Re: [mv] Using Interchange as a POS system

[John Foster <jfoster@augustmail.com>]

******    message to minivend-users from John Foster <jfoster@augustmail.com>     ******

	Thanks for the comments folks. It seems I hit a nerve with this thread.
I will explain my situation for those who are interested. I make a large
part of my income from the sale and installation office back end
systems, and servers for various types of businesses. My specialty is
small mom and pop retailers. They are for the most part start ups or
they are operating on a shoestring budget. My goal is to be able to
provide a turnkey solution for those with few computer skills. I am
presently using Debian Linux (slightly customized) for that purpose. All
installations have StarOffice 5.2 as the main interface. I know its
sorta hoggish but the customer never does, because the systems I put it
on are real brutes. I am able to make this work because ALL of my
software is free or VERY inexpensive. That allows me to give them a
better hardware solution to their problem. An example was a recent
bidding war with Gateway for a chain of carpet cleaning stores. I was
able to compete effectively because I offered a sizzling hot price while
providing the same software solutions that they did (and more). All the
customer cared about was that when his staff logged in they have a GUI
that "looks and feels" like Windows. The folks at Gateway wanted to
charge him $8,000 for software alone. Yea, I sorta tricked him. I sat
him down in front of one of my systems without telling him it was
running Linux, and he didn't know the difference until I told him. By
then he had sold himself.
	I want to expand on this by now providing those customers a way via DSL
to become web retailers (the carpet guy is foaming at the mouth ;-) I
have most of the software selected to do this however the key presently
seems to be in adapting Interchange to work with Adabas D. I do have two
shots though because StarOffice 5.2 claims to use any DBM system. I just
need to work out the details. For those interested I will post my
results from time to time. PLEASE; if you have any experience with
Adabas D let me know. It seems to be very poorly documented and I am
just now experimenting with it. I am already working on getting the
bar-code reader to serve my needs, but I need to know how to get it to
input directly into interchange. I will get that to happen in time. Perl
is my friend :-).
Thanks for your interest.
-- 
AdVance-Computing Systems

We sell fine quality servers and workstations.
We specialize in multiprocessor units. 
We install Debian Linux at no extra charge!

John Foster                                
jfoster@augustmail.com 
ICQ# 19460173
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