COMPASS ™ - Point of Sale, Inventory, E-Commerce & Retail Management System from RealTime7 Inc.

POS Industry Vendors and Technology Configurations We Recommend

Symbol Inc. develops high quality hardware POS barcode scanners. We particularly like the LS2208 Cobra as our recommended model for the least startup time.

Epson’s TM-T88IV printer with parallel or USB interface is a device which has produced consistent results for our POS end users. It includes in built auto-cutter, more efficient thermal receipt printing technology, and faster receipts which can speed up checkout times and improve customer experience.

Star’s TSP200 and TSP600 are both excellent POS receipt printer models for the retail POS industry and comparable alternatives to the TM-T88IV from Epson.

Zebra LP2844 and TLP2844 are our recommended POS bar code printers. See the Compass Point of Sale Hardware Compatibility Guide for a detailed listing of supported hardware models for the Compass Point of Sale.

http://www.realtime-7.com/Old_site/1.0/Hardware_
Compatibility1.html

MagTek Mag Swipe Keyboard Emulation, USB interface, with Track 1 and Track 2 is our recommended credit card reader for the COMPASS Point if Sale application.

Many Compass Point of Sale customers use MMF Cash Drawers. Be sure to select cash drawers which have interface cables according to the receipt printer model you choose (such as Epson or Star)

Mercury Payment Systems is our recommended credit card processing engine and the only engine currently supported by the Compass Point of Sale system.

We recommend SATA hard disks in a mirrored RAID 1 configuration for Compass POS database servers for best fault tolerance.

We recommend Intel Dual Core processors.

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 is a powerful enterprise quality database engine with up to 1 terra byte of memory support when used in conjunction with Windows Server 2003. This is a significant improvement over the maximum 3 GB extended support for MS SQL 2000 and Windows 2000 environment.

Microsoft .NET is a good platform for Windows specific web application development with strong encryption tools, asynchronous events and delegates support, and a great development IDE in the form of Visual Studio 2005. Coupled with a Visual Source Safe tool, there is a complete enterprise development environment for software developers and software development enterprises available from Microsoft. The reliability of .NET applications can be an issue and a weekly server refresh and reboot cycle will help achieve more reliable performance in production environments.

Microsoft Windows XP is our recommended operating system at this time for Point of Sale computers with Microsoft Windows 2003 Server for server back ends for the Compass Point of Sale.
Adobe Flash Player 9 is an excellent video and media content delivery tool for the Net.

Sun Microsystems Inc. develops high quality software and hardware tools. Java is an excellent software development and application programming platform.

Apple Inc. produces highly innovative products which are high end, high quality, and high wow factor. One downside of their product hardware is that it can be fragile and expensive to repair or maintain compared to much more cost effective and prolific PC products. We do not recommend or support the Mac OS for the COMPASS POS at this time, but highly recommend Apple computers and products for home users, artists, and non-technical users.

*Information and recommendations presented in this document are based on our experiences only as they relate to the effective delivery of products and services from RealTime7 Inc. Please research carefully all technology and tools according to your context specific decision criteria.