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Choosing your cyber cafe
When technology moves too fast, it can some times leave you with a confusing surfeit of options. Only a few years ago, one had to hunt all over town to find a cyber café where you paid what they asked and took what you got. Not any more.
These days, Internet cafes can be found next to each other, jostling for space and trying to grab your attention with irresistible offers. This can be confusing because while one outlet has a banner announcing Internet access at Rs.20 per hour, the guy next door seems to be packing them in, even though the charges are exactly double.
That is because Internet cafes use different technologies to provide Net access and these can make the surfing experience anything from painfully slow to blindingly fast.
And then there are the ``hidden extras'', which are never advertised — you discover only at the end of your session that they don't allow you to save your work on a floppy or insist on your buying the floppy from them. And then they charge exorbitantly for printouts.
This week's column will hopefully help you size up the various options and decide which of your neighbourhood cyber cafes offers you the best value for money.
To begin with, hardly any cyber cafe uses the dial-up telephone route. This is too slow and unreliable.
Many of the outlets started two years or more ago, have installed leased lines — similar to telephone hotlines, which come at various access speeds like 64 Kilo Bits Per Second (KBPS).
These special telephone lines could also be digital lines known as ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network), which allow multiple users to work simultaneously on a single line.
Satyam Infoway, the first private Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the country, has established a chain of cyber cafes known as ``i-Ways", using its dedicated network of ISDN lines.
Another digital technology of connecting to the Net is DSL or Digital Subscriber Line. The Chennai-based Dishnet has been a pioneer in this technology and all the Dishnet hubs use this technology. They have laid their own fibre optic lines to bring this service to their hubs.
Typically, DSL provides access at around 1.5 MBPS (Megabit per second), which is 25 times the speed of domestic dial-up using a 56 KBPS modem. The technology is inherently capable of speeds upto 7.5 MBPS, but this is difficult to achieve in India.
Another way in which cyber cafes access the Net is through cable modems — the same cable that brings satellite TV channels to your home. Cable systems can provide typical connection speeds of around 3-5 MBPS. However, these speeds are dependent on the number of users online at a given time. So, if all the seats in the cafe are occupied, you could even end up worse off than a home connection through telephone.
It may well happen that the pricier cyber cafe uses technology that allows you faster access. If your task requires you to download a lot of information, a cafe with a higher hourly rate could, in the end, nevertheless turn out to be the cheaper option.
It is a good idea to enquire about these hidden extras:
— Are you allowed to bring your own floppy disk and take away whatever you have down loaded? Many cafes will sell floppies at around Rs.20 each.
— o they provide a laser printer for outputs and how much do they charge per page? Remember, when you give the print command on many Web pages, you have no idea how many pages the document will occupy. You could end up paying an extra Rs. 100 if your print command spills out 10 pages.
— In their anxiety to prevent virus problems, many cyber cafes provide only Web browsers and email services — and disable other standard Windows tools, like word processing or spread sheets.
You may find that you cannot access ``Excel'' to read a spreadsheet you have downloaded with your mail or even compose a letter in MS Word, which you want to send as an attachment.
Don't be shy of asking the right questions before you commit yourself to a surfing session. It's your money and your time and you have the right to demand the exact service that you require.
A VISHNU
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