Relocating to Toronto

[Colin McGregor]

 --- Tim Goodaire <tgoodaire-zC6tqtfhjqE at public.gmane.org> wrote: 
> Hello everyone,
> 
> I've just taken a new job in Toronto, and will be
> moving there from
> Halifax around the beginning of October. I will be
> attending TLUG
> meetings, and look forward to meeting you all.

Congratulations on coming to the centre of the
(Canadian) universe. Though it should be noted that
last I heard there were some 300 people on the mailing
list, but a good meeting turnout will be on the order
of 50 or so people, thus you may not get chance to
meet us all (me? I'm at almost all the meetings so you
will likely see me...).

[snip]

> Also, I'm looking for a decent place to buy new and
> used computer gear.
> Preferably, some place with knowlegable staff, and
> good prices.

Besides the shops on College Street west of Spadina
which others have (properly) praised, Above All on
Bloor Street and Active Surplus on Queen Street there
are a few other shops I would suggest. 

- There is a cluster of shops on Victoria Park just
south of Steeles Avenue that I would recommend, places
like Sayal, Active Components and others are all
within a 10 minute walk of each other. These places
are great on individual parts, (like capacitors, ICs,
resistors, etc.), and weak on complete systems. Still,
if you like the smell of soldering flux this is a must
know about cluster of stores.

- Not as good for individual parts, but much handier
if your in the downtown is Supertronix, just a few
doors away Active Surplus on Queen Street.

- I have mixed feelings (in part because they are a
former employer) about MDG with several locations
around Toronto. If you know your PCs, are willing to
ask questions, you CAN get a GREAT deal from these
people on bare bones, basic PCs. If you don't know
what your doing, then stay away from these people. 

> Any other geeky recommendations would be great too!

- Well, if your also into Science Fiction then Bakka
Books on Yonge Street is a must know location
(Canada's oldest SF bookstore).

- Also in the science fiction area you should be aware
of the Merril Collection on College Street (not far
from the University of Toronto where TLUG meets and
the computer shops), one of the world's largest
publicly owned SF/Fantasy book collections.

- Also there is the Unix Unanimous group that meets
the 2nd Wednesday of every month (read tonight), info
on their meetings can be seen at
http://www.unixunanimous.org/ . The Unix Unanimous
crowd tends to be more server oriented plus they deal
with Solaris, FreeBSD, etc in addition to Linux. There
is only limited overlap between the the people at UU
and TLUG (I am one of the few that often does both
meetings), still I think they are good....

Stuff that isn't normally noted about TLUG is that
there is normally a group of TLUG people that have
diner together before the meeting, normally at Pho
Hung (a Vietnamese style place) on Spadina Ave., then
after the meetings many of the people at the meetings
will go out to a pub at the University of Toronto's
Graduate Student Union building.

As for Unix Unanimous after the meetings they go out
to Real Thailand (a Thai style place) on Bloor Street.
The UU crowd keeps going back to the same street
address after the meetings, so in the 10 years or so
that I have been (on and off) attending UU meetings
that one address has gone from a Greek to a Family to
now a Thai restaurant... This fixed diner place means
that on occasion there have been more people show at
the restaurant than attended the meeting proper...

Colin McGregor
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml