UK hotel chain adds iMacs to the list of in-room amenities
Faithful UK Macenstein reader Brian has a bit of good news for those of you planning to travel to the UK but don’t feel like crating up your desktop to bring with you. Hotel chain City Inn has decided to put a brand new iMac in every room in its London and Manchester hotels.
Above: Using the iMac’s built-in iSight camera, guests can presumably broadcast live web cam sex shows in order to help pay for the room.
According to Macworld UK, City Inn has partnered with software company DirectStreams which developed a system to allow guests to use the iMac as a TV, radio, DVD and CD player, as well as allow for full access to the iLife suite, Office apps, and the internet.
What’s really cool here is that through the use of Faronic’s Deep Freeze software, no data is recorded on the iMac’s hard drive, and the systems are returned to their default state each day (remind me I want to install that on a few friend’s systems this coming April 1st). This means people need not worry about the security risks normally associated with shared environment computers. It also means you should pack a USB thumb drive if you are planning to write any reports on the road and don’t want them to mysteriously disappear in the morning.
Above: What are those, JBL speakers as well?
Of course, with room prices starting at $265.63 (US) per night and given how worthless the dollar is now, odds are it will be a while before any Americans get the chance to take advantage of City Inn’s iMac goodness.
BIG DEAL! The SoHo Grand and the Chelsea Grand in NYC have offered iMac in most rooms for YEARS! Customers reserve rooms there just so they don’t have to bring their portables with them! Great IDEA! I wonder if Apple were smarter, they’d make sure hotels that wanted iMacs in rooms could get hem at a super low lease rate and replace them every two years like clock work. Same price per room, just upgraded every year. They’d sell a lot of macs doing that. A LOT!!
That iMac shown in the pictures is not brand new. It is a G5 Mac and not from the current Intel generation.
the 300 Imacs in City Inn Manchester were installed in May 07 and are Intel inside white Macs. The 475 Imacs installed in City Inn Westminster (London) are brand new aluminium Intel Macs. A small detail however : these Macs are not simply providing the computer usage but also and mainly the Multimedia usage through an interactive portal allowing guests to watch IPTV channels, listen to Radios, access to Room service ordering, a.s.o….that is the big difference with simply put Macs from the shelves in an hotel room, this brand new solution is having a strong back office behind, managing all the network appliances (the solution is based on a full IP Ethernet Network) and a Network Operating Center Architecture….
You can tell they are intel iMacs because of the arrangement of the ports on the back.
This is a great idea and it sounds like they’ve taken the trouble to do it the right way. My only criticism is that a 20″ or even 24″ screen is too small to view across the room. It means you practically have to sit at the desk to watch TV or a movie, which is not ideal.
And nothings stopping you from just booting up from your own disk right?
What stops hotel staff looking through the keychain before the system is reset to note down any passwords you have used?
“You can tell they are intel iMacs because of the arrangement of the ports on the back.”
You can?! Uh, yeah…
Seems like a easy way for the hotels in England to skimp out on having to upgrade to large flat panel TV’s. Perhaps they can get away with not having to pay that stupid TV tax by pushing TV through a 20″ Computer monitor. Kind of a shame to see an excellent computer put to no good use in a hotel room.
With today’s flat panels you can get a beautiful 47″ LG LCD TV with a “Hospitality Package” that allows you to bring movies, music, adult entertainment and many more options into your guest rooms. I applaud any hotel for trying new things to step out side of the box, but when I check into a hotel, I expect a TV, not a 20″ computer monitor.
Thank you very much for the great information-
Thanks