Buying Tech Locally

I don't like buying from national chains if I have a local option. In Lancaster, the options have never been great. Cyberwarehouse is a pretty good option for certain things, though I'm not aware of everything they offer. Today I dropped in to buy a few things for my new office, and they had what I needed--a wifi router and a wireless mouse. I paid cash, forgot the cards.

I've been in there before, and have had decent customer experiences (I've had terrible experiences at Radio Shack, Circuit City, Office Max, and Staples at times, as well as pretty good ones), but the point is I'd much rather spend at a local store than a national one because of the dramatic impact local spending has on the economy: up to 4 times more. That is, only 11 cents out of every dollar spent at a national retailer stays in the local economy, but up to 44 cents out of a dollar spent at a locally owned store stays in the local economy.

If you want strong communities, neighborhoods, and local economy, buy local. And hire local. There are likely a few people working there who we'd hire. And if you can help get the word out that we're looking for support personnel and pay decently, maybe we can attract some of the few gems out there in the local retail world looking for a step up (or over).

Cyberwarehouse scan: decent deals and range of offerings for notebooks and computers, wide variety of cables, which I think I would do if I still had a computer store because it's resourceful to people and helps build loyalty; bunch of LCD and plasma TV (I don't understand why they carry them given there are plenty of things in the computer.gaming world to carry...seems unfocused, but the deals were decent from what I remember); service staff to add RAM, drives, whatever to your computer, and they appear to know their stuff.

I listened in to a few conversations and aside from one inappropriate comment they were knowledgeable and helpful. I'm likely to try them for service work if we ever need it, but at the moment we're pretty much plug and play in the new space.

Any of you locals know of other decent locally owned computer stores?