With starbucks delivery, starbucks printing, etc.

I somehow doubt that people are lugging a desktop and printer around the city, only to set it up and work for 1 hour in Starbucks.

They actually have exactly that for gaming: a "pc bang" like a internet cafe. I wonder if it has been tried in earnest for co-working. You would think it is an easier business so long as the demand is there.

There's already a large offering of such spaces in Korea. You have cafes where you can bring your laptop and work in peace, there's pc cafes / pc bangs which are more for gaming but provide a desktop, there are places where you can rent co-working spaces or spaces for co-working that you can use with a membership.

Isn’t that how most coworking spaces work already? I’ve worked from a lot of them, and it always worked like that: I check in when I arrive in the morning, and when I check out at the end of the day, I pay for the number of hours I have spent there (often capped to a maximum of 5 hours or so, even if I stay longer).

What a novel concept!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_bang

What makes you think they’re desperate? IME people from Asian cultures sometimes have ways of thinking that strike at least me personally as basically alien. And then my brain interpolates their motives wrong based on biases that are shaped by western versions of politeness etc.

South Korea is cyber café country. If you open a café there, people expect some specific services.

I guess the fact people come with PCs and printer is a way to demonstrate how they don't want this part of US culture and would like to keep theirs. So either adapt and start offering PC bang in South Korea or go home.

There needs to be a resurrection of the Canon NoteJet laptops.

South Korea has many pc cafes, so called pc bangs / pc방, and there are also many study cafes where you can work for long periods.

The 'problem' with those for remote workers is that you pay per minute/hour in a cybercafe - in a normal coffee shop you can just nurse one coffee for hours and pay a single low cost (and get a coffee).

I can't remember the name of it now but back in 2010s there was an 'OK' managed drop-in office space you could rent for £10 a day in central London - which came with free coffee and printing - I haven't looked at the prices lately.

Cybercafes are already a big thing in SK, but why is the above comment downvoted? I, for one, miss net cafes very much. They used to be big in Greece, and I made many many dear friendships in small, cozy net cafes.

I can recount hilarious and even heartwarming stories; turns out that having a cafe (i.e. leisure space) with computers used by people in close proximity makes for dynamics and interactions that you cannot recreate with remote connections.

I used to travel with a Canon PIXMA printer. Quite portable. Could carry a laptop and printer in a small backpack. The paper was heavy, though.

I thought about Improv Everywhere recently - they had some great things in the early 2000s.

Re watching this, at about 1:16 one of the agents looks familiar. "Huh, she looks kinda like Aubrey Plaza". Then the credits come on: It was actually Aubrey Plaza.

17 years ago - wow!

That will ruin them at $1,500 to $2,000 per litre of ink...

Is that a business they even want, someone occupying a seat for 8 hours only to consume two coffees?

Most of those people arent in college, especially outside the US.

Anyone who doesn't need to work while traveling actually.

A desktop is both cheaper (at the same spec), while being much more durable due to being upgradable and reparable.

Sure laptop win in terms of portability, but since we can do so much on our phone, I don't really feel the need to bring a computer with me everywhere.

They used to be cheaper. Might still be?

I've had mine about ten years and it's still on the original CPU and mobo and PSU I think. I've probably saved a few hundred bucks from not buying another whole computer. It might not be as fast as a new laptop but it has more RAM and storage than most.

If I want to go into LLM stuff I will buy a newish used GPU for it. If the CPU is a bottleneck then I'll get a new mobo but I won't need a new chassis or PSU maybe ever. And the hard drives just rotate as I buy bigger ones

Laptops are terrible -

- Too small

- too loud

- too hot

- too few ports

- fake performance (good luck with your 105W "5090")

- OS confusion about active screen, keyboard and mouse (how many times have I experienced that only the built-in keyboard works during booting, or the OS showing the login screen on only the built-in screen),

- most of them have to be open or have ports in awkward places, and take up space comparable to a desktop.

[delayed]