Fry's Electronics has finally taken the giant leap faith and has put together a simple web site.

Sometime over the last few days, Fry's introduced a web site that includes information on their retail store locations (including some crude maps), their return policy, their newly revised price-match guarantee (more on that below), their DSL and dial-up offerings and a history of the company. They're also offering web-based email, however it's unclear if you need to be connected via their network in order to use it - upon trying the link, I received an "unable to connect" error, indicating that it's either not operational (wouldn't that be a surprise), or only available via their own network.

There's good news and bad news regarding their price-match guarantee. The good news is that they now price-match online vendors. The bad news is that they've reduced the amount of time you have to find that lower price from 30 days to 24 hours. Ouch.

"If you buy something from Fry's Electronics then find a lower price at any Internet Or retail store, including ours, within 24 hours of your purchase, we will gladly refund the difference."

Also gone is the extra percentage they gave you, under certain circumstances, above & beyond the price difference.

According to the Fry's ISP FAQ, their ISP offerings are only being sold through the San Jose store for the time being, but they have plans to extend the services to all of their retail stores. According to the site, there are two DSL packages available: 608k/128k for $39.95/month, and 1.5m/384k for $69.95/month.

They also claim that their dial-up service supports the latest technology, v.90, allowing for download speeds of up to 53 kbps, and upload speeds of up to 33.6 kbps. Perhaps someone should tell them that v.90 is due for an overhaul, and they're going to need to upgrade their equipment by the end of this year in order to "keep up with the Jones's". [Analog modem technology is due to receive one last technology update in Q4 of this year.]

Their DSL service appears to be repackaged Covad DSL service. Their site didn't make clear whether the dial-up service is provided by the same company.

I suspect that their site isn't complete yet, due to the number dead links and overall lack of aesthetic beauty. I'll be keeping an eye on it and following up this article if any major changes take place.

The Fry's web site can be found here.

S.