AT&T THE SPAWN OF SATAN I'm going to give you the same warning I give to my customers at WehoComputerRepair.com . Would you like to get high speed Internet from a company with "TELEGRAPH" in it's name?  Of course not, but if AT&T is your provider that is just what is happening. A Google search of the phrase "AT&T evil" brings up 940,000 results.   Is there a single person in America they have not pissed off? AT&T is a dowdy old monstrosity that treated it's customers like cattle even BEFORE it was broken up in 1982 for being a monopoly.  Things are no different now.  Since then the company has basically put itself back together again piece by piece. Now it is the 23rd largest company in the world. In 2014 the Feds sued AT&T again, this time for allegedly deceiving millions of customers by selling them supposedly “unlimited” data plans that the company later “throttled” by slowing Internet speeds when customers surfed the Web too much.  Apparently somebody at AT&T forgot to pay off a politician somewhere.   I have watched the American Telephone and Telegraph company trash my clients and myself for fifteen years.  When high speed Internet came out they sent unqualified techs to people's home who broke their computers just trying to put in a networking card.    Once they turned of MY phone service because they owed ME five dollars.  Five dollars!  Customers who requested high speed Internet in the early days found their business phones turned off for weeks by accident instead.  In 2014 I watched them put a West Hollywood music venue through two weeks of broken Internet torture.  AT&T made big promises about fixing their problems without resolving anything.  This deeply affected their ability to do business and employees had to use the Internet on their phones.   My clients who have switched away from AT&T are much happier.  Warner Cable provides very fast Internet at an affordable price and I like the service.  Do not be fooled by AT&T's claims about package deals saving you money.  It's called AT&T U-Verse: phone, Internet and TV in one package.  A package deal with them leaves you MORE dependent on them ... more trapped.  And if their signal goes out you could lose television, telephone and the 'net all at once!  Even AT&T has given up on U-Verse and is switching itself over to DirecTV which they bought in 2015.   Worst of all, when I forgot to pay a bill for five days they took my phone number I had had for 18 years and threw it away!  There went my long time business number. Then they sent me a check because they had been overbilling me for that disconnected number for years!  Idiots!  I guess that story explains this rant doesn't it?  You can find more good consumer advice for folks in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills at WehoComputerRepair.com. For more on this issue go here: ATT the Spawn of Satan.

The best places to buy electronics in Southern California

TECH SHOPPING IN LOS ANGELES

I'm going to tell you the same thing I tell my customers at wehocomputerrepair.com about shopping. Shopping for tech stuff in So Cal is great because we get all the latest gear the minute it gets off the boat from Asia. Staples and Best Buy do not have the selection they once did as electronics sales shift more onto the Internet.  People on the East Coast pay more for the same stuff because it must be shipped across America first.

By far the biggest, cheapest, best place to get tech gear is Fry's Electronics.  And what don't they sell? Computers, parts, printers, games, appliances, toys, gadgets and enough electronic components to build a hundred Artoo-Detoos.  It's hacker heaven and where all the tech savvy folks shop.  They have nine gigantic stores in Southern California. Unfortunately none of them are near West Hollywood or the West Side because they need so much real estate. It is a trip to make it out to them but it is worth it.  You just better know what you want because most of the workers are immigrants and don't know much about electronics.  The woman you just asked about network adapters might have been living in a ditch in Bolivia last week.

But the people at the memory/CPU desk are always VERY knowledgeable. Even PC experts find CPU and memory modules confusing and fast changing. It's easy to buy the wrong thing and the components don't work together.  The folks at the PC parts desk have not steered me wrong when it comes to assembling computers from scratch. If you are too far from one of the locations listed below you can always shop at Frys.com but you won't have anybody to ask if you are buying the right thing.

Another neat thing about the physical stores is that each one is done up in a different theme.  Fry's knows people sometimes have to spend a lot of time in line at Christmas so they make sure each store is full of unusual sculptures and displays.  The Burbank store has a UFO crashing into it's entrance and a Sci Fi B-movie theme inside. The computer department is help up on the suckered arms of a giant drooling octopus!  The Woodland Hills store is theme as "Alice in Wonderland" and visitors seem to be falling down the rabbit hole as they enter the store. Kids love it!

LOCATION	ADDRESS
Anaheim	3370 E. La Palma Ave.
Burbank	2311 N. Hollywood y.
City of Industry	13401 N. Crossroads Pkwy.
Fountain Valley	10800 Kalama River Ave.
Manhattan Beach	3600 Sepulveda Blvd.
Oxnard	1901 E. Ventura Blvd.
San Diego	9825 Stonecrest Blvd.
San Marcos	150 Bent Ave.
Woodland Hills	6100 Canoga Ave.

For strictly online shopping I recommend NewEgg.com.  There are several other sites that are just as good but New Egg is in Whittier. That's in LA just 12 miles from downtown. They can deliver almost anything in a day or two and they get everything the minute it comes off the boat from Asia. Long Beach is where all the Asian imports enter America. Why buy from an East Coast site that must ship electronics cross country just to get back to where it was originally imported?
You can find more good consumer advice for folks in West Hollywood and Beverly Hills at Weho Computer Repair. For more on this article go to my shopping page .