Word: wi-fi
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...service say they like it. "The connection is great," says Swapan Chakrabarty, 31, a graduate student and network administrator for a software firm, who goes to the Astor Place store about four times a week and stays two to three hours per visit. About the only complaints from wi-fi users are that some stores don't have enough electrical outlets...
...there is one group of road warriors for whom wireless works well: Starbucks' employees. Before wi-fi, the 600 regional managers--all of whom work with laptops--had to drive back to the office every day to file reports and order supplies for the six to 10 shops that each of them oversees. Now they can do all that during their store visits. The company says wi-fi has increased its managers' presence in stores as much as 25%, since they spend less time shuttling back and forth from the office...
...rule, wi-fi users tend to spend more time in Starbucks--about 45 minutes per average customer. Bob Macala, 61, says he is at the Piper's Alley store every weekday from 8:30 a.m. until noon and then sometimes in the evenings as well. The retired English teacher is working on a novel and poring over his stock portfolio. He's even made some wi-fi friends, mostly other retirees who hang out at Starbucks and trade stocks online...
...more serious threat to Starbucks' plan is the competition from free wi-fi--the crazy quilt of free wireless networks springing up in San Francisco, Seattle and other high-tech cities. Starbucks customers have been known to hop on a free Internet node and bypass the store's paid service entirely. "Why pay if you don't have to?" says Kevin Lawrence, 28, a software-industry entrepreneur, who spent hours typing on his laptop but hadn't bothered to buy anything during a recent visit to a Starbucks in Manhattan...
...TOUCH...NOT Lots of people go to Bali for vacation. A few even get sent there for business. And if they are really lucky, they get to stay at the Ritz-Carlton resort. Now that the hotel has wi-fi in its conference room, business users can get more work done before they venture into...