etouchOS Retail Network Version

Well testing of etouchOS Retail Point of Sale is going well.

Our friends in Adelaide at Il Toro and at Subito have been putting the software through its paces. We're updating every couple of days now as we fix bugs and add in new features. There's still a fair bit to do, but the list is getting shorter.

Tomorrow (Saturday 13th Oct) we're going to install the beta network version at Subito, so fingers crossed! So far internal testing shows that the performance once loaded is very good.

We imported all of Subito's clients the other day from their old system using CSV (Microsoft Excel) format structure. In addition this next release incorporates the ability to set-up special offers and combo deals.

The one thing we haven't had to worry about is the Brother TD4000 printers. Ask any programmer what concerns them the most with business applications, and I'll bet that the majority will say "printing".

Our colleagues at Brother have lent us a Brother TD4100N for testing, it's the network version of the TD4000 and it's been a really good unit, no matter what errors have come from my keyboard, it's still churning away!

If you take advantage of our Brother special offer before the gold release of etouchOS Retail, we won't bill you until 3 months after the gold release for your etouchOS licence/s. (of course you will need to purchase the qualifying printers).

Drop us a line if you want to take up the special offer and you're feeling adventurous.  We'll let you install the beta version of the software and participate in the joy (and pain) of creating a great product. (on the understanding that you know that the software is still in development and the software is designed for Australia).

Anyway, enough about the printers, I don't have to worry about them, although I still have a bit to do to provide the etouchOS link to Brother's P-Touch software for the label printing.

Thankfully Jim (Il Toro), Sam and Damian (Subito) have been run off their feet (my waist can attest to their excellent culinary skills) and haven't been in my ear about labelling yet.

If you're in Adelaide, look them up, home cooked food like mama used to make!


For the Geek within;

Our internal testing has shown that the network version performs as well as the single user version after the initial load. The approach I've taken is to cache everything in memory and only write new and changed records back to the server.

The initial load takes about 5 seconds on the network version, which should be acceptable. The response time is blisteringly fast once loaded (RAM is cheap these days). The downsides of this approach are;

1. the loss of data if there is a power failure mid-sale
2. unusable if the data server is unavailable 

We are planning to build in an offline mode (similar to our etouchOS Wholesale product) once we've got all of the planned functions working.

The data server uses TCP/IP communication and transfers the records to the workstation in groups (packets) at a time. There is a real improvement in performance using this method rather than the traditional mapped network drive.

Because the data server is handling the file I/O there is no file locking occurring which makes a huge difference when writing data back. In addition this also means that you can locate you data server in a different location to the actual workstation if you need to. (Not that I'm suggesting that anyone should do that)

Our approach was to try and make it as easy as possible for our users to manage their systems as most of the people considering etouchOS Retail are not going to want the expense of installing and managing an SQL server. Although Microsoft (and others) do offer a very good free version of their SQL product, I think most users would find installing and maintaining SQL a bit daunting.

That said, should someone with a multi-site operation want to use etouchOS Retail we'll look at providing a connector that writes data (in the background) to an SQL server located at a head office.

The etouchOS suite is scalable.


Product: etouchOS Retail Point Of Sale (Beta)
User Interface: Australian English (en-au)
Input: Touch-screen * (works with standard screens as well)
Single User : Yes
Network Version : Yes
Data Server on Primary Workstation: Yes
SQL : No
Windows 32 bit: Yes
Addresses Extended RAM (4gb) : Yes
Programmed in Clarion
Supports Offline Mode : Not yet (planned)
Memory Caching for performance : Yes (Clarion In-Memory)

File Systems
Clarion Topspeed ISAM files
Clarion IP Data Server (Networked Version)
Clarion In-Memory File Driver

Limitations
File Size 2gb per file
Concurrent Users (Network Version) ~200 (depending upon server)
Designed for Windows 7 Desktop and Windows 8 Intel/AMD Tablet

Hardware
Processor : Works on an Atom processor. Recommended minimum Dual Core (Intel/AMD)
RAM (Memory) : Will work with the minimum supported by the operating system  Recommended 4Gb+
Hard Disk : SSD or SATA 7200rpm+ 
Network Card : 1gb recommended.

Printers
Brother: TD4000/TD4100 series,  RJ4030/40, Mobile A4/A6/A7

Fast Clean Web Sites

It's interesting reviewing the history of web sites. I remember when the Internet first became a mainstream option, we all rushed to put as much as possible on our web sites. More colour, good. More images, good. More text/content, good. Flash, good.

In the rush to load more and more onto our web sites we've forgotten that not everyone in the world has high speed Internet access. The more we load our web sites the more frustrating for those without high speed access.

It's become even more important with the advent of smart-phones and tablets to be aware of how long it takes to load a web site. In the era of instant gratification we need to have a compelling reason for people to wait while our digital "works of art" load.

So, why blog about it? Well we've just completed two new sites one for our own product Jobcard Tracking System and another one for our friends at Il Toro Espresso & Pasta Bar . Both sites have minimal graphics and a clean simple look. After all isn't that what we want to impart?

The over use of text and graphics tends to lose people on occasion, so it's better to do something clean and effective. An example is the page that explains our Brother special offer , clean and reasonably fast.

Our first "clean" site was for Euro Pizza in Adelaide.


By making a site clean and fast you make it easy for everyone to see what your story is whether they're at home, work or mobile.