Starbucks launches its free North American in-store Internet today: It was quasi-free before (two hours with a single purchase ever since December's changes), and now you pay nothing to use as much Wi-Fi as you want.
Will *$, as we affectionately call the company here in Seattle, be filled with snoring loafers and couch squatters? Likely not. The company found an average of an hour's daily use by those who took advantage of the two-free-hours offer previously.
The Starbucks in the Phila. Marriott already has them camped out. Even before the first, some walked in and sat down and plugged their cords into the outlets and surfed their merry way. Did I forget to mention they bought something ? No, I didn't because they don't. At least many of them. I tried to use my iPod. Hard to get a signal. I looked around and saw almost everyone on the Web. It's only going to get worse. Wait till Starbucks gets their next month's electric bill.
By the way, I charge my iPod at home.
I'm at the Starbucks at 7th avenue and 31st Street in Manhattan right now, and there's tons of folks, happily surfing away. However, if you want to use a VPN or some other protocol that's not the web, the bandwidth management system must give your protocol a lower priority. So free is nice, but not if you can't get what you need to do done.