When looking at PDA's for my father (who live in Europe) at CompUSA (I was boycotting Fry's at the time due to their sales staff), I made the mistake of asking whether the power adapters for Palm's supported 220V. The normal salesperson didn't know, and so got the manager of that department, who told me that the PDA's wouldn't work on 220V like most laptops do because the battery in a PDA is too small to be able to take the extra voltage, whereas the larger battery in a laptop could "handle it". When I asked whether he thought that the voltage from the wall was actually applied directly to the battery, he said that it was. I didn't think it worthwhile to ask if he had ever tried charging a battery in that way.
At that point, I just decided to leave (keeping from laughing too much was a contributing factor to this decision). If a store is going to have such products presented so that one cannot open, or even look at the boxes, and inspect them on one's own, then the store really needs to hire people that have some basic knowledge of things like electricity.
The nice thing about Fry's, however, is that even though the salespeople have little or no knowledge about the products and can be downright evasive (many will say "oh yes, I'll just check in the back" - and never come out again), the store does have a selection of items that are not found in the other stores. The other stores may have ethernet cables, but not spools of cable, and Fry's seems to be the only chain left selling components, though their selection there leaves much to be desired (hardly any transistors the last time I went, for example), and components are frequently out of stock for long periods of time (and don't bother asking anyone when they will be restocked).
That said, the salespeople can make going there not worth it - trying to get something that is actually in the back can be painfully tedious - and I've had much more help from other customers when asking about products. But then the return policy is great - I've returned opened software without a receipt, motherboards, and a variety of other things, many of which had no defects, without any problem at all, and no restocking fee.
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And then what? In many areas, you either have no choice about your service provider, or the choices are all essentially the same.
When looking at PDA's for my father (who live in Europe) at CompUSA (I was boycotting Fry's at the time due to their sales staff), I made the mistake of asking whether the power adapters for Palm's supported 220V. The normal salesperson didn't know, and so got the manager of that department, who told me that the PDA's wouldn't work on 220V like most laptops do because the battery in a PDA is too small to be able to take the extra voltage, whereas the larger battery in a laptop could "handle it". When I asked whether he thought that the voltage from the wall was actually applied directly to the battery, he said that it was. I didn't think it worthwhile to ask if he had ever tried charging a battery in that way.
At that point, I just decided to leave (keeping from laughing too much was a contributing factor to this decision). If a store is going to have such products presented so that one cannot open, or even look at the boxes, and inspect them on one's own, then the store really needs to hire people that have some basic knowledge of things like electricity.
The nice thing about Fry's, however, is that even though the salespeople have little or no knowledge about the products and can be downright evasive (many will say "oh yes, I'll just check in the back" - and never come out again), the store does have a selection of items that are not found in the other stores. The other stores may have ethernet cables, but not spools of cable, and Fry's seems to be the only chain left selling components, though their selection there leaves much to be desired (hardly any transistors the last time I went, for example), and components are frequently out of stock for long periods of time (and don't bother asking anyone when they will be restocked).
That said, the salespeople can make going there not worth it - trying to get something that is actually in the back can be painfully tedious - and I've had much more help from other customers when asking about products. But then the return policy is great - I've returned opened software without a receipt, motherboards, and a variety of other things, many of which had no defects, without any problem at all, and no restocking fee.