Global Geek News Blog

Greetings Readers!

I have not been quite about the fact that I have been a huge lover of the Dash Express GPS Unit for some time.  I have often called it my all-time favorite device and a revolutionary GPS product.  It seems my dreams that it will one day be as mainstream as the TomTom GPS units or the Garmin Nuvi units have been shattered.  Earlier today, Dash announced that it would be stopping the production of its hardware and has fired two-thirds of its employees.

While I admit that I think the Dash Express was missing some wanted features such as bluetooth, I really liked the unit itself.  It is simple, elegant, and can withstand extreme conditions (sitting in direct sunlight in the middle of summer).  Of course my favorite feature was the constant Internet connection.  I loved being able to search for stuff on the fly or get information that I needed sigh as flight or traffic delays.  While there are very few services that I am willing to pay for, this was by far the most worthy of my money.  Sadly these days are coming to an end.

While Dash has announced that they will continue to support the device, with a major update coming out before the end of the year and the next one already in the works, they haven’t said just how long they intend to keep the backend servers running.  Personally, I hope they keep them running for a long time to come since I recently purchased a two year subscription to their service.  Apparently Dash hopes to focus on their software.

Dash has stated that they are now going to focus their efforts on their software and trying to get it on the GPS devices from other manufactures as well as cellphone manufactures.  While I do think it would be great for some phones to have Dash technology, I think that it is going to be extremely difficult to sell the software to their major competitors such as TomTom or Garmin just because they already have good, established products that are dominating the market, something that Dash could never have accomplished because they were only sold online on sites such as Amazon.  They certainly have some great software, but I dont think there is anything great enough to make the other major GPS manufactures jump at the idea of buying or licensing the software.  The GPS market is too competitive for something like this.

Given the fact that I don’t think that Dash can make it as a GPS software company unless it can successfully make deals with cellphone manufactures, I would say they won’t be around much longer.  While their death my not take place overnight, I do think it is not that far off.  When you fire 2/3 of your employees and completely change your business strategy, you are in an extremely desperate position and pretty much just clinging to life.  I do hope they they stay around long enough for me to enjoy my 2 year subscription, either that or they refund my money.

I really hate to see Dash go, they had a great product with an amazing service.  Like many products, I think it was the lack of availability and price point which ultimately caused their downfall.

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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray

Greetings Readers!

In case you haven’t opened your feed reader or checked your favorite tech blogs today, there is more bad news surrounding Circuit City.  They have announced the closing of 155 stores across the country (list here).  This of course comes on top of the news last week that Sony has stopped shipments to them, in mid shipment, because they are afraid that Circuit City can’t pay for the shipments.  The NYSE also warned Circuit City that they are about to have their stock listing removed because it has been below $1 for over 30 days.  At this point, it would be hard for news to get much worse about Circuit City.

Best Buy has been beating the snot out of Circuit City for a while, and it looks like they are chomping at the bit to put the last nail in Circuit City’s coffin.  I have never seen why Best Buy has any more appeal than Circuit City, but around here, they are pretty much identical in size, inventory and price.  The only real difference I can see is the fact that the Geek Squad is much better known than Circuit City’s Firedog service.  Honestly, I hate both companies equally.  From the employees that know nothing, to the prices which are disgustingly high compared to what you can find online, both stores can gladly die off as far as I am concerned.  When I talk about the stores, instead of using their actual names, I typically refer to them as Worst Buy and Circuit Sucky.  The only redeeming quality they have compared to online retailers is that I can get something the day I want it instead of having to wait a day or more to get something shipped.  Even then, I hate that I have to pay sales tax when I never have to with most online retailers such as Amazon.

For the sake of getting things when I need them, I am kind of glad that my local Circuit City isn’t one of the ones that is closing.  Of course that feeling will quickly vanish as soon as I get trampled by the mob of people that will descend on the store on my favorite holiday of the year, Black Friday.  Circuit City has always been apart of my Black Friday tradition, and it will be hard to imagine it not being there in the future.  I should probably say that I expect Circuit City to go out of business as early as middle of next year but almost certainly before the decade is over.

I think there are two main factors as to why Circuit City is having such a hard time.  #1: Pricing!  With the possible exceptions of video games and bargain bin DVDs, I can typically find most of the same items that Circuit City sells online and for much cheaper, often as low as half the price even after shipping!  I have gone into the store on a couple of occasions to look for various computer parts, only to get pissed off when I see I have to pay double the online price just because I need it right away.  #2:  Service!  While I have not visited every Circuit City to say that this is true about all of them, for every Circuit City that I have been to, most of the employees don’t know anything more than how to take money.  They often can’t tell me about a product, how it compares to other products, or even where a certain product is!  To be fair, I have this exact same problem with Best Buy (and the pricing problem to an extent as well).  Is it really that hard to find a person that has at least a little knowledge about what they are selling?  If you combined the knowledge of all of the Circuit City employees at my local store, it probably wouldn’t even be half of what I know about the products!

Circuit City is hoping the new store closing move will help it become profitable, and while it did bump the stock up over 20%, I don’t think even this can stop its slow slide to death.  At this point, I think Circuit City just hopes that it can survive and that nobody tries to put it under before they have tried everything they can.

It is for these reasons that I am not sad to see Circuit Sucky go, and I would likely wet myself in excitement of the same thing happened to Worst Buy.

Are you glad to see Circuit City go?  Do you wish that Best Buy would go down with them?  Have a fond memory of the stores?  Share your thoughts in the comments!

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-Jeremy “pcnerd37″ Bray