Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Tue Aug 19 13:18:46 CDT 2014
After all the XP OS Point-of-Sale systems, have been decommissioned, there has been a real glut of under powered PCs with old touch screens on the market...either for free or very cheap. These PC are too weak to run Windows 7 but there are alternatives that can breathe new life into these boxes. Aside: Against the popular opinion that says PC sales are down because of the alternatives, it seems that the main reason that PC sales are down is because the products are built good enough that they last for many years...ten to fifteen years is not unusual. First you can install the latest Ubuntu or Xubuntu 14.04 (Xubuntu is supposed to have a lighter foot print than Ubuntu...but for any computer that has been able to run XP, it is almost irrelevant, but if space is really tight try the XFCE desktop manager) on the box and then install the appropriate drivers and you will end up with a Linux box with a touch screen. The following link will tell you how to accomplish this. http://www.alandmoore.com/blog/2014/07/11/friday-fun-linux-on-an-old-point-of-sale Finally, with a little bit of software like Wine or DosBox and then the POS is back up and running again...and the client is happy because they have not dropped two grand a box, in software and hardware and they will enjoy a nice speed increase as well. Jim