Q: What do you look for in one of these places?
A: Good prices, Clean enviroment, Good comps, Good/Great Connection.
Q: What kind of atmosphere do you like?
A: Doesnt have to be quiet by any means, that'll be impossible to accomplish. I'd expect some good rules that are enforced.
Q: Do you want coffee/snacks available to you?
A: I personally don't care for "snacks", but to have one of those large standing coolers to serve some drinks from is always nice.
Q: Where would the shop have to be for you to want to go there often?
A: Obviously location is extreemly important, but if the price is right i'd take the time to go further for a lower per hour rate.
Q: What kind of prices have you paid in the past? What kind of prices do you want to pay?
A: Here in pittsburgh the prices are way too high to even think about going, also the fact that the only good one is an hour from my place. But in Toronto the cafe's i've been to cost anywhere from $2.50 - $4.00 (canadian).
Q: What would you want in an internet café that you havn't seen in others?
A: GOOD headsets, GOOD mice, and possibly GOOD mousepads. (Every cafe i've been to has had shit headsets, shit mice, and dollar store mousepads)
Q: Would an office suite be valuable?
A: I can't really comment on this, as I wouldnt use it.
Q: What kind of connection do you expect a place like this to have?
A: Atleast 2-4 hops to a major backbone, anything above 10mbit/10mbit(Full duplex) should be just fine (Good networking equipment will be needed).
Q: What kind of machines do you expect? (café and gaming)
A: Cafe: you don't need much, amd xp series, 1800+, 256mb ram, geforce4 ti series.
Gaming: This is where most cafe's lack funding to get what the gamers want. With the upcoming computer games around the corner, there isnt any cheap alternative with Full DX-9 Games coming about. I'll give you an idea of what I would get.
Asus/abit/shuttle/blah motherboards with 8x agp, onboard sound (will save you money), onboard lan(diddo). Barton 2500+, 256mb ddr-400 x2 (dual channel), ATi 9600XT, Microsoft intellimouse Explorer 3.0/Logitech MX-500, Sennheiser PC-150/Plantronics audio-90's. That would keep (pretty sure) all of your customers satisfied.
Q: For those of you with alot of experience, do you have any software recommendations?
A: Cafe: Norton 2004, Office XP, Windows XP. (I'm sure there's more)
Gaming: Mirc, Norton, WinXP, OfficeXP (obviously the games). I'm sure there's more i'm missing.
I've known many people that have started cafe's, a close CLOSE friend of mine is starting one up soon in toronto, i'll be heading up there to help him sort it out when they purchase the place. It really looks like you have your thoughts strait, and I wish you the best =).
PS: I forgot to add in what type of monitors people would want, and again.. i'm pretty biased on this. I feel that lcd monitors are worthless for gaming, but so many cafe's i've been to feel that this is a "PRIORITY" to have. Too expensive, and not worth it unless you have NO space for crt's. As for the size of the monitor, I think anyone would be content with a 17", but 19" would be good if you have the extra $$$.
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Last edited by Gotenks; 02-23-2004 at 11:12 AM..
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