Help me ditch Windows in my retail business!

[happyisland]

since 2006 I have been completely windows free in my personal life. Thing is, I run a small retail business that has used Quicksell 2000 (a somewhat antiquated Microsoft product) since we opened our doors six years ago.

We're expanding our physical store and thought it would be a good time to implement a new, *open source* POS setup. I have searched and searched and it is very hard to find good information about installation, migration, and implementation of what are theoretically the good OS POS products (I'm looking at you, Openbravo POS).

We're happy to pay for a good solution - we'll be investing money in a new setup no matter what. I would just rather that the money go to a good OS development/service company than to a closed-source solution from the likes of IBM or Microsoft.

Does anyone out there know any good companies that would be able to assist us in upgrading our system to a sophisticated (ie, sales tracking, multiple networked registers, etc, etc) new POS and migrating our existing data?

I know it's a shot in the dark, but I figured I'd try before writing another check to the closed source big boys.

[OZFive]

I worked in retail for about 10 years or so and went through many different POS (and I am not talking Point of Sale here) programs and really liked any of them. So I wish you the best of luck. I did some daydreaming once of running my own place and looked into POS software, I saw this one....

SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 10
http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpointofservice/features.html

some equipment designed I suppose to go wiht it?

NCR RealPOS 80XRT™: Industry leading retail point of sale
http://www.ncr.com/products_and_services/point_of_sale/pos_workstations/ncr_realpos_80xrt.jsp?lang=EN

[I-75]

since 2006 I have been completely windows free in my personal life. Thing is, I run a small retail business that has used Quicksell 2000 (a somewhat antiquated Microsoft product) since we opened our doors six years ago.

We're expanding our physical store and thought it would be a good time to implement a new, *open source* POS setup. I have searched and searched and it is very hard to find good information about installation, migration, and implementation of what are theoretically the good OS POS products (I'm looking at you, Openbravo POS).

We're happy to pay for a good solution - we'll be investing money in a new setup no matter what. I would just rather that the money go to a good OS development/service company than to a closed-source solution from the likes of IBM or Microsoft.

Does anyone out there know any good companies that would be able to assist us in upgrading our system to a sophisticated (ie, sales tracking, multiple networked registers, etc, etc) new POS and migrating our existing data?

I know it's a shot in the dark, but I figured I'd try before writing another check to the closed source big boys.

Lowes (Home repair store in the U.S.) uses Linux in its terminals, find out what company supplies the terminals and give them a call.

[happyisland]

I worked in retail for about 10 years or so and went through many different POS (and I am not talking Point of Sale here) programs and really liked any of them. So I wish you the best of luck. I did some daydreaming once of running my own place and looked into POS software, I saw this one....

SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service 10
http://www.novell.com/products/linuxpointofservice/features.html

some equipment designed I suppose to go wiht it?

NCR RealPOS 80XRT™: Industry leading retail point of sale
http://www.ncr.com/products_and_services/point_of_sale/pos_workstations/ncr_realpos_80xrt.jsp?lang=EN

Thanks a lot for the links! I just submitted requests for info to both of those companies, which look like they could do the job. Now we'll see if installation and support in Aruba is a possibility...

[OZFive]

I could alway be talked back into the retail gig again if you need anyone down there in Aruba! It would be tough but I could handle it.

[happyisland]

I could alway be talked back into the retail gig again if you need anyone down there in Aruba! It would be tough but I could handle it.

Haha! Thanks, but for some strange reason it's not that hard for us to find people who want to work, live and surf in Aruba. If we have any openings I'll let you know though...


The quick update on the POS search is that so far Novell is the only company that has responded to my request for information - with a request for information about my company. Theoretically a salesperson will be contacting me within 48 hours of yesterday lunch. Otherwise nada.

[OZFive]

Have they contacted you yet?

and what kind of retail are you running?

[happyisland]

I'm running a single location surf shop that needs a two registers and one back end setup.


Novell got back to me, eventually from their office in Venezuela, which was very professional. The problem is that we want to have support that is local so they can help us if anything blows up. As an open source true believer it breaks my heart to say it, but I think the whole system is going to end up being a windows-based microsoft point of sale system. Dammit! Hopefully the next upgrade cycle we'll be able to do something a little cooler, and something that doesn't require me to shell out for windows licenses. I hate that.

[oldsoundguy]

See if you can get with the powers that be with Lowe's check with them .. also contact Red Hat as THEY are the folks that put the Lowe's system together. Granted, you do not need anything that intensive, but worth a mail or two. (Enterprise division of Red Hat) And you can contact Enterprise at Ubuntu and see what they have shaking.

[ugm6hr]

Have you seen this: https://www.redhat.com/apps/isv_catalog/VendorProfile.html?vendor_id=3228

Aruba is mentioned.

[happyisland]

Thanks for the link - that's a good idea, and I will check it out as a possible solution.

Here's the sticking point, and the reason that I think Bill Gates & Co will be getting our check: upgrade path. We currently run a legacy microsoft product, and microsoft is the only solution provider that can give us a seamless upgrade, including sales data, customer logs, etc, etc.

Having to buy back into the insecure, non-open windows world really makes my skin crawl, but it doesn't look like we have any other relatively low-cost, and decently-supported solution.

[ugm6hr]

We currently run a legacy microsoft product, and microsoft is the only solution provider that can give us a seamless upgrade..

Vendor lock-in is a powerful software tool...

Nevermind.

[happyisland]

Vendor lockin totally bites. I would be totally willing to pay a premium to have our data ported over to an open system that wouldn't give us a bunch of similar headaches in the future. The thing is, for a business our size it's just not cost-effective.

On a side note, after weeks of dealing with the friendly people in Novell's Venezuela office I realized I had been completely wasting their time. Oops! I really feel like an a-hole about it. Turns out that they don't do any point of sale software at all, but just do computer and server OS installs and maintenance. I guess if I had read all the fine print instead of filling out an info request form I could have saved us all a lot of hastle... Now Microsoft is looking like the sure winner.

Not happy about that at all, but the lack of other viable open source alternatives has got us stuck. Hopefully by the time we're ready for our next generation of software there will be a good product out there for the little guys like us.

And for the record, we're going to end up spending several thousand dollars, so it's not total chump-change...

[halloween2311]

Greetings,

I haven't used this in a "live" retail environment yet, but you could try using Dale Harris' Cash Register program. It is a free DOS based program that you can run under DOSBOX in Ubuntu. It has has sales tracking, networked registers, inventory programs, etc.

You can get more info on it here:
http://pages.prodigy.net/daleharris/pos.htm

It is not open source, but it is free ware and there appears to be some community involvement.

May be worth a look! Good luck!

[oldsoundguy]

As I mentioned before .. get in touch with either Red Hat enterprise or Lowe's Home Improvement centers. The system they use there is point of sale on a GRAND scale (including inventory control/ordering, automatic book keeping, sales tracking of individuals, registers and register receipts, etc.). Surely RH has a scaled down version available!
(the only thing in Lowe's that runs Windows is the paint department and that is because some their suppliers can't figure out how to network their WINDOWS machines. Paint has to be FRESH.)
(strange, as the GARDEN shops are RH!!)

[happyisland]

I just wanted to report back on what our final decision ended up being: Microsoft RMS. Let me be the first to say what a shame it is that there isn't an easy, professional open source solution for the small-scale retailer out there. The real dealbreaker was lack of local installation and upgrade support and lack of an easy database import path. We have 6 years of sales and inventory data and microsoft's was the only solution that promised to simply and cheaply let us keep all of that valuable information.

In 2006 when I switched all of my personal computers to ubuntu from XP I swore I would never go back. Now I'm buying 2 XP Pro-licensed workstations and the retail POS software from our local microsoft provider. I feel like I'm headed backwards, but that there's not really much of a choice for us. We're a mom and pop type operation that doesn't have the time or resources to devote to trying to customize and open source product.

I really, really hope that by the time we're ready for our next generation of POS software/hardware there will be an open source solution we can use.

Until then, I'm gritting my teeth and writing my check to Microsoft.