Net Cafe’s hate me.

April 16 00:51 2008 by Alexei Rivera Print This Article

So I’m here at a net cafe after a business meet – and I don’t like it.

Besides the usual lack of comfort in places like these, they never quite seem to have the right things to make it a comfortable experience.

Upon opening my PC I’m greeted by a bunch of random pops that seem to look like it was the last few pages the last user was looking at. That or the use of the PC includes a bunch of dumb ads. Let’s hope it was the former.

Using a different PC than your own is also quite the unusual hassle. I remember most passwords but I don’t always remember the URL’s for my favorite sites. That said, you need to be pretty flexible to software configurations while using it…

Is the mouse tracking too slow? No, but this optical mouse is skipping around the place when it touches on wierd parts of the calendar mousepad. Smart.

Does the keyboard feel fine? Well yes, I’m typing fine on it but the table I’m lying my palms on is uncomfortably edged.

Hows the monitor? Decent size. It could use some settings resize and brightness/contrast settings, but it runs fine. What it does need though, is a whole lot of cleaning. This text I’m writing right now is blurred by a rainbow of fingerprint-ish material on my screen. Commonly known as gunk.

I run a personally configured Opera browser with all the stuff I want on it – well now I’m on firefox with its quirks… No big deal. The browser is faster on this as what I usually notice. (My PC runs a bunch of apps.)

Oh goodie. I’m almost 45 minutes in. My colleages are on a second game of DotA. A game I would rather not play – because I’m not too fond of Warcraft 3. (I think I would have wanted a farther zoom – and various other nitpicks.)

On a final note, one thing I really miss, besides being able to type on my blog lying down on my bed-oriented PC, is the faster internet connection. The interweb is just not the same without it.

I wonder how well I can avoid this experience if I get myself a laptop? I guess I could always save a list of Wifi hotspots on the damn thing. Oh wait, I forgot. Laptops cost money.