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Mobile Users Plug-in Anywhere They Can
jasonla writes "The New York Times looks at mobile technology users who leech power from restaurant and airport outlets while on the road. The article looks at the habits and 'culture' of people who use portable devices -- such as laptops, iPods and cellphones -- and what the businesses think of power hungry customers." As interesting as the phenomena of customers leeching power from the businesses they frequent is the self-imposed etiquette of many users.
people who use a businesses' air, light and even gravity?
In some cases, those staking a claim do so by plugging in a device - even a $2,000 laptop - only to leave it unattended while fetching a $4 coffee.
... as their insurer takes care of that pesky dead battery problem.
I have to admit that I do this all the time, especially in airports-- and it is getting harder and harder to find places to recharge.
They don't bat an eye at helping yourself to serviettes or sugar but a little juice gets a 'leeching' tag?
Geeze, you could have a cafe full of plugged in laptop users and still not have this cost you 25 cents an hour.
Dog is my co-pilot.
I borrow. Sometimes with interest!
Back in January 1998, when a good hunk of Canada had no power due to an ice storm, I couldn't go to work because we had no power at the office. I also had no power at home, and was bored out of my tree.
So, I grabbed a pair of APC BackUPS 400s, threw them in a knapsack, and walked to the local pub (which DID have power). Plugged 'em in, had a few beers, walked home, watched TV; repeat.
I tell ya, though, my back was kinda sore. Those things ain't made to be portable!
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Whenever I've visited a resturant, I've asked permission 99% of the time.. unless it's an emergency. (What's an emergency to you?) I've been turned down some times, but remind them you'll buy more, or *gasp* pay a dollar or two for the privelige.. Once in Arby's I was denied permission, and got a wierd look.. Then the manager thought better, said not to put the cord of the floor, and I bought food to go.
As far as cost goes, it shouldn't really be too much of a problem for many businesses, assuming they are charged on the same basis as the power companies do here in the UK. Companies (at least, the theatres I work in) are not charged according to the number of units used, but by the maximum amount of power they use during the billing period. For example, during a theatre show we use a hell of a lot of power, and the power companies takes this peak rate and charges us across the board at that rate. I don't know whether this is just limited to certain businesses.
If I'm having an overpriced cup of coffee at Starbucks and paying for WiFi, they damn well better let me plug in ...
what, 50 laptops? The point is, public-ish facilities that want or depend on public traffic don't lose much by being accommodating, and no doubt generate some good will among the lithium-ion set. The guy that uses a lot more paper towels or flushes twice in a public bathroom is chewing up a LOT more overheard than the lady who's trickle-charging her laptop (let alone her cellphone).
/.ing
I'd say the bigger cost is the risk of liability when one Starbucks customer trips over the power cord of another customer's laptop. You know, the one the user has stretched from the pillar in the middle of the room over to his table, where he's
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Good call. I don't know how's stuff in Yankeeville, but here in Brazil it's commonplace in airports, for example, to have tables with lots of electrical outlets specifically for the purpose of charging cellphones and laptops for on-the-go users. No charge. And it's not even inside a coffeehouse or whatever, it's clearly marked at the waiting room.
I guess courtesy is out of order at the good ol' US of A.
(and no, this is not a troll, more a rant...)
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
Just make all of the outlets which are in public spaces under lock and key. That'd stop the vast majority.
Then, to make an extra buck they can have a little "power cafe" if you will. Same idea as getting a little internet time somewhere, but you go plug in to recharge instead. Personally, I'd pay a dollar for the right to plug in and charge from a single outlet for whatever time I am there. I think most people who needed to charge something would pay out a dollar, and the airports could make good money offerring it at that price.
...he could simply meet the person face to face.
Seriously, doesn't anyone else here think 3 hours of cell phone yammering every day might be a bit excessive?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
In the good ol' US of A, the main point is that it's up to the person who owns the table/outlet/electricity to decide who gets to use it and how. Now, if that business thinks their bottom line is getting eaten alive by people charging cell phones, they're crazy. However: it's up to them to decide that.
The other thing that we have in the US of A is a long history of watching foolish businesses go OUT of business. That's the miracle of capitalism! Sounds like Brazil already gets it (in terms of businesses providing these services), but I'd rather that we talk in terms of the companies involved getting it or not, not the country.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Har! Back in 1986 when I was on the road making locale-specific engineering modifications to a pay telephone system I designed, I had an 8085 emulator-in-a-briefcase and a full-size Compaq "Luggable" (8088 12 Mhz 40 MB HD) that I used to plug into airport AC outlets and play Chess and Rouge (Epyx's version for PC) with it while waiting for flights!
You see, I had no "Geek Shame" back then, and nowadays no one would give me a 2nd look, except perhaps the wonderful TSA folks...
It also had a nice clock on the screen by a TSR program of some sort, which would remind me when to pack up and go to the gate. Unfortunately, once, after a couple of cocktails, I forgot completely about the whole time zone thing, and missed my flight clean by an hour! But that is another story...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
Here in the UK Virgin has been putting power outlets for charging up phones and laptops next to all the seats in their new trains.
So you could go on a pleasure trip and charge up (but given the state of the UK rail system that might not be a good idea if you need to make it to something on time. )
Philip
Signatures are broken
Cellphones, ipods and even portable computers are not that power hungry that it would matter. I consider using the power outlets included in what I pay for coffee, airport tax or whatever. Just like I don't pay extra for breathing air from businesses' ventilator systems (which probably costs more than the power). If some business doesn't like me charging my laptop, I choose to go elsewhere.
For reference, my portable computer's battery is rated 14.8V, 4400mAh. That roughly equals 65 watt-hours. The biggest cost of electricity I found is 9 cents per kWh, so filling the battery from empty to full would cost less than 0.6 cents. I will gladly pay 0.6 cents extra to use my laptop wherever I go, if asked for.
1) www.bugmenot.com It has a firefox plug in, you right click the username field, click bugmenot, and it logs you in, no registration required. 2) I'm guilty, so what? I like to go to a coffee place (a cheap, friendly one nearby) and work for 3-4 hours. It's a productive environment. I reckon I drink a coffee every 30 minutes while I'm working, so I probably have about 6 in 4 hours. Call it £3/coffee, that's £18. Call it 6p/kWh, my laptop drinks 65W, so that's about 2p worth of energy. It's a bit of a fuss about nothing. Quote: "Somebody's got to pay for that electricity." Yes, the customer. They might say "if everybody came in and did it..." well, for 12 hours, there are 10 people drawing 100W, that's 12kWh, that's about 70p for the day. Boohoo. BTW, guys who can't find power outlets, use my Confucius say style motto... Think like the cleaner.
I think there is another important issue: safety. If your device short circuits the airport power network and then it takes 20 minutes before someone finds the circuit breaker then people are not going to be happy. And what if your device screws up someones laptop? (I know this is _really_ unlikely) The UK solution is that all electrical devices plugged in any sort of public socket (e.g. libraries) should be tested for safety, whenever they're more than one year old.
I'd imagine that airports have two or three different level of electricity grid one for the "totally essential" and one for all the shops adverts and Christmas trees.
As for the electricity bill: if I'm at the airport and everything is running on time then batteries in my laptop last long enough. If my flight gets delayed by 7 hours like it did the last time then I feel I have the right to use some electricity, for all the airport taxes I have paid. Even if that means unplugging some Christmas tree.
And if any employee of the airport wants to come and argue about this then he's welcome: I have 7 hours to spare and I'm pretty annoyed to begin with.
I'll plug in at coffee shops from time to time if my laptop's battery is starting to go dead. I've always considered buying coffee there to be a form of rent fo rthe table space I'm using. Power is just an extension of that.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
It's because you're paying for a capacity to be made available for you as well as the power itself.
As a simple example, suppose your peak power consumption is the same as the peak output of the local power-station.
Given that you could want 100% of the power plant output at any one time, the power ocompany has to effectively reserve it for you. Even if you just want 1% of it, it can't sell the other 99% because you might need it.
DISCLAIMER - yes I do work in the electricity industry.
My friends and I would specifically go to Denny's instead of the IHOP across the street, because they had a booth with an outlet. We would plug in and watch movies while we ate and hung out. It was 3am so nobody minded us hogging a booth, and the manager would come and sit with us and watch the movie when it was slow enough or the movie was good enough. We cost them $.50 in electricity and made them much more than that in business. I don't feal guilty for it....and the manager never minded....
Nokia is using a standard charger for all models that has not been changed since the mid 90s. With the (past) marketshare of Nokia this means you are never far from a charger, at a friends, at work, with a customer or around town. I travel a lot without bringing a charger (+adapter) for my Nokia without a problem. Genious.
What is it going to take to get /. editors from using links in stories that actually LINK TO the article/story they are referring to, instead of ones that prompt for some stupid login.
If it requires a login, its a private site, and isnt public news. If its public news, the same story *WILL* be posted on a public site that doesnt waste peoples time with login nonsense. It would take an editor posting a story 15 seconds to hit google news, and find such a link for a story, to substitute for where a story submitter has included a link to such a private news site. Instead of each view having to either do that or waste time either maintining a login or making up a disposable one for every story.
WHY IS SLASHDOT SUPPORTING THE NEW YORK TIMES OBNOXIOUS, PRIVACY-INVADING, AND GENERAL PAIN IN THE ASS REGISTRATION POLICY? How much are they paying, and to who?
If this is going to continue, it would be damn nice if instead of the (intermittent) '(free reg required)' comment on these stories, that fact was stored in a boolean field in the story database, so that viewers could have a prefs option to choose to just have those stories completely supressed from their slashdot experience.
And if enough people set that pref, perhaps the eds will finally realize that posting stories with that type of link is a complete waste of time.
I have to admit that I do this all the time, especially in airports-- and it is getting harder and harder to find places to recharge.
That's strange: the only place where I can consistently find a free* outlet is in the airport. I have on occasion carried a small outlet strip in my bag just in case all the outlets are taken, but this has not been an issue. (Someone using a laptop probably wouldn't mind unplugging for a few seconds while you plugged in the strip (so you could share the outlet), unless he was a complete turlingdrome.)
I also fly on newer Airbus aircraft whenever possible. The 300 series have DC power outlets in the armrests of all the seats (yes, even in coach/steerage). If I know I'm going to be on such a flight for an hour or more, I won't bother looking for an AC outlet in the terminal. I picked up one of these for use on the road. (The auto-DC-to-airline-DC adapter is the C-chaped item at the bottom of the picture.) Airline DC outlets are standardized (I forget the name of the connector) so any vendor's adapter should work.
* "free" as in "no people". In this context, I suppose "free as in beer" would also apply.
I want to drag this out as long as possible. Bring me my protractor.
I know at the "School of Advanced Technology" college I went to they had zero [yup count them zero] places to sit down and use a laptop. We had to make due sitting in the cafe and steal from the wall outlets [of which there were a half dozen for a school of 14,000 people].
Just wondering, anyone else goto tech schools like that?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I own Node Coffee Shop in Milwaukee, WI (open 24 hours). When I built the cafe I had the electrician put in quad outlets every 6-8 feet around the shop so that customers would never have to fight over a power outlet. Every seat has an outlet. No other cafe in the area can boast that kind of setup. I dont believe it costs us very much more as far as operating expenses go, but it does increase our profits as we get a lot of customers who come to our establishment because we have such great access. Check us out if you are ever in the Milwaukee area! http://www.nodecoffee.com/
Ok lets see now: My iBook charger outputs 24.5v @ 1.875A. Based on an electricity price of 5.5p per KHW (I plucked that from the first thing I could google) which is pretty high and probably lower for commercial outlets.. anyway i digress.. thats 0.003p per hour. Now lets take an average cup of Starbucks and break it down:
Price: ~£2.50
Costs: ~£0.80
and there for the amount of time I would need to sit there charging my laptop before they started loosing money:
~680 hours or about 1 month!
Obviously that makes some assumptions:
a) I would only buy one cup off coffee for the whole month and would live off drinking out of the toilet for the rest of the time (an improvement)
b) They probably wouldnt let me stay overnight
and
c) I would actually have to go to Starbucks for more than an hour - the time after which you can no-longer stand its nuvo art fake prints and dirty seats.
This is so no big deal, its in all these places interests to just let people plug their laptop in for an hour or so, the WiFi and coffee price will more than make up for it.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
...especially since they tore down all the analogue masts...
er, no they did not tear down the analog masts. Some rural locations (I have a friend that commutes 2hr to the city from the boondocks every day) are still well served by analog systems. Additionally GM's OnStar service is carried mostly by Verizon's old analog system because analog still has more complete coverage that digital (again especially in rural areas)
Back on topic, he said talk time, 180 min is pretty standard for most digital phones talktime.
Here's the article:
Power Users, Ready for a Refill
By MICHEL MARRIOTT
MIHOKO HAKATA, a freelance illustrator and recent art-school graduate, ducked into a coffee shop in Midtown Manhattan last week, desperate for a jolt of energy.
She had work to do. But as she removed her materials from her backpack, it became clear that the energy she was seeking could not be found in a cup. She had a more pressing need: to find a power outlet for her laptop computer, whose battery had died.
"I realized they have this," said Ms. Hakata, a 29-year-old Tokyo native, as her hand slipped beneath a table to deftly plug her I.B.M. ThinkPad into a wall socket.
Before Ms. Hakata, who lives on a drafty boat on the Hudson River, could settle into her work, a young man clutching a dying cellphone rushed in.
"I just have to charge it," he said, asking Ms. Hakata if he could share one of the two power outlets under her table. She smiled politely and nodded.
Every day, millions of people are finding themselves scurrying about in search of wells of electricity they can tap so their battery-powered mobile devices can remain mobile. Dependence is growing on laptops, cellular telephones, digital music players, digital cameras, camcorders, personal organizers, portable DVD players and the latest hand-held gaming devices - most of which operate on rechargeable lithium-ion batteries - and finding available electrical outlets away from home and office has become more urgent.
Starbucks and other establishments catering to wired customers appear to do little to discourage or regulate customers who plug in, either to work on AC power or charge up. In large part, the power seekers seem to negotiate their needs among themselves with cooperative grace, following a series of unspoken rules.
Chief among them, some say, is never to use more than half of the sockets in a wall outlet. If an outlet provides four sockets, electrical etiquette dictates that you can plug in, say, your laptop and your cellphone, but not the iPod, too.
Those who disregard this courtesy may find themselves the targets of grumblings and harsh stares.
"It's better not to hog all the outlets, of course," said Zyphus Lebrun, a graduate student in journalism at Columbia University. "It's like when you go to the Laundromat and there is one person using four dryers."
While some devices, like a dying cellphone, require only a few minutes of charging to regain short-term use, most devices, like laptops, take much longer. It is not uncommon for users of electronics with more ravenous appetites to camp out for hours near an electrical outlet. In some cases, those staking a claim do so by plugging in a device - even a $2,000 laptop - only to leave it unattended while fetching a $4 coffee.
Much of the mounting quest for power stems, some hardware manufacturers say, from battery performance that has generally not kept up with the rapidly expanding capabilities of today's consumer electronics.
In turn, some battery makers blame hardware makers for adding power-consuming extras like larger, brighter display screens on laptops and bigger hard drives in digital music players. The result is devices that can operate for little more than four to six hours between charges.
As a consequence, knowing the location of a well-placed (and unused) electrical outlet may be considered more vital than knowing the closest public bathroom.
"It has become part of your lifestyle," Ralph Bond, the consumer education officer for Intel, said of the continual challenge of taking advantage of the widening offerings of digital electronics but not becoming a slave to the socket. "I can give you a guided tour of the two concourses for United Airlines in Chicago O'Hare." He then rattled off a long list of airports where he knows the whereabouts of obscure but accessible electrical outlets. "I can show you where the very valued and highly prized electrical outlets are for frequent travelers that need to jui
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
Or alternativily you could argue that todays consumer electronics haven't designed their products well enough to take into account the clearly known limitations of current battery technology (it's not like the mainstream market has changed very much recently). Sure they've made efforts, but the direction has been (until recently) on bigger, better, faster and more powerful rather than lower heat output and reduced power consumption.
Or you could blame product managers and consumers. One for actually considering that a product with a 3 hour battery life is marketable and the other for actually proving them right.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
What if some punter comes in with a defective charger that fuses the outlet circuits or worse, starts a fire?
Some establishments (my kid's school for example) don't allow any electrical appliances to be used unless they have been through a safety check.
The same concern may apply at hotels etc. I wonder what the liability position is. Is it the establishment owner or the owner of the defective device?
That's why you need to carry around one of those adapters that plug into an incandescent lightbulb socket with a couple plugs on the side. That way if they lock down the outlets, all you need to do is sit next to a lamp.
Oh . . . and bring an oven mit along too, if the light is on.
In the UK even the trains have these power points - specifically marked 'for laptops'.
The airports are full of them... in the 1st class lounge you even get a desk to work on, and they provide a Wireless LAN.
I've not seem them in resaraunts yet but I probably don't frequent the right establishments.
I spoke with one of the leaders of the conference about it (figuring I wasn't the only one who got yelled out), and she told me it was most likely due to union issues...the union apparently was very strong there and the conference staff wasn't allowed to pull any cables...they needed union convention center staffers to do it. What that has to do with me plugging in a personal laptop is beyond me. Should I have gotten a union rep to do it instead?
I'll chalk it up to lack of intelligence on the guard's part, but I had no further problems. 'Course, whenever I saw that guy, I immediately unplugged.
There's a friggin 24/7 coffee shop in MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN but I cannot find *any* here in the goddamn SILICON VALLEY. There is something seriously wrong with this picture. :P
"Heart of technology" my ass. This dump sucks. I'm going to Wisconsin!
I used to steal electricity.. at first it was just the occasional pocketful, but it soon escalated. Before I knew it I was running carloads of electricity across the border at a time, running a major smuggling operation and selling to some of the underworld's most shadowy consumers of electricity.. it's a slippery slope, I'd advise you to stay well clear
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Restaurants definitely pay for their air.
The air you breathe is processed, filtered, temperature and humidity regulated. That costs money and customers are people who are willing to pay for "atmosphere" which usually does include special lighting.
They pay for water, for toilets, for square footage.
That gravity that's holding your ass to the seat, that's called "real estate". Underneath your fat ass is dirt and that is where the gravity comes from.
What's so far off the mark? Another poster noted that restaurants are in the service industry, not the food industry. He is exactly on target. Power is just another potential service that they can market just like any utility(service) company. Hell, they could even improve the power and advertise "uninterruptible" for a premium if they thought there was a market for it.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
There's a friggin 24/7 coffee shop in MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN but I cannot find *any* here in the goddamn SILICON VALLEY. There is something seriously wrong with this picture. :P
Some Silicon Valley cities require you to hire an off-duty cop as an armed guard if you want to be open after certain hours. (California's gun control has led to high crime rates and overnight stores are easy targets. The cities in question have used this as an excuse to set up a graft mechanism for their police officers.)
Others just zone things like that out of exisesence - so you need to be grandfathered or get a variance from the zoning board to go 24/7.
California runs the entertainment industry. The entertainment industry noticed that computer geeks keep late hours, jumped from that to the conclusion that Silicon Valley had more night life than the rest of the world, and promulgated that image.
I moved here from southeastern Michigan, which really DID have lots of stores open 24/7. (When I left there was a drugstore near my old place with a 24/7 MANNED AUTO PARTS counter! Rebuilt waterpumps at 3 AM if you needed 'em.) It was quite a shock to discover that Silicon Valley actually rolled up the streets at night.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
For everyone who thinks this is OK, how about putting an extension cord out your window and publishing your address.
When I walk into someone's house with my laptop, I immediately plug it in. They don't mind. They invited me into their home, and use of all the facilities (bathrooms and power plugs included). When I'm invited into a business, I'm also given free use of the restrooms, so why not the power outlets as well? Use of the restroom is much greater cost than plugging in a laptop for the duration of my stay.
When you invite people into your house, do you charge them to use the bathroom? Do you charge them to get a glass of water? Would you charge them to plug in a cell phone? If so, you must not have any friends, if not, why would you expect to be treated more poorly when invited in by a business?
Learn to love Alaska
They don't bat an eye at helping yourself to serviettes or sugar...
I've worked at and eaten in restaurants (mainly the fast food types) where they care a great deal about how many little packets you get/take. One place I worked for kept all the condiments behind the counter and customers had ask for them. The employees were given guidelines as to how many ketchup packets per order of french fries, etc., we could give out.
Some of these place's profit margins are so small that every penny matters to them, unfortunately.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest