Some people will go a very long way for a decent cup of coffee. Me, I have traipsed half way round London's West End, passed countless perfectly respectable coffee shops and still haven't satisfied my craving for a grande latte with hazelnut.
That's because today's breakfast menu not only includes a large cup of frothy coffee but also fast internet access for my notebook PC.
I am reclining on a very comfy chair in the 32 Fleet Street branch of Starbucks, one of a pair (the other is in Broad Street) of the chain's cafes to offer high-speed wireless internet access via wireless LAN, or Wi-Fi (802.11b) as it is popularly known.
Anyone can use the Starbucks service. Provided their laptop (or PDA) features a Wi-Fi card they can log on to the network and access email accounts, surf the web or download files via a fast connection. They first have to download HP's Wireless Connection Manager software from www.starbucks.com/hotspot. At the present time, Wi-Fi connection is free. But prices of around £50 for a month's access and £7 per hour will be introduced shortly. T-Mobile, which is providing the network access, hopes that the pilot scheme will lead to a roll-out of similar networks in Starbucks across the UK. In the US more than 1,200 Starbucks already offer high-speed wireless access.
Wireless hot spots could soon be big news in the UK, too. BT, which offers a similar service at Heathrow Airport, is promising to install up to 4,000 wireless LAN hot spots in bars, motorway service stations and exhibition centres by June 2003. If fast and reliable wireless LAN internet access is available in a large number of places, it could also slow demand for third-generation services.
Back at Fleet Street Starbucks, I have finished catching up with my email and taken a few snaps of a very smart area in Starbucks with a large table downstairs that the staff have already christened "the boardroom." If only I had been smart enough to bring a USB cable with me, I could have emailed them right then.
The easiest way of sending images (albeit rather low resolution ones) now is using a photo message phone via multimedia messaging (MMS). The service, available from Orange and T-Mobile, is hamstrung by the limited range of handsets - just two at the present time. The Sony Ericsson T68i is a superbly specified phone, but to take images you have to attach the rather fiddly CommuniCam camera. The tiny screen is not ideal for viewing images, either. As for the Nokia, it works extremely well, yet is a tad bulky and, at around £250 with contract, is hardly mass-market.
By the time 02 and Vodafone launch their photo messaging services later this autumn, the range of handsets available across all networks will be considerably larger and, courtesy of two new models, significantly more appealing.
Aimed ostensibly at the youth market, Sharp's GX-1 camera phone, available exclusively via O2, is so compact it makes rival models look excessively bulky. It sports unique features too, namely a pair of zoom options and five exposure levels. Users can store up to 80 images and set up an online photo library. If priced competitively it could kick-start photo messaging as a major trend among the young. Sharp's photo messaging mobiles are enormously successful in Japan, and the GX-1 is the company's eighth handset.
At the top-end is Sony Eric sson's P800 - one of the most sophisticated mobiles ever produced. Around the same size as a small PDA (117mm (4.6inches) tall, it features a flip-down front that reveals a large screen. Images taken by its integrated digital camera are stored either in the phone's 12MB internal memory or the 16MB Memory Stick that accompanies it. It runs the latest Symbian V7 operating system, has email facilities and an HTML/Wap web browser and features Bluetooth and Java. Owners can also view streamed or downloaded video. Its expected price is about £500. No networks have committed to it yet. Sony Ericsson is also offering a budget photo phone, the T-300, which will be available with a new CommuniCam snap-on digital camera.
Finally, if the high price of MMS (T-Mobile £20 a month or Orange, 40p per image sent) proves too much, T-Mobile is now offering photo messaging on the cheap
Although it doesn't use MMS, the i128 sends images taken by its accompanying plug in camera to PCs as emails. The phone is available now with contract, and no additional MMS fees, for £79.99.
