Return To Spring 1996 Index
It was a drab grey down-town sort of day, and yes, I was having a bad hair day. Actually it wasn't so much bad as acquiring a shade of grey which matched the wintery Southampton sky. Me, grey at a mere ?!? years of age? It had to go! So, I took myself off to my hairdresser, who decided it was an emergency.
"I see what you mean love," he said, " I can fit you in shortly. Why not pop round to the new Cafe next door while you wait."
So it was I found myself in Southampton's one and only Internet Café - and jolly good it is too. First, and let's be honest about this, what you really want from a cafe is good food and plenty of it, the food was tempting.
A wonderful aroma of coffee drifts up into the street and invites you into a pretty Georgian building. Clever placing of tables and PCs ensured a feeling of space: while the lack of background music and the concentration of customers logged into the net lent a peaceful air to the place.
I imagine one could settle in for a Sunday, reading the papers, eating, surfing the Web. It is good to find a cafe which you can frequent as a single woman and not be uncomfortably aware that others might see you as either a pickup or someone who has been stood up. British hoteliers might learn from this.
The computer equipment is good - as you would expect - but not top of the range. They are 486 based PCs with 8MB of RAM. However, they seem admirably fast and certainly none of the other customers complained about connection times.
The cafe was not busy when I was there on a Saturday morning. Proprietor, David Vane who opened the Cyber Cafe six months ago admits things have been quiet and that it has been difficult to predict customer demand. He is confident that the future is good.
David also maintains business sites on the web, offers training and EMAIL access, so the cafe is also a good advertisement for his wares. He is also working on a Careers site (which can give agencies access to individual CV's.
I am delighted to find an Internet Cafe in Southampton and highly recommend it - if nothing else you will be certain of a good cup of coffee. I am not sure though, what its typical customer profile is. A student can normally get free access to the net through the University library and I have to say that £3.00 per half hour connection time seemed pricey.
Back at my hairdresser's I tried to explain about the Internet and failed. "Go to the Cafe," I said, "Check it out."
A look of pure terror crossed his face. "I can't!" he said - panic stricken, "It's far too technical for me."
Sadly the high tech image of on-line services may be frightening off the very users the Internet should be seeking to attract.
For more info: info@interalpha.co.uk, visit The CyberScone web site on http:www.interalpha.co.uk or
snail mail 75 Bedford Place, Southampton, UK.
If technobabble is frying your chips, then check out our
- Ed.
