From WorldatWork’s Telework Trendlines for 2006:
Public park wifi seems like a great trend for cafe commuters. I can’t wait to try the new free outdoor wifi in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park once the weather warms up!
Here are a few articles about laptops getting stolen out of cafes in San Francisco, sometimes while the owner is still using it!
Laptop thieves descend upon wireless cafes
Life is worth more than laptop
I don’t know if this is due to an extra high frequency of public laptop use in the Bay Area or what. Here in New York the common thieves have been known to be among the most cunning and opportunistic in the nation but we don’t seem to have quite as much of a problem. I’ve left my laptop unattended many times at Brooklyn cafes while going to the restroom. It just doesn’t feel like much of a risk though after reading these articles I’m going to start using my Kensington cable lock religiously just in case. Of course I’d never use my laptop in Manhattan without the lock, it’s a mad house over there!
I found a great article from last year in Ars Technica about working in cafes. The last paragraph summarizes things nicely:
Personal experience suggests that most laptop users who work at coffee shops don’t do so because they are too cheap to rent an office. No, people whose work involves the solitary punching of laptop keys enjoy being around other people, and coffee shops and cafes provide a comfortable and inexpensive environment where one can feel less isolated while working. Looked at in this way, the “WiFi wars” are less over Internet access and more about the type of jobs that we do—jobs that require little human interaction but do require the constant tether of a network connection.
I found this post at Web Worker Daily that sparked a very interesting discussion about whether or not it’s appropriate to do your work at an internet cafe.
There are quite a range of opinions with the opposite ends of the spectrum represented on the one hand by this comment:
How hopeless! You go to the cafes to relax and chat. Not effing work and tap away on your damn laptop.
and on the other hand by this:
Disagreeing with most comments on this — cafes like this are a “third space†for many of us. Not work, not home, but public yet available for working/surfing. One is “alone togetherâ€, which is often a very productive position indeed.
Many people feel more able to work with the background noise that comes from being in a public place, yet none of the folks around you are cow-orkers who will interrupt. Plus there is coffee. Bliss.
That’s my idea of bliss also, if you throw in a full kitchen with table service! 
…due to pending legal action by the RIAA?
If the judge rules that we’re each legally responsible for all of the traffic that comes through our ISP account, open, unprotected Wi-Fi hotspots would become a serious legal liability, the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people who depend on their neighbors for Wi-Fi will be out of luck, while altruistic (or ignorant) folks who leave their wireless networks open could find themselves embroiled in an RIAA lawsuits even if they’ve never shared a single song in their lives.
Ironically enough some negative reviews that you read online for venues are actually very positive from the point of view of the cafe commuter. Here’s a review for one of my favorite places to work:
Well, Supercore is a definitely cool place, but watch out for the worker-bee/laptop vibe on weekdays. I went there with some friends to hang out on a weekday morning, and got looks from the waitress because we were sitting around and talking. What are coffee shops coming to? Guess you have to keep the cappucinos flowing, or do some important web-surfing to hang out in this joint.
from freewilliamsburg.com
and here’s another:
There is nothing here but laptops. It looks like an office inside, just rows of laptops. . . with a coffee counter. How is it that someone can spend $2.00 on a cup of coffee and be entitled to take up space at the tables for a whole day? Bad place for a conversation because your the only ones talking and its weird, everyone else is “working”. What happened to the days when cafes were social?
from yelp.com
Obviously these are 2 places that would be ideal to spend some hours with your laptop. On the other hand some people work regular jobs, and when they’re not at work the last thing they want to see is a bunch of people busy at work. There are a number of bars in Brooklyn that now offer free wifi but I’ve never been to one where I didn’t feel a vibe like “this is a place to socialize and get drunk, not work on a freakin’ laptop!”
Anyway this is an issue I’m trying to sort out here: distinguishing between places that just have free wifi and those where you’re actually welcome to hang out and do some work for a few hours. I wish venues would be more up front about it and advertise as ‘worker/student friendly’ or something like that but instead you have to rely on more subtle cues, though like at the place mentioned in the second review above they have power strips plugged in all over the place so it’s pretty obvious they don’t mind you hanging out for longer than your laptop’s battery life.
Hi my name is Eric Kittell and I am a freelance web developer. I recently traded in my Mac G5 desktop for a MacBook laptop so that I could work in other places besides my home office. It can get kind of lonely here not to mention the boredom of sitting in the same room, with the same view, same walls, day after day… blah!
I am starting this blog to share some of my experiences as a ‘cafe commuter’ as well as recommend different products, devices and software that I have found to make my life easier. I also want to setup a database of locations that are conducive to the cafe commuter lifestyle. There are many wifi hotspots around and many lists of hotspots also but just because a place has wifi doesn’t mean you’ll feel comfortable or even be allowed to work there for any length of time.
So then there’s my first post. I feel I should write something inspirational, like cafe commuters of the world unite! (lol) Anyway we’ll see how this thing turns out. I think more and more people will take up this lifestyle while more venues will begin to cater to us and our special needs.