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Tuesday, 23 December 2014

The internet cafe - will there be any left in 5 years?

There was an explosion of Internet cafe businesses in the late 90s right through to the mid 2000s, now you are stretched to find one but they are still around.


With everyone carrying either a smartphone, tablet or phablet in their pocket or briefcase, they already have sufficient computing power to browse the web, purchase goods online, creat documents, spreadsheets, a database or presentation, they just need to hook onto a WiFi connection. With 3G and 4G technology, you carry a mobile connection around with you. You might even see a laptop computer being used.With restaurants, shopping malls and just about every business now offering free WiFi, one has to ask, why would anyone pay to use a computer? 

Indeed you might ask, why would a business invest in expensive computer hardware when nearly every consumer supplies their own computing equipment? One of the great rubs was an Internet cafe never actually sold coffee. After all, what business owner would want to risk a user knocking over a full mug of coffee over a keyboard, game controller or printer? Geez, you might head into an actual cafe like Dome Cafe, Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Gloria Jeans, Seattle's Best Coffee or Starbucks and actually order a pretty decent espresso coffee and surf the web for the price of a coffee.

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