart. The burner included the DVD authoring software, so I was able to skip that one. Then it was on to the video capture equipment.

This is where my plan hit a little snag. Corbin and I had been in the store for an hour and a half at this point, and we had completely exhausted his supply of snacks and drinks. He was cranky, and we think he is cutting some molars, so he was in an awful mood. I hadn't done my homework on video capture boards, so I needed some type to look into the different models. With Corbin throwing a fit, my patience was wearing out. I decided to high tail it out of the store while I still could. I tossed a couple of DVD cases into the cart on my way to the register. Total Damages: $254.26. Total Rebates: $62.00.