pixelbend

Just for clarification -- I was talking about a gaming room for the heavy metal.

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losthellhound

what do you look for in one of these places?
- Clean environments and good computers, and of course good pricing

What kind of atmosphere do you like?
- comfort is a big factor, nice chairs and clean computers

Do you want coffee/snacks available to you?
- coffee is a must if its good coffee, junk food is not as good as muffins and cookies and such

Where would the shop have to be for you to want to go there often?
- close to me? a difficult question to answer.. The last one I frequented was far from me, but close to the university

What kind of prices have you paid in the past? What kind of prices do you want to pay?
- $20 for 24 hours is what I paid before..
- The price I'd pay is random depending on what is provided

What would you want in an internet café that you havn't seen in others?
- an email address and hosting space would be cool
- a space with a couch and a big TV to watch movies

Would an office suite be valuable?
- yes yes yes
- and a printer (both color and black and white
- and a fax machine

What kind of connection do you expect a place like this to have?
- fast enough I won't notice Im sharing it (XDSL, 3 meg fibre, NOT a 1.5 meg DSL connection or cable connection)

What kind of machines do you expect? (café and gaming)
- fast, clone is okay as long as its stable

For those of you with alot of experience, do you have any software recommendations?
- Windows XP pro

Your big concern will be security, both of the machines, and the outside line. If someone hacks the pentagon from your internet cafe they will come knock down YOUR door..

I did a full business plan for an Internet cafe so message me if you want further advice or suggestions

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-- Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death

GraveTaker

if you need any help about what type of network connection you need just pm me but if you want the best that's out right now is to have Cat 6 cable with 1000base Tx network cards which you will be able to send 1gig/s between computers but it is a bit pricy for that cable even though there is a Cat 7 cable. If you have a bugit sorry i spelled that wrong, then try cat 5e which in and ideal world where the cable isn't kinked and everything is perfect then it will also give you 1 gig/s although that's highly unlikely but it will give you 600MHz/s easily. Oh, one word of advice that all customers make a mistake about is that your network is only as strong as your weakest link meaning that if you have a 1000Base Tx card and you're using Cat 5 cable even though you have cat 6 jacks (connectors) then your network will only run at what cat 5 can handle. Cat 6 is becoming more common now, but if you want a cat 6 network then you need everything within the network to be rated for cat 6. If anyone tells you otherwise then they're lieing because i do this for a living. Oh, and Bix is better than 66 Block for your phone network cat 3 is all you really need for phone.

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GraveTaker

nebbugvrok

as for fucking up computers I'd say too much restriction is a bad thing a lot of people like pretty unrestricted freedom. Although I would strongly recomend having something like norton ghost. you know you get a load of pretty much identical machines and then you fix one of them up so that it's in perfect condition for all your gaming needs. Then just use something like norton ghost to put the identicle setup on all the machines. If a computer got messed becuase of something you could have it fixed within 15 minutes. which would save you a lot of time and anguish. But maybe thats obvious sorry I don't go to net-cafes so my advice is probably of not much use. (although I host pretty big lan parties)

JohnnyRoyale

Don't know if it's been mentioned, but it'd be nice for some kinda lan party/theme night. Once night a month, do a counterstrike night, one night a BF night. Let people bring in machines, and do a LAN party, or block out your internal machines, in case of viruses.

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wakelagger

Have headphones instead of speakers at every station. No exceptions. All it takes is one asshole to turn his music up full blast on the speakers to ruin it for everyone. Also, if everyone has their stuff going at a moderate volume level, its more difficult for people to communicate without shouting. Furthermore, if speakers are used in the gaming room, if one person fires their weapon, their speakers will blare the gun shot, along with everyone elses speakers who is within videogame 'earshot' of the first gun shot. Imagine the racket if there is a moderately sized firefight.
Headphones also provide improved privacy and can also by quite cheaper than very cheap speaker sets. For example, I can buy Labtec Icon-740 behind the head-phones with volume control for 7.99 (cdn $) in bulk at the local computer store.
The only problem I can see with headphones is that its pretty easy for someone to steal them. Maybe, when someone comes in, you can get them to sign the headphones out and get them to return them when they leave or their 'account' gets blacklisted or charged?

Furthermore, are you going to have account cards/membership cards where you can buy hours in advance, have a card just to speed up sign in and buy hours when you get there that last only for the night, or are you going to just let anyone buy time on the computer regardless if they are registered with the cafe or not?

bltzkriegmcanon

LMAO. Only you would think of something like that.

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- Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 3

The password is "Who are the Patriots?" and "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." "La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo." Gotcha.
- The Colonel and Snake, Metal Gear Solid 3

Mondak

I was wondering if you ever did this? Do you have pictures? How is it going?

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First it is ridiculed
Second, it is violently opposed and
Third, it is accepted as self-evident.

ARTHUR SCHOPENHAUER (1788-1860)

Mephisto2

Wow... thread reincarnation.

It would be nice to hear an update.


Mr Mephisto

bendsley

For internet connection, make sure you have both good download and upload speed. Usually, the upload speed is your big limitation.

For any software needed, other than Windows, I would look to opensource software, as it's free and you don't need to really worry about licensing unless you modify the code.

For office apps: OpenOffice www.openoffice.org
For graphics: Gimp www.gimp.org
For 3d graphics: Blender www.blender3d.org
Web browser: Firefox www.mozilla.org

You might also look heavily into group policies, that way you don't end up reloading your machines all the time because people delete stuff and whatnot. Remove the start button, disable shutdown, etc. There are many things you can do. You might also look into a proxy server (content filter) if you're worried about people looking at indecencies while at the cafe.

I wish you luck!

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"You hear the one about the fella who died, went to the pearly gates? St. Peter let him in. Sees a guy in a suit making a closing argument. Says, "Who's that?" St. Peter says, "Oh, that's God. Thinks he's Denny Crane."

irateplatypus

flamingpeach,

i backpacked japan this summer and spend several nights in internet cafes. over there, when people miss the last train or subway home... they duck into those cafes to pass the night. while i doubt redmond residents have to worry about catching trains... maybe the latenight tired-of-the-bar/club-but-don't-wanna-go-home-yet crowd might be a good demographic.

anyway... that was kind of a secondary point. of all the cafes i went to, my favorite BY FAR was a place called cybac cafe in fukuoka. it was well run and very well patronized... the place was hopping all night. if you know some japanese check out www.cybac.net. if not, pm me w/any questions and i'll see if i can answer them.

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If you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly, you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance for survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than to live as slaves.

~ Winston Churchill