Internet Cafe revamp
-
Back in the Philippines, my brother in law is revamping his internet cafe and I would like to offer some help when I visit them this October.
Just wanted to get some nice ideas on improvements we could have. Currently they have few computers and printer, pcs have some games (not very high end I believe).
Main concern is to do the whole setup in a cost effective way without compromising on the quality of service.
Few things came up on my search are:
- Diskless setup
http://www.ccboot.com/
One case about the product in the PH http://www.ccboot.com/successful-case-in-philippines-cyber-cafe.htm
But not sure if diskless setup is the way to go. For sure we need to have a good setup, which can restore the whole settings back on a reboot to avoid issues. At the same time give the users good speed machines for them to get engaged and visit back.
-
getting some gaming account like steam. This can make sure that we offer latest games, may be conduct some monthly tournaments, give away prizes as membership discounts/free hours etc.
-
May be add a gaming console as well, its cheap here to get one.
-
Some kind of automated billing system- I am still looking at some solutions-
http://www.cybercafepro.com/features.php
http://www.handycafe.com/features.php
http://www.smartlaunch.com/
I liked handycafe and smartlaunch
- A wifi hotspot
Thoughts and suggestions please
- Diskless setup
-
Congrats!
I like your idea.
"getting some gaming account like steam. This can make sure that we offer latest games, may be conduct some monthly tournaments, give away prizes as membership discounts/free hours etc.
May be add a gaming console as well, its cheap here to get one"
Internet Cafe is really a good business specially in province. -
@Joy Thanks. I am hoping to get more ideas from ML
-
Absolutely go diskless but make sure they have a really solid network foundation. I caused a logon storm years ago on 100mbit and it wasn't that many PC's.
-
Of all the internet cafe's I've been to the "best" always had the best food.
-
Thanks @MattSpeller I would be getting a Gigabit switch and cabling. its just less than 10 PCs for now. Once the base is setup, we have plans to expand. And for food, in the PH the best thing is beer! So people used to come and sit for hours for both beer+internet/gaming
-
Start with rack mount gear so that you aren't sad later when you go to expand. A 24 port GigE switch is cheap.
-
@Reid-Cooper Yes, If i go diskless, i think the best option would be to get a small rack, get a good server for serving to all those diskless stations and the switch on that mounted with Cat6 cabling.
Im looking for tools/software that can be used. Not sure about the steam, does a single steam account can be used on the clients machines?
-
@Ambarishrh said:
Im looking for tools/software that can be used. Not sure about the steam, does a single steam account can be used on the clients machines?
That will not work. The entire point of Steam is to stop you from doing this kind of stuff. Steam is DRM top to bottom. It's a great service but they are only allowed to sell games the way that they do to keep people from trying to get free use of the games. Steam can be on every machine, but only one person will be able to use it at a time.
-
@scottalanmiller said:
@Ambarishrh said:
Im looking for tools/software that can be used. Not sure about the steam, does a single steam account can be used on the clients machines?
That will not work. The entire point of Steam is to stop you from doing this kind of stuff. Steam is DRM top to bottom. It's a great service but they are only allowed to sell games the way that they do to keep people from trying to get free use of the games. Steam can be on every machine, but only one person will be able to use it at a time.
I think they allow two people to use it now but it's family/home use only.
-
@thecreativeone91 said:
I think they allow two people to use it now but it's family/home use only.
We have it and haven't noticed it here, will have to check. We use one account per person, would be really handy if two of us could play at once.
-
@thecreativeone91 said:
I think they allow two people to use it now but it's family/home use only.
Every time I install it on coughmyworklaptopcough it boots me out of my desktop.
-
@MattSpeller said:
@thecreativeone91 said:
I think they allow two people to use it now but it's family/home use only.
Every time I install it on coughmyworklaptopcough it boots me out of my desktop.
That's odd, it should not do that, because it is designed for them to talk to one another and stream games between them.
-
¯\(ツ)/¯
-
Just saw this post https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3806-RYSJ-1102 but on some forums it says this program is not active anymore
-
@Ambarishrh said:
Just saw this post https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=3806-RYSJ-1102 but on some forums it says this program is not active anymore
Only works for Valve games which is very few.
