On Sunday 25 Mar 2007 15:02:38 Debarshi 'Rishi' Ray wrote:
I am curious to know what are the M$ things users demand. I have not been to a cyber cafe for a long time, and hence have lost touch with the current state of things.
didnt you read mrugesh's post in this same thread?
Sure I did. That is why I asked, because according to him the information was a few years old.
Its still valid. Few meant a little more than one.
I'll add another one to the list. A Windows based software for managing the cafe. Though there were a couple of Linux alternatives, but I have not tried them.
In any case, I think the learning curve of GIMP and Blender will never be as steep as keeping a Windows machine virus free. Why? This is because the latter is close to impossible. Moreover customers do not appreciate going to a cyber cafe just to plug in their floppy or pendrive and have a virus remove all their precious data.
Oh give me a break and be practical for once. I've not had a single virus or spyware on my Windows box for over 3 years. We've had Rony on the list who had to reinstalled Windows after a considerable amount of time. If you use it properly, its pretty manageable. Yeah every customer in the cafe might not, but then in the cafe I converted, the owner would run anti-spyware and anti-virus scans thoroughly every night before he left. He hadn't had a problem even once.
Secondly a cyber cafe is a place people primarily for browsing the Web using a Web browser. I am not sure how many cyber cafe's have the necessary bandwidth to allow _all_ their users to _simultaneously_ engage in voice chat or video chat.
Dream on. I've seen that happening. A couple of the people having webcam sessions and a few others playing Counter Strike online simultaneously on a 512K line. Then again, the cafe soon switched to a very affordable 1M connection.
Therefore a viable alternative is to earmark a few machines which are only going to be used only for browsing (and some text based IM) to be converted into GNU/Linux or *BSD or any other free operating system.
You'll lose even more users rather than gaining them if you try this. Trying to pull out people from their comfort zone is a bad idea if tried aggressively. Have patience and go gradually. Attack the roots and not the leaves. And seriously, NO ONE is interested in freedom. They aren't interested in learning about it either. Seriously, get out of your self spun freedom cocoon and be practical.
Moreover it would be nice to have the cyber cafe association issue a press release expressing their preference towards free software wherever feasible. It would be an excellant oppurtunity to let the comman man taste free software.
LMAO!
P.S. And btw, next time you reply to this thread, try to make sure that you've actually done something about this issue.