In Mobile Office Reviews Johnboy and I search for the perfect place to spend a day working.
This morning we went to 39 Steps Cafe, a fancy looking little place at the O’Conner shops. The weather was cold, but 39 Steps was warm and welcoming.
Johnboy got a coffee, I ordered bacon and eggs. Full of enthusiasm for the place, we opened our laptops and tried to start out RiotACT day.
Sadly things didn’t turn out quite the way we hoped.
Technology:
No available electricity, poor mobile coverage, and terrible WiFi.
Sadly this is really where the ‘mobile office’ part of the review really starts and ends.
No available power is manageable. It’s not ideal, but it is fairly common. We can cope with that
It was the combo of poor mobile coverage and barely usable WiFi however that made the place completely unworkable for us. We obviously need to be able to get online to work on our website and it just wasn’t possible.
If your work doesn’t require much online work beyond the occasional email then their in-house WiFi may do you ok, but we found that even gmail had troubles loading (it switched back to that awful html version).
At the time we could see nobody else there with a laptop, so unless the manager was outback torrenting Game of Thrones or something, I can’t understand things were so slow.
After struggling for about 30 minutes we gave up on mobile officing it today and went home.
Food:
Breakfast was nice, obviously we didn’t try lunch.
My plate of bacon and eggs was not cheap, but it was huge and delicious.
Productivity:
Zero. It seems like it would have been fine, but we never really got to test.
Coffee:
When I shake the Magic Johnboy™ it says:
Pleasant, but not remarkable.
Comfort:
Quite nice. The place is charming and the booth we found ourselves in was comfy. The tables had plenty of room for Johnboy and I to spread our all our laptops, phones, bacon, tethering cables, sunglasses, and eggs without feeling feel crowded or cluttered.
Service:
Lovely. Staff were friendly and attentive.
Other People:
We were there too early to really tell what the clientele were like. I can’t image the place getting too distracting a crowd, but I don’t know.
Conclusion:
Really nice cafe, terrible mobile office.
Our quest continues!