"I noticed there didn't seem to be anyone in any of those pictures that was alive before Ford was president. Was that pretty much the case in the ones you visited too?"
ftth- Yes. Absolutely. I was the only person out of something like 600 users that was in the over 40 crowd.
"I can see why: very "school-like"....pretty "bare bones" presentation, with hard chairs, no partitions, hard surfaces everywhere."
Yes. That's about it. The more traditional cafes were dead. Again it's not something I understand...oh yeah. There is one thing I do understand. Price elasticity. If you lower the price, the customers will come! This may be an exceptional shining example of that rule of economics. The traditional Internet Cafes generally charged double to triple the cost that easyEverything charged.
Also, easyEverything worked. I was blown away by this. Most Mom and Pop places are spotty. All the times I sat down in the easyEverything cafe it worked with no flaws. Better than this cable modem I'm on now.
"So I guess it's beyond me too, what the attraction is."
Me too. I think we may be seeing an example of a generation gap. IMO, it really seems to be a social event. Not so much with each other face to face, but with the other people on the other end of the connections.
"I think I'd probably choose wireless internet access via hand-held device with a 4 inch screen..."
Did you pick up the stats about i-mode users in Japan?? 15,000,000 users. Again, I believe it was driven(at least initially) by young people. Again from what I generally read, it was a social connection that was important. So if we think that a 15(or 17) inch LCD screen is impersonal, imagine what a i-mode screen is like. I read they zap little tiny photos back and forth. Maybe this helps overcome the problem of the screen real estate?
"Hell, you can buy a pretty powerful machine from Dell for 20 bucks a month, 45 payments, including the ISP for the first year."
In the US you are correct. But what about Europe. Let alone Asia and Latin America. Not only do you have to buy more expensive machines, you have to pay per minute charges. I would guess the per minute charges of a home user would be greater than an easyEverything Cafe charges for a T1 connection. But I'm only guessing. -MikeM(From Florida) |
