4 ms·

Funny you should mention Dixons. Back when I was a university student I worked part time at a Currys store (part of the Dixons group) here in the UK during the

Funny you should mention Dixons. Back when I was a university student I worked part time at a Currys store (part of the Dixons group) here in the UK during the transition from a keyboard-driven SCO system (I don't recall its name) to a touchscreen Windows system called "Eclipse". We were one of the few smaller stores that got to trial it first. Absolutely horrendous. Typical transactions took 10x as long, the system froze up regularly, a load of functionality was missing. We had all muscle-memoried all the common tasks and could navigate to most of them within a couple of seconds on the old system, all gone with Eclipse. We were promised they were just teething troubles and would all be fixed for the final rollout. Of course, they weren't and Eclipse was universally despised within the Group stores. Dixons Group ran into massive financial trouble shortly afterwards, although no word either way on whether the new till / stock control system was a factor. Amazing how it all comes flooding back! It still makes me shudder when I go into a Dixons Group store and see Eclipse still in use. I almost break out into a cold sweat.

toothbrush 11y ago
I am amazed that people don't more universally recognise the advantage of a tactile (== physical buttons) interface... Here where i shop the cashiers also have a touch interface, and they have to keep their arms practically horizontal at chest-height most of the day, which (i'm not an ergonomics expert, but) must be much more tiring than keying stuff in on a flat keyboard. Also, they have to look and aim and peck, whereas a "traditional" (i'm aghast that a real keyboard could fall into a category called traditional, what's the world coming to?) keyboards allow much surer and faster (and sometimes blind) entry... EDIT clarification
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  Agreed, it was the blind entry where all the time was saved. Even the 60+ year old part timer in our store had most of the functions memorised and complained when the new system launched. I forget the exact sequence (it's been about 10 years) but the faster typers among us could walk up to a terminal, type in their user ID and password, hit e.g. F2 F6 F1 F7 to go to the sales screen and scan the first item within about 3 seconds, even before the screen had caught up, and it would work flawlessly every time. It took longer than that just to log in to the new system!
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Touch screens for cashiers seem to be used for product flexibility reasons. Meaning that chains can add/remove products, or categories, easily. As for the ergonomics issue, i think that is known as "gorilla arm". My personal take there is that screens for input and screens for output should be put at very different orientations. A input screen really belong at a near flat angle, much like with a keyboard. Also, i wonder if the resurgence of pressure sensitivity (See Apple's force/3D touch as an example) will make for some change in this. Especially if one combine it with some kind of tech that can give the screen software controlled textures.
  - kagamine 11y ago
    Touch screens in retail till systems (POS) are used because we can rewrite the software from scratch and deliver on the same hardware. We can add a button for 10% discount next to teh 5% discount button and just have it appear on the screen after the next release, and only in stores 1 to 5 & 7, not 6 8, & 9. You can also do stuff like add a button to open the browser and carry out tasks on a completely different service not entirely related to POS. Flexibility is definately the reason. Having to upgrade keyboards with physical key-caps is a nightmare. You have to send an actual person (a human!) out to do upgrades. Intersting point about controleld textures, any idea how you can see that being used in a shop POS? With only a minute's thought the first thing I came up with was allowing blind people to work retail ... everything is automated now anyway, you don't even hand cash to a human, you just stick it in a hole.
    - toothbrush 11y ago
      > Having to upgrade keyboards with physical key-caps is a nightmare. You have to send an actual person (a human!) out to do upgrades. Yeah, imagine that. To hell with the people who have to use those interfaces day in and day out. /s
      - kagamine 11y ago
        Just imagine the time cost involved in that. New features and upgrades would come once a year, maybe. How do you track different sonfigs across hundreds of shops? POS systems with touch screen have been in use for 10+ years, they are well tested and there is no "screw the users" attitude in the industry. Not sure what you are complaining about.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
kagamine 11y ago
Before I worked on the product they tried, I am told, to port it to .NET and WIN servers, but it was so slow in comaprison that they quickly gave up. Huge amounts of data in chain store databases and linked services accross the country, all sorts of integration. These are of course things that .NET can handle very well, but apparently not as fast as COBOL binary files and an ODBC database.
- SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
  I actually have some experience in getting .NET to talk to COBOL flat file databases and I agree it's not something that anyone seems to have managed to get 100% right. CONNX is a pretty good product but still seems to suffer from locking and needing to manually restart the service from time to time, and this was on a project much smaller in scale than anything a group as big as Dixons would need. As a .NET developer myself I certainly don't envy the guys who had to deal with all our complaints from the shop floor, and of course the ageing SCO system had to be replaced with something. These days it would probably be something lightweight and browser based as opposed to a full-blown WinForms application, pretty much emulating the old terminal-based setup (hardware-wise if not interface-wise). The keyboard navigation and super-low-latency feedback of the old system would still be a huge challenge, though.
- digi_owl 11y ago
  A quick glance at the COBOL page on Wikipedia it seems to "suffer" from the kind of verbosity that has also sunk ADA (as i understand it at least). Frankly i find myself wondering if it is high time that computer education is split between computer science and computer engineering. It seems to me that much of the ailments of the computing world is that people keep bringing stuff from computer science into the larger world virtually untested.

toothbrush 11y ago

I am amazed that people don't more universally recognise the advantage of a tactile (== physical buttons) interface... Here where i shop the cashiers also have a touch interface, and they have to keep their arms practically horizontal at chest-height most of the day, which (i'm not an ergonomics expert, but) must be much more tiring than keying stuff in on a flat keyboard. Also, they have to look and aim and peck, whereas a "traditional" (i'm aghast that a real keyboard could fall into a category called traditional, what's the world coming to?) keyboards allow much surer and faster (and sometimes blind) entry... EDIT clarification

SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
Agreed, it was the blind entry where all the time was saved. Even the 60+ year old part timer in our store had most of the functions memorised and complained when the new system launched. I forget the exact sequence (it's been about 10 years) but the faster typers among us could walk up to a terminal, type in their user ID and password, hit e.g. F2 F6 F1 F7 to go to the sales screen and scan the first item within about 3 seconds, even before the screen had caught up, and it would work flawlessly every time. It took longer than that just to log in to the new system!
digi_owl 11y ago
Touch screens for cashiers seem to be used for product flexibility reasons. Meaning that chains can add/remove products, or categories, easily. As for the ergonomics issue, i think that is known as "gorilla arm". My personal take there is that screens for input and screens for output should be put at very different orientations. A input screen really belong at a near flat angle, much like with a keyboard. Also, i wonder if the resurgence of pressure sensitivity (See Apple's force/3D touch as an example) will make for some change in this. Especially if one combine it with some kind of tech that can give the screen software controlled textures.
- kagamine 11y ago
  Touch screens in retail till systems (POS) are used because we can rewrite the software from scratch and deliver on the same hardware. We can add a button for 10% discount next to teh 5% discount button and just have it appear on the screen after the next release, and only in stores 1 to 5 & 7, not 6 8, & 9. You can also do stuff like add a button to open the browser and carry out tasks on a completely different service not entirely related to POS. Flexibility is definately the reason. Having to upgrade keyboards with physical key-caps is a nightmare. You have to send an actual person (a human!) out to do upgrades. Intersting point about controleld textures, any idea how you can see that being used in a shop POS? With only a minute's thought the first thing I came up with was allowing blind people to work retail ... everything is automated now anyway, you don't even hand cash to a human, you just stick it in a hole.
  - toothbrush 11y ago
    > Having to upgrade keyboards with physical key-caps is a nightmare. You have to send an actual person (a human!) out to do upgrades. Yeah, imagine that. To hell with the people who have to use those interfaces day in and day out. /s
    - kagamine 11y ago
      Just imagine the time cost involved in that. New features and upgrades would come once a year, maybe. How do you track different sonfigs across hundreds of shops? POS systems with touch screen have been in use for 10+ years, they are well tested and there is no "screw the users" attitude in the industry. Not sure what you are complaining about.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

kagamine 11y ago

Before I worked on the product they tried, I am told, to port it to .NET and WIN servers, but it was so slow in comaprison that they quickly gave up. Huge amounts of data in chain store databases and linked services accross the country, all sorts of integration. These are of course things that .NET can handle very well, but apparently not as fast as COBOL binary files and an ODBC database.

SmellyGeekBoy 11y ago
I actually have some experience in getting .NET to talk to COBOL flat file databases and I agree it's not something that anyone seems to have managed to get 100% right. CONNX is a pretty good product but still seems to suffer from locking and needing to manually restart the service from time to time, and this was on a project much smaller in scale than anything a group as big as Dixons would need. As a .NET developer myself I certainly don't envy the guys who had to deal with all our complaints from the shop floor, and of course the ageing SCO system had to be replaced with something. These days it would probably be something lightweight and browser based as opposed to a full-blown WinForms application, pretty much emulating the old terminal-based setup (hardware-wise if not interface-wise). The keyboard navigation and super-low-latency feedback of the old system would still be a huge challenge, though.
digi_owl 11y ago
A quick glance at the COBOL page on Wikipedia it seems to "suffer" from the kind of verbosity that has also sunk ADA (as i understand it at least). Frankly i find myself wondering if it is high time that computer education is split between computer science and computer engineering. It seems to me that much of the ailments of the computing world is that people keep bringing stuff from computer science into the larger world virtually untested.