Hello all,
I was quite encouraged to find this forum, in case you cannot tell from the title
I live on the hardware side (forum602, I love helping people).
I'm a Sysadmin/Landscape Architect for a medium-sized ($3-4M/year) design/build landscape firm. I have several years of hands-on PC knowledge, I have built all 14 machines on our network (including a laptop & SBS2003sp1 Server and migrated the server from NT4.0 single-handedly. Oh I also tend to all the office machines except the large-format copier. I'm "the guy". I am also the main revenue generator for the co., I like being busy, truly enjoy drawing & coloring all day, and LOVE all things tech. Can't get enough. With PCs/tech as my hobby I have avoided CAD and free-draw & render everything. Okay enough about me. Here's the skinny:
Our garden center division (pathetic and a $$$ drain) is rolling out a new Water Garden Center campaign, and we hope to attract a lot of folks to our place. Our gazebo, where we do our sales, is open to the Texas heat & humidity. We need to develop a POS system that:
1) Is a cash register with receipt printing;
2) Can print exterior-grade plant tags & waterproof labels w/ bar code (this can be done indoors, on a separate PC as needed;
3) Can read & ring up those bar codes;
4) Can index customers via phone # etc. to create customer DB
5) Has durable hardware, possibly touch screen, for humid, dirty environment;
6) Can interface w/ Quickbooks (asking too much?);
7) Can be used by $7/hr Garden Center workers
8) Hopefully be connected to a PC in the secure climate-controlled office ~30' away...either via CAT5 or 802.11G
9) Is professional and reliable
To date, the only POS solution I have even heard of is WASP while browsing PCConnection brochures, I did some research tonight that only led to more confusion. I am hoping my Tek-tips karma will pay off and some of you experts can at least spoon-feed me a little bit about how this goes together and what products to seek and which ones to avoid.
Our budget is flexible, maybe ~$5K max (maybe more) but I would like to keep it around $3.5-4K if possible. I have no clue what this stuff costs. Remember I can create whatever PC is needed to run this thing, the most important things are being able to communicate with the machine from the network and QuickBooks integration. If it costs more, so be it.
I look forward to meeting you all, harvesting your wisdom, learning your jargon, and finding my best possible solution...what this site is all about...sharing and helping others!
Tony
(forgive the cheesy flash...I am a Landscape Designer not a Web Designer...
I was quite encouraged to find this forum, in case you cannot tell from the title
I live on the hardware side (forum602, I love helping people).
I'm a Sysadmin/Landscape Architect for a medium-sized ($3-4M/year) design/build landscape firm. I have several years of hands-on PC knowledge, I have built all 14 machines on our network (including a laptop & SBS2003sp1 Server and migrated the server from NT4.0 single-handedly. Oh I also tend to all the office machines except the large-format copier. I'm "the guy". I am also the main revenue generator for the co., I like being busy, truly enjoy drawing & coloring all day, and LOVE all things tech. Can't get enough. With PCs/tech as my hobby I have avoided CAD and free-draw & render everything. Okay enough about me. Here's the skinny:
Our garden center division (pathetic and a $$$ drain) is rolling out a new Water Garden Center campaign, and we hope to attract a lot of folks to our place. Our gazebo, where we do our sales, is open to the Texas heat & humidity. We need to develop a POS system that:
1) Is a cash register with receipt printing;
2) Can print exterior-grade plant tags & waterproof labels w/ bar code (this can be done indoors, on a separate PC as needed;
3) Can read & ring up those bar codes;
4) Can index customers via phone # etc. to create customer DB
5) Has durable hardware, possibly touch screen, for humid, dirty environment;
6) Can interface w/ Quickbooks (asking too much?);
7) Can be used by $7/hr Garden Center workers
8) Hopefully be connected to a PC in the secure climate-controlled office ~30' away...either via CAT5 or 802.11G
9) Is professional and reliable
To date, the only POS solution I have even heard of is WASP while browsing PCConnection brochures, I did some research tonight that only led to more confusion. I am hoping my Tek-tips karma will pay off and some of you experts can at least spoon-feed me a little bit about how this goes together and what products to seek and which ones to avoid.
Our budget is flexible, maybe ~$5K max (maybe more) but I would like to keep it around $3.5-4K if possible. I have no clue what this stuff costs. Remember I can create whatever PC is needed to run this thing, the most important things are being able to communicate with the machine from the network and QuickBooks integration. If it costs more, so be it.
I look forward to meeting you all, harvesting your wisdom, learning your jargon, and finding my best possible solution...what this site is all about...sharing and helping others!
Tony
(forgive the cheesy flash...I am a Landscape Designer not a Web Designer...