People seem to forget that extracting meaningfull information from end users is a highly specialist skill. Developers are from my experience clever folks, however frequently they lack the ability to learn the most important language in IT, EUS - End User Speak. To my mind the most undervalued skill in the industry.
In my last job I was the first ever IT person to be based in the branch office. The users perception of the software and systems was very negative. The main IT function was based 300 miles away and only did a token visit to the site once a month. Being based on site and actually sitting with the users I could see just what impact the systems were having; when you end up staying past midnight, helping a user in tears becuase they could loose their job if the client didn't get the expected reports. You then start to appreciate the issues a hell of a lot more and why they have issues in sending developers good information to work from.
You have three options:
1. Go sit with the users or pay somebody else to do it for you and act as an interpreter
2. Automate error reporting. This should involve no more user intervention than clicking on a confirmation and should send them back a case reference number. This must then feedback to the user to make them feel involved in the process.
3. Educate some users and appoint bug monkeys on teams having repeated issues. There is usually one person on a team that thinks they know IT and likes to have a badge. Play on it, give them an hour or so of your time and get them to report the bugs for users on the team.
Support staff don't tend to be that well paid, we don't tend to get much love from users or developers. What you're seing now is what we can do for you and what we protect you from.
Yes, it does have a VGA port. However with the standard distro the one downside is that you can not run the two displays at different resolutions*. Most monitors don't seem to like 800x480 and if you up the res for the external display then you just get the top left corner of it on the Eee screen. If you ditch the supplied distro and move to eeexubuntu or even XP then you should have a more traditional external display setup. You get OpenOffice by default so most PowerPoint presentations should be supported out of the box.
*It may be possible to do a bit of hacking to work that way but I've not seen anything on it yet.
The BBC is covered by Ofcom regulation so has a duty to respond to all complaints in a timely manner, they also have to log EVERY SINGLE ONE. I was advised I should have a reply within 10 days to my complaint that they are using a closed platform yet again. If nothing else we might be able to get the message through that there are more than two companies out there that make operating systems.
I just find it amusing when the BBC has been carrying stories about Linux and organistions / authorities banning closed MS formats on the technology sections of the site for the past couple of years.
I can't believe that you think this is any worse than your Millitary Commissions Act and the removal of rights that this imposes on your nation. Yeah.. we do have lots of cameras.. You have AT&T..
Its just great. We can get high res footage of the people that kick off the trouble but no sign of any authority to come and stop it. As for the comments about 'We have prison for trouble makers' so do we.. we use it very extensively. That's probably why we have the highest percentage of our population in prison of any EU country. We're currently looking to borrow or build a prison ship for gods sake as the number of free prison places is all but zero.
To the original point. There are other schemes like this in other areas. They use the more traditional aproach of taking a pic and letting the bouncers at all the various bars in the town know who the bad lads (and ladets) are. This might work with the yokles in Yeovill but I cant see this working in some of the clubs we have that could hold 5~10% of that towns population!
As chuck-d would say 'Dont believe the Hype'
Its called ISDN30 and its still widely used. You only get 30 channels (x64k) to play with though and after that you multiplex. You would be amazed how much use this stuff gets.. its still a very viable alternative to DIA and if you use all 30 channels for data your going to get a lot more upstream bandwidth than you do on ADSL and Cable...
Surely the gamers will be on the 'Ultimate' eddition or the cracked corporate licence that will doubtless appear.
I think MSFT is playing the retail game. They are giving people a reason to go to ultimate.
The home user who buys a bundle will more likely add external devices than internal upgrades so the restrictions are much less of an issue for them..
Having worked for two years for an EPOS provider (HW & SW) I have to say that this is your single biggest challenge. Certainly in the UK the EFT provider will require to come in and test your solution. Even if you buy there code they still require to test the interface from your application.
Another way to do it is to get your friend to run the stand alone EFT solutions from their bank of choice and just not have the connection between the till and the actual card processing, although this will require the transaction to be entered twice, on the till and then on the card processing unit.
The other issue is support. Whilst the commercial solutions cost you do have the comfort of a support contract. Will your friends still be your friends when their till goes down at peak trading and you are not around to fix it?
As for white box solutions my advice would be to buy SFF pc's. One thing our customers always wanted was more space at the checkout.
Good luck on your quest. There have been some good suggestions so far.
Oh.. and if you do decide to go the commercial route ADS Anker (http://www.anker-systems.com/) used to do probably the best hospitality solutions. I don't know the state of the market now but I believe that they are now owned by Torex.
Man oh man... you can tell you never worked in the drugs business...
I worked in IT for the large UK based pharm company and the last thing that they worried about was production cost. Yes it was a factor but so small in comparison to the rest, Why do you think Generic drugs are so widely available?
Comparing the music industry to the drugs game is silly. The shear volume of compounds that were collected, stored, screaned, tested, packaged and trialed just to find that one active element was huge. The legeslation that all this was conducted in was complex and extensive. It inherently costs money.
Slightly off topic but the most telling stroy I ever heard in the drugs game concerned a product we had. It was the best performing drug on the market in the US for the use it had. Despite this sales were slow. They hired a team of consutlatnts to see why it was not selling...
The answer they came up with was to DOUBLE the price. Thats right put the price up. They did this and within 12 months were the market leader. It seems people still associate premium with quality.
Now if you will excuse me I'm just off to replicate some more Prozac...
Slashdot Mirror
People seem to forget that extracting meaningfull information from end users is a highly specialist skill. Developers are from my experience clever folks, however frequently they lack the ability to learn the most important language in IT, EUS - End User Speak. To my mind the most undervalued skill in the industry.
In my last job I was the first ever IT person to be based in the branch office. The users perception of the software and systems was very negative. The main IT function was based 300 miles away and only did a token visit to the site once a month. Being based on site and actually sitting with the users I could see just what impact the systems were having; when you end up staying past midnight, helping a user in tears becuase they could loose their job if the client didn't get the expected reports. You then start to appreciate the issues a hell of a lot more and why they have issues in sending developers good information to work from.
You have three options:
1. Go sit with the users or pay somebody else to do it for you and act as an interpreter
2. Automate error reporting. This should involve no more user intervention than clicking on a confirmation and should send them back a case reference number. This must then feedback to the user to make them feel involved in the process.
3. Educate some users and appoint bug monkeys on teams having repeated issues. There is usually one person on a team that thinks they know IT and likes to have a badge. Play on it, give them an hour or so of your time and get them to report the bugs for users on the team.
Support staff don't tend to be that well paid, we don't tend to get much love from users or developers. What you're seing now is what we can do for you and what we protect you from.
Yes, it does have a VGA port. However with the standard distro the one downside is that you can not run the two displays at different resolutions*. Most monitors don't seem to like 800x480 and if you up the res for the external display then you just get the top left corner of it on the Eee screen. If you ditch the supplied distro and move to eeexubuntu or even XP then you should have a more traditional external display setup. You get OpenOffice by default so most PowerPoint presentations should be supported out of the box. *It may be possible to do a bit of hacking to work that way but I've not seen anything on it yet.
As with all articles on Tom's you can get round the multi page bit by changing the index.html to print.html - eg:
http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/08/intel_skulltrail_part_3/print.html
That gives you a long single page. It's not perfect but it helps.
For those of you here in the UK that would like to tell Auntie your feelings on the matter you can do so via the website.
e p1.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/make_complaint_st
The BBC is covered by Ofcom regulation so has a duty to respond to all complaints in a timely manner, they also have to log EVERY SINGLE ONE. I was advised I should have a reply within 10 days to my complaint that they are using a closed platform yet again. If nothing else we might be able to get the message through that there are more than two companies out there that make operating systems.
I just find it amusing when the BBC has been carrying stories about Linux and organistions / authorities banning closed MS formats on the technology sections of the site for the past couple of years.
Use your voice.
I can't believe that you think this is any worse than your Millitary Commissions Act and the removal of rights that this imposes on your nation. Yeah.. we do have lots of cameras.. You have AT&T.. Its just great. We can get high res footage of the people that kick off the trouble but no sign of any authority to come and stop it. As for the comments about 'We have prison for trouble makers' so do we.. we use it very extensively. That's probably why we have the highest percentage of our population in prison of any EU country. We're currently looking to borrow or build a prison ship for gods sake as the number of free prison places is all but zero. To the original point. There are other schemes like this in other areas. They use the more traditional aproach of taking a pic and letting the bouncers at all the various bars in the town know who the bad lads (and ladets) are. This might work with the yokles in Yeovill but I cant see this working in some of the clubs we have that could hold 5~10% of that towns population! As chuck-d would say 'Dont believe the Hype'
Its called ISDN30 and its still widely used. You only get 30 channels (x64k) to play with though and after that you multiplex. You would be amazed how much use this stuff gets.. its still a very viable alternative to DIA and if you use all 30 channels for data your going to get a lot more upstream bandwidth than you do on ADSL and Cable...
Surely the gamers will be on the 'Ultimate' eddition or the cracked corporate licence that will doubtless appear. I think MSFT is playing the retail game. They are giving people a reason to go to ultimate. The home user who buys a bundle will more likely add external devices than internal upgrades so the restrictions are much less of an issue for them..
MOD PARENT UP!
Having worked for two years for an EPOS provider (HW & SW) I have to say that this is your single biggest challenge. Certainly in the UK the EFT provider will require to come in and test your solution. Even if you buy there code they still require to test the interface from your application.
Another way to do it is to get your friend to run the stand alone EFT solutions from their bank of choice and just not have the connection between the till and the actual card processing, although this will require the transaction to be entered twice, on the till and then on the card processing unit.
The other issue is support. Whilst the commercial solutions cost you do have the comfort of a support contract. Will your friends still be your friends when their till goes down at peak trading and you are not around to fix it?
As for white box solutions my advice would be to buy SFF pc's. One thing our customers always wanted was more space at the checkout.
Good luck on your quest. There have been some good suggestions so far.
Oh.. and if you do decide to go the commercial route ADS Anker (http://www.anker-systems.com/) used to do probably the best hospitality solutions. I don't know the state of the market now but I believe that they are now owned by Torex.
You gain 20/20 vision and an appreciation on Sir Isaac... but loose your hearing as a a sacrifice :-(
Man oh man... you can tell you never worked in the drugs business...
I worked in IT for the large UK based pharm company and the last thing that they worried about was production cost. Yes it was a factor but so small in comparison to the rest, Why do you think Generic drugs are so widely available?
Comparing the music industry to the drugs game is silly. The shear volume of compounds that were collected, stored, screaned, tested, packaged and trialed just to find that one active element was huge. The legeslation that all this was conducted in was complex and extensive. It inherently costs money.
Slightly off topic but the most telling stroy I ever heard in the drugs game concerned a product we had. It was the best performing drug on the market in the US for the use it had. Despite this sales were slow. They hired a team of consutlatnts to see why it was not selling...
The answer they came up with was to DOUBLE the price. Thats right put the price up. They did this and within 12 months were the market leader. It seems people still associate premium with quality.
Now if you will excuse me I'm just off to replicate some more Prozac...
Now come on.. we brits have always known how to identify the bad guys.. why do you think all the bad guys wear black clothes in the James Bond Films??