Hi all,
I'm writing a program/service for bike shops and I wonder what's the typical case: do the LBS' you frequent/own/work/... have an internet connection?
If yes, what kind of connection? (slow 56K dial-up or DSL/Cable?)

And what kind of computer do they have (15 years old windows 3.1 or reasonaly recent with at least XP)?

Thanks!

Yes, at least here in Denmark almost every LBS have internet access, and most have a website too, some have their own shop website while others are part of a chain of bike shops who also share a common website.


Dial-up? Does that still exsits? I don't think I know a single person with a dial-up connection anymore, even my old parents have switched to broadband a long time ago. Just about everyone (private or business) has broadband in some form, like ADSL, cable or fiber. (and a few has wireless broadband like WiMAX or 3G).


Windows 3.1? Have anyone actually been using that for the last 10 years? I think Windows XP is the most common OS at the moment and some have Win 2000 and even fewer might still have Win 98 while some who have bought a new PC might have Vista. Altough Vista haven't really catched on in the business world and some experts say it never will replace XP/2000 but (large) buisness customers will wait for the next Win OS before they replace XP/2000.


But I think it varies a lot from country to country. In some countries internet is almost as common and widespread as TV, while other internet is not nearly as common in other countries.

The shops around here all have a net connect. some are low band some are high...

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charles@pezcyclingnews.com

The small shop I mainly use has what looks to be a pretty good computer and fast internet hook up. In fact when you go in there to buy a part for a bike like a stem or casette the owner will go on the internet and give me a price based on the approximate average of what an item is going for. Not the highest or lowest but somewhere in the middle. Also this shop has a web site where you can purchase stuff. Not sure if they host it or not. Most of the other shops in the area also have online shopping.

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I doubt very much they host their website themselves. Most smaller buisnesses use a webhosting company to host their website and there's many good reasons to do so.

Most bike shops overhere got a website.
Hosting is not expensive I payed only 40 euro incl. VAT for a .com & .nl domain.

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Chris Kuiper
www.KuiperTrading.com

The bikeshop I worked at had windows XP mainly but some were on 2000.

DSL I beleive (It had broadband, 1Gb I think) It was mainly used so the owners could watch teh cctv cameras from home. They had no trust in their employees at all and had no idea about bikes or how to run a bike shop. They used to add 10% to the RRP's!! So I left.

Thanks everybody! I guess it's only the old-style bike shops in Italy that still have no connection and/or no computer.

Looks like most shops have a faster connection than my workplace (software company)

Here in the states it varies quite a bit. There are still quite a few small shops that don't have internet access.

We are an fairly average- or slightly larger than average. However, I do think we are a bit more net oriented than others. We have 7 PC's in the store all at least dual core running XP pro. An industrial T1 equivalent connection. Our website is hosted on our own server(but I'm sure that is not very common except for a couple of the largest online shops.)

Frenk, can I ask what you intend for your software to do? There's already software to do pretty much everything you'd need in a shop but none of them are perfect, and there is room to improve on many of them.

If you want ideas drop me a PM and I'll let you know what we'd like to see in some of the softwares we use.

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T1 with wireless for customers.

Starnut

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