Well, I am a bit biased because I work for the University's Division of Information Technology...but since we don't carry a lot of consumer stuff I have a few places that I tend to frequent for all things electronic both here in town and on the web.
Let me preface this by saying that I am a deal meister. I tend to look and find the best possible price, without pulling any strings, and then I'll either buy online or at a local retailer because I have found that vendors like newegg.com and zipzoomfly.com have excellent RMA requests and are many times even more helpful than local businesses I frequent.
I usually tend to start at fatwallet.com's hot deals forum and from there I make my way out to pricegrabber.com to see if there's anything better available from a reseller with high ratings.
If the deal happens to be somewhere in town I usually end up visiting the usual suspects, i.e. Circuit City, Compusa, Best Buy. Of those three I have found that CC on the west side of Madison tends to have the best layout and selection. It's a far better place to shop now that their sales people are not commission based.
Compusa occasionally has good deals, but I have been burned a few times on their rebates so they tend to be a last resort. Best Buy seems okay too but I tend to prefer CC for computer hardware purchases because they are pretty prompt about responses.
*sigh*
Now, if we could only convince Fry's to open a store up here. I still tend to make trips over the the Fry's in Downer's Grove whenever I visit the Chicago area because it just blows everyone else away!
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