Once the only store you could get computer parts from those dinky screws that mount your hard drive in its bay inside a computer case all the way up to an actual computer, CompUSA will be closing the doors of its remaining 103 stores for good this January. After nearly serving the computer world for 24 years, slumping sales can no longer sustain the superstore. What seemed to be some cost cutting measures earlier this year by closing some stores (one of which was a twenty minute drive for me) has turned into a complete chain closing. Sold to Gordon Brothers Group for liquidation, the computer superstore will close for good after the holidays.

I can still remember my first CompUSA, the one on Stevens Creek in Santa Clara, California (where interesting enough, the property it sits on use to be my father in-laws childhood farm). I was so excited that I could get computer “stuff” for my computer in one store! No more searching on CompuServe’s boards for a toll-free number of some catalog store I didn’t know anything about, or struggling to find something at the smaller stores such as Egghead (which really was just a software store anyway.) I was 20 when I walked through those doors for the first time in 1990 and now it’ll be gone for ever. While I wasn’t too sad to see the Modesto store close this summer, the chain, ya, that’s a bit sad. Even though the Blossom Hill store was closer to my home and was nicer (though smaller than the Stevens Creek store), that Santa Clara superstore will always be special to me.

As for it’s demise, I blame Carlos Slim. A Mexican telecom tycoon (he represents 8% of Mexico’s GDP…but is that really saying much?). Slim purchased CompUSA for $2 billion in 1997. His “dream” was to take on Best Buy and thus is the reason he also purchased The Good Guys. Note how that store no longer exists, either. Mmm, starting to see a pattern here? While he may be the richest man in the world, he doesn’t really get how to run technology stores, does he? For those keeping score, that’s 0 for 2.

While Slim doesn’t have anything to do with day-to-day business of any the businesses he does own, he could have at least sent a few cronies over the border (legally, of course) and taken a look at how things were running. What he would have witnessed was a staff that had no clue what it was selling and managers that could care less about their customers. I saw the down hill trend going back to 1999 and knew it wasn’t going to get any better any time soon. Thankfully, I always knew exactly what I wanted. When I heard that Slim purchased The Good Guys, I knew right then CompUSA’s (and The Good Guys’) days were numbered. Slim’s idea and reality of integrating The Good Guys into CompUSA to battle Best Buy was laughable at best. Dumping wide screen TVs and a few HD DVD players to the mix wasn’t going to do it, Carlos. And it didn’t.

These closings won’t hurt Slim, worth an estimated $68 billion, but it does hurt me. It’s a piece of my history and I’m bummed it’s going away. Like Downtown Datsun, CompUSA will be a time in my life line that I will not be able to take my kids to and say, “This is where I use to get computer parts when I was your age.” Sad days indeed. Yes, even us geeks are sentimental.