Isn't lock-in a wonderful thing?

I don't know of any existing Internet Cafe programs for Windows written in Perl, and if any exist I think they would be expensive. Odds are that you won't succeed in writing one easily either because writing a good one requires hooks into Windows that you are unlikely to find freely available. But if you have to charge anyways, vendors won't find it easy to ignore the potential cash cow from lock-in, resulting in what you have above.

Standard advice for customers who can't avoid lock-in is to use the fact that both you and the vendor know that you will suffer in the future to get a sweet bribe up front. (For more details, read Information Rules.) Otherwise assess your pain, and think about whether or not you are willing to go with an alternate solution. For instance the Linux Terminal Server approach can be used to create an internet cafe - but some customers will be turned off because it won't be Windows. You might be able to make it Windows using VMWare on top.

There are more options, I know. I don't know what they are, but I do know someone with the necessary skills who did some research into starting a business like this but then decided not to. I don't know what he found, or what his reasoning was though, but create an account and ask me privately and I will pass you his email address. (I don't want to post it publically for obvious reasons.)

In reply to Re: Re: Re: Internet Cafe Anyone? by tilly
in thread Internet Cafe Anyone? by Anonymous Monk

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