Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Gord]

Seriously. Title says it all.

Let's review:

The good: $1 an hour.

List ends there.


The so-so:

The chairs. While looking good at first, most fail to go anywhere beyond the minimum. I like locking chairs which seem to be in low supply. And the inside wood is generally too thin to be durable so as the chair ages it starts to wobble. And the cheap fabric most places use tears too easily with age.

List ends there.


The bad:

Crowded desks. 80cm is considered an acceptable desk space. WTF? Yes, where is the flag indeed. And premium desks clock in at 90cm. Rock on.

The games. You can play any free game you want as long as it's StarCraft. StarCraft came out in 1998! And not the end of 1998, but in May. You know what else came out in May of 1998? Gran Turismo and Half Life. Yes, May of 1998 was a damn fine month but we can't live in the past forever.

In the odd place that does have a game like WarCraft 3 they accidentally bought when drunk, they have the games installed on random machines. So if you wanted to play another game, you have to toss the Naver-chatting child off their computer.

Not that running new games is even an option since half the places run Windows 98 anyway.

The browser: Unsecured systems that anyone and everyone installs everything on. Security risk ahoy! I once built a web server into a machine and streamed out images of what they were doing because I was bored. I am so going to Hell.

The lighting: Fluorescent lights were pretty swank back in 1945 when they were used to light up the room the ENIAC-1 was used in. But for use in a room where people are to sit for hours at a time? It's like they want you to leave before you get bored of playing StarCraft and realize the chair is breaking.

The keyboards: The use of keyboards that no one wants to use is brilliant. And as an added bonus, no one would want to steal them either! At $4 a keyboard, you'd think someone would put in new ones once in a while. Crowd control so that people don't stay too long?

The mice: The use of the cheap Samsung mouse which is based off an old discontinued Microsoft design from 1995 makes me cry. On some of them, you can still see the wax pencil marks from where they traced the original Microsoft mouse they copied. If they wanted to use cheap and useless mice, why not just buy the real deal from Microsoft? They've got billions of them from when they discontinued the product because no one wanted it.

And you've got to love those 50 cent mousepads they toss out. Would it really kill them to get some nicer ones that don't peel and fuzz up in a day? And get away from the cloth ones that can't be cleaned. Be it soup, drink, or body fluid, it's easier to wash a surface that doesn't absorb things

The monitors: Again, cheapness is the order of the day. Budget CRT monitors suffering various grades of burn-in unless the PC room is new. Nothing scream quality like the aforementioned fluorescent lights glaring off the cheap glass.

Or the few places that have LCDs all have the software running at 1024x768 because the login software they use runs at that so the images are blurry. DVI? Screw that noise, it's old-school VGA jacks from 1988! And when you play a game that changes the resolution, you get to manually re-align the image to fit the monitor. Rock on.

The indoor colour: Any colour you want as long as it's white or black. I once saw a place that was blue and green, but I believe the owners were arrested for heresy and then later burned for being witches.

The speakers: Obviously the solution to people listing to speakers is to use the cheapest ones they could find that sound so bad that people would have no choice but to use headphones. But without front jacks to plug headphones in, most people live in a world of silence. And silence is tranquility. Or it would be if they weren't using the cheapest power supplies they could find that sound like a damned wind tunnel.

That, or the wind tunnel covers up the cracks and pops generated from the poorest on-board sound chip they could get from VIA because the Intel on-board sound chip at $2 which actually works was $1 too much.

Perhaps the wind-tunnel power supply fans are there because not one PC room has proper ventilation in place. Because putting in a system that would properly heat, cool, and ventilate the place costs money and there will be no money invested into a PC room.

The graphic cards: The youngest child I ever taught was four years old, and she is younger than any graphic card I've ever seen in a PC room. It's like a theme: They want everything frozen in time: The game is from 1998, the O/S is from 1998, why not have a graphic card from 1998? Though seriously, the cards are from 2001 which still makes them older than little Cindy. If 3DFX was still around, I suspect that the PC room industry would still be using their 1998 cards as it is obviously part of a 1998 theme they have going on.

Case stylings: There can be only one reason for the use of the ugliest cases that the average PC room uses. Theft deterrent because no one would dare steal an ugly case because they could not sell it and their friends would laugh at them for having such ugly cases. Yongsan has every case in the universe there and there are a lot of very swank cases to be found.

Food and drink: Another sad tale of a day late and a dollar short. Does Family Mart lean on PC rooms that carry food? Korean gangsters that walk around and push over PC room food displays if they get too big and then tell the owners that their might be an accident unless they sell a little less stuff?

The desks: Some places are starting to get nicer desks, but most still use the generic Chinese-style layout. And not the good Chinese style, but from the poor areas where people can't afford computers or furniture, so the desks are built as cheaply as possible. The desks only remain standing due to the sheer about of ugliness they radiate.

Cables, cables, cables everywhere. Has no one in Korea heard of a zap-strap or tie-down? They are 2 cents each! I'm going to introduce them into Korea and make millions. Pro-tip: Dividing walls behind the desks would wonders too.

Printers: I built my first printer network in 1989 which involved modems and remote connections. It was pretty impressive at the time given I was all of 15 or so. It's a wonder anyone ever dated me. And networked printer support has been standard in O/Ss since 1991! Yet if I want to print something out, I have to go to a specific computer? It's like they don't want my money. And not every print has to be colour. A laser printer is ten times faster and does 10 pages for a penny, all for the low price of $100. My last Samsung laser cost me $129 and came in with a $30 mail-in rebate I never used. It's not like people will set it on stun and start shooting people with it.

And so on.

So there you have it. Korean PC rooms are not great, but the inverse. If I was the bady Jesus, I'd be crying. Still cheap at twice the price? Hardly, we're paying them to insult us, and that's sad.

-Fin

[Hater Depot]

Hmm. All the PC rooms I've been to were pretty nice. Up to date hardware, nice LCD screens, comfy chairs. The only problem is finding one that isn't smoked up or have terrible lighting. I'll agree with you that the food and drink suck.

[kangnam mafioso]

i never used the pc bangs for anything too high tech. mostly web surfing, yahoo chess, chat, email and occasional word processing. i like the fact that they are always open and you can smoke and drink in them and they sell snacks. i also like the fact that they are located everywhere. but yes, if you're looking for a quiet place to type and format a dissertation or someplace to build the blog of the year or play the most advance games, pc rooms are not ideal.

[Big Mac]

Wow, what a complainer you are! Did you actually take out a tape measure to see what size the desks were?

At least you have PC bongs available to you on just about every corner in Korea. In Canada (at least the Ottawa area) you'd have to look far and wide to find one at all.

[Gord]

[VanIslander]

You forgot Internet SPEED

(go to such places in other countries for comparison, any other country)

CONVENIENT LOCATION (everywhere!)

and drinks and snacks

and air conditioning and heating (not hard to find a newer PC Room outfitted well)

the only real negative I can think of is cigarette smoke, and even then, some of the newer ones (one in my neighbourhood anyways) have wonderful ventilation and actually enforced non-smoking sections (because adjumma demand it - I've seen it in action).

[Hobophobic]

HAHAHAHAHA....actually I went to a PC bang I used to frequent(back in 2001), before I had a computer at home, and it was set up very well...

Completely changed from when I used to go - was much like you mentioned... plus the keyboards always had a cigarette burn somewhere.

...it was actually impressive...well for a PCbang....done up nice and new.

[matthews_world]

I've yet to play computer games here in Korea. I have no idea how to sign up to get an ID to play one of those things. Crazy how so many people here are addicted.

[Zyzyfer]

There are some absolutely disgusting PC rooms around, but I always manage to find one in whatever area I'm in that is just swank enough to let me veg out on Warcraft III in comfort. The overall best one I've been to was in Bundang. It had a little more desk space, suave computers, Warcraft in all the right places, and wasn't too smoky.

[eamo]

In agree about the 1998 thing. I think that was the heyday of PC bangs so they all try to recreate that '98 feelin'.

I guess you have a hot PC at home Gord. Why spend so much time and patience at PC bangs?

[RACETRAITOR]

Wait til you go back to your home country and discover that they haven't invented the Internet there yet.

[indytrucks]

I haven't been to a PC Room in 6 years. I use my own computer at home.

[djsmnc]

[Big Mac]

Well, Gord, after looking at your website your strange post makes so much more sense to me.

You think you are God and your website is your bible? Hmmmm.

Take a look everyone: http://www.actsofgord.com/

[mithridates]