Sunday Afternoon at The Micro Center
Last weekend I ventured out to our local Micro Center. I hadn’t been there for several years. It was an interesting and enjoyable experience, even if I didn’t buy anything on this occasion. In some fashion, it was a grounding experience.
I have a long relationship with The Micro Center. When I first moved here from Toronto in 1998 it was an eye-opening place. That was before Amazon.com, when computer stores were still a thing, and software was bought on floppy disk or CD-ROM. The Micro Center was a place I could go and lay hands on things before making a purchase. As a lark, one day I was there with Stella and I hugged a fancy new computer. Thereafter, she started to call it “The Michael Center.”
On Sunday, August 10th, 2025 The Micro Center in Houston was busy! It had not occurred to me that this was the last weekend before kids started back to school. It was also a tax-free weekend for back to school supplies. The place was fully of families getting things their kids would need for school.
The Lenovo Twins
I was there just to look around the place, but I really wanted to lay hands on a Lenovo T14 laptop. It’s one model in the running to replace my 2019 X1 Carbon and my aged desktop. I found a T14 there on display along side a T16. This was enough to convince me that 16” is just too big a laptop for my tastes. I wish I’d brought my X1 Carbon with me. The T14 is markedly heavier, but had a built-in Ethernet port and is vastly more upgradable over time.
I came away from the Lenovo display wanting to get hands on their P14 model, which is a mobile workstation. Sadly, such was not available at The Micro Center.
It’s really difficult to move away from the X1 Carbon. It’s basically ideal for mobile applications. However, soldered in memory means that the only upgrade opportunity is the NVMe drive.
4k Monitors?
Walking through the place, I had a chance peruse all the computers. I noted that 4K displays were actually quite rare. All but the highest-end systems had something less than 4K screens. There were stacks of cheap monitors that were:
- FDH (1920 x 1080 pixels)
- 2K (2560 x 1440 pixels)
- 2.8K (2880 x 1800 pixels)
- 3K (2880 x 1620 pixels)
- 3K (3072 x 1920 pixels)
I would guess this admits something about their demographics/target customer, who are possibly quite cost-conscious.
This seems odd to me. I’ve had a single 4K desktop monitor for several years. It’s not the greatest, but it was cheap. I certainly do appreciate the screen space. With four times the area of an FHD display, it’s vastly better that the dual-FDH monitor setup I had previously.
TVs
There were certainly a plethora of TVs. Lots of TVs from recognizable brands. Lots of OLED options. 4k TVs are now seriously cheap. Even 65 inch models can be had for under $500. There was a 98” Samsung model that probably would not fit in our house.
Small Stuff
One of the great things about The Micro Center is they way carry small items. For example, they had an aisle dedicated to all things Arduino. Next came an aisle of electronic components; resistors, capacitors, etc. It brought back memories of the glory days of Radio Shack.
I could not find any Raspberry Pi stuff. Looking on their web site, I see a diversity of Raspberry Pi stuff offered, but none of that is available for local pickup. It all has to be shipped to the customer.
So Much Unifi
Working my way to the back of the store I passed through two aisles of Unifi networking gear. That was a surprise. Unifi was seriously well represented.
They had a stack of the new USW Ultra 8 Port Network Switch. This is something that just came to my attention recently. It’s an 8-port POE switch. When fed by an upstream PoE++ switch, it will pass normal PoE onward to the remain 7 ports. That is up to 42 Watts in total.
If you need more power, add an optional external power supply and you can deliver up to 202 Watts to the attached network devices.
Why might you need 30+ Watts fed down Ethernet to a device? Two reasons comes to mind; (1) network attached audio amplifiers and (2) surveillance cameras with serious PTZ mechanics.
I am in the habit of using PoE splitters to use the network to power devices that do not have built-in support for PoE. Normally these are small devices like IoT hubs. This strategy lets me keep most of my network powered from Mr Eaton, the UPS in the network core.
Unifi & AT&T Fiber
While in the Unifi aisle I overheard a young sales staffer advising a thirty-something gentlemen about issues using Unifi with AT&T Fiber. The gentleman was planning for a new house. The staffer warned about potential problems, just as I was waiting to ask a question of my own. I felt it warranted interjecting, offering that I’ve had a UXG Max router on AT&T Fiber for around 9 months with zero issues.
The gentleman said he was currently using pfsense, but his old hardware will not keep up with a new Fiber ISP. That’s an exact mirror of my own experience in late 2024. I’m not usually comfortable claiming to be an expert, but I always happy to share my own first-hand experience.
Beyond Gigabit
The young salesman was interesting. He was of the opinion that 2.5Gb Ethernet should be baseline for any new home. I certainly applaud anyone who recommends pulling Ethernet throughout a house. That’s just good sense. However, he thought mere 1Gb networking would be problematic. Most especially as “you’re likely to have a multi-gigabit connection to your ISP!”
I think this is overly optimistic. In 2025, I don’t think 2, 5 or 10 Gb connections are at all common in residential situations. Where they are available they’re very costly.
Further, looking at our own use of the 500/500 service from AT&T Fiber, the most we’ve ever actually measured on the link is 132 Mbps. And we’re two adults who work from home full-time, who cut the cord and only use streaming services for media consumption.
Cross-referencing a friend who works in IT, they’ve never managed to come close to saturating a 300/300 link. Even when running massive backups to the cloud.
Kudos to the young man for trying to sell the more capable gear, but the pitch was not exactly based on any real world experience. As a practical matter, gigabit Ethernet throughout a home still gets the job done for most people. That will certainly change in time. Limiting reliance on Wi-Fi dramatically improves reliability, since Wi-Fi is a shared resource.
Escaping The Bubble
I need to get out more. To be out and around folks at The Micro Center reminded me that my situation is unique, but still has a lot in common with what other people are doing/needing. I probably lean too much on online vendors, to my detriment. I should support local retail when there is the opportunity to do so. The Micro Center is a valuable local resource. It would be a shame if it followed Fry’s into oblivion. Quite possibly the demise of Fry’s was actually good for The Micro Center.