Comments on: Starbucks Starts Wi-Fi Debates, Breakfast Battles Heat Up

By: Web Worker Daily » Archive Starbucks Begins “Complimentary” Wi-Fi «

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 19:00:47 +0000

[...] 3rd, 2008 (12:00pm) Jason Harris No Comments As forecast in a previous post, Starbucks has begun their complimentary Wi-Fi service. To get your two free hours of Wi-Fi, you [...]

By: Mr. Crash

Mr. Crash — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 13:29:32 +0000

I’ve got a similar opinion to Melinda.

Local coffee shops here are very few.
In fact, one of the only ones that serves decent coffee happens to be stuffed in a shopping center… Which happens to be full of many, many people – predominantly school children.

Creates a slightly less than perfect work situation with hundreds of them acting up and causing problems.

Starbucks (here specifically) on the other hand… Can keep longer hours being outside the huge shopping center and also isn’t frequented by kids. It’s clean, quick and we don’t have the music problem mentioned by others… Probably because we don’t have the joy of satellite radio here in Australia…

Sure the coffee isn’t as good as other places, but i’ll deal with it because it’s more readily accessible on those levels.

By: Melinda

Melinda — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:29:47 +0000

I guess I have an “opposite” opinion… I live in the midwest, in a coffee-shop-less suburb. Let me rephrase that… Where I live, the ONLY nearby coffee shops are Starbucks. On the other side of town, about 30 minutes’ drive away from my home, there are some indie shops, but otherwise it’s all Starbucks. Free wifi is very limited… there’s an overpriced (and underflavored) pastry shop, a crowded Panera Bread, and the local library. That’s it. So I’m glad to see the free wifi returning to Starbucks, if only because I’m glad to have the option.

Yes, there are still places that don’t have free wifi. And I’m stuck right in the middle of one!

By: Sugar? Cream? Wireless? « Charlottesville Words

Sugar? Cream? Wireless? « Charlottesville Words — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 02:40:01 +0000

[...] 15, 2008 · No Comments I had no idea Starbucks charges for wi-fi access. I guess I thought the profit margin on a four-dollar cup of coffee would cover the overhead on a [...]

By: Greg Birch

Greg Birch — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 21:11:49 +0000

Is it me or does it just feel like Starbucks doesn’t care?
It’s silly because I would be buying stuff on itunes and they must get a kickback from apple.

time will tell.

By: Judi Sohn

Judi Sohn — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 18:22:03 +0000

Jeffrey, I can stop in a Starbucks to get a quick thing done, but if I have any work that requires concentration it’s my last choice.

It’s not the patrons. It’s the fact that they usually have that XM station cranked so loud I can’t think. Because the music is so loud, folks trying to have conversations think they have to shout.

I have a T-Mobile hotspot account, and I much prefer using it at a Borders cafe where the lighting is usually better and the music, if any, is set at a low volume.

By: Jeffrey McManus

Jeffrey McManus — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:50:45 +0000

I took my laptop to do some work at my local Starbuck’s yesterday as a trial run to see if it might be a good alternative to my local wi-fi cafe now that they aren’t going to gouge people for network access.

The Starbuck’s I went to was dirty and noisy. I had a table full of foul-mouthed high school kids on one side of me and a bunch of foul-mouthed tradesmen on the other. The food still sucks. And the coffee isn’t any better than what you can get at any one of 100 locally-owned coffee shops (with free, no-strings-attached wifi) anywhere here in San Francisco.

It’s nice that it’ll be possible to work at Starbuck’s in a pinch without having to pay T-Mobile ten bucks, but there’s very little chance that it’ll become a destination for web bedouins.