Coffee shops and notebooks

I'm sitting here in Starbucks for the past 2 hours, more people are actually coming to Starbucks or any other "high" class coffee shops these days with their notebooks. When I say high class I'm referring to the ones where you pay close to RM10 or more for a cup of drink. Places like Coffee bean, Starbucks, San Francisco Coffee and etc.

Are these places actually making money? if yes...how?the turn over rate is slower now and people are taking up more spaces by having one person per table and sitting there for 2 hours drinking 1 drink and surfing the internet. It also seem like its became a trend to have notebooks lately. I think if we look around us we would notice a lot more notebook users than 4 years back. Notebooks used to be a luxury and only people with a thick wallet would be using them...normally. Lately prices of notebook have dropped a lot and is more affordable, not to mention quality gets cheaper as well.

Anyways, I'm sure most of us have been to Starbucks, but the question is...what do we do there? socialize? surf? download (kiasu people who wants free internet). What happen to internet cafes? Remember back then internet cafe were actually coffee shops with some computer units where you pay a certain fee to go online? Now internet cafes don't seem like the places you would go to do your homework...with all that screaming and smoking and noise there from the games. Though there are some who do not allow customers to turn on their speakers but instead supply headphone, but they too don't have the softwares like microsoft word, access, or power point. No more scanning facility, no more printing service. So, is this the end of the term "internet cafe"? It seems that there has been revolution and the word cafe doesn't suit the current change no more. Where's the coffee?late?or mocha...is Starbucks now an "internet cafe"? They have internet, they have coffee and everything that qualifies it to be called a cafe.

Back long long ago, coffee shops were places where people socialize and often a place of gathering. These days the younger generation go to the club's and pub's to do this. I was reading a thesis from a MIT student about how coffee shops are changing the way people interact with each other now, people go there to go online and sit alone. What happen to the socializing? unless it is an arrange meeting with friends, colleagues or people you meet online. There wouldn't be much socializing in these places anymore.

I would very much like to hear your opinion on this...do share. =)