Upgrading Cunninghams tills in-house?

[howartp]

With the impending demise of XP and all the discussions taking place on various other threads, and having received indicative pricing from a local school who've already had their call back from Cunninghams (still waiting for mine) I'm just wondering...

 

Has anyone already, or have your considered, upgrading the tills yourself?

 

All the tills are is an empty WinXP machine with a few drivers (inc touchscreen) and a folder on c:\ with the till software.

 

I guess the hardest bit will be configuring the scan ID's of the fingerprint readers for Biostore (v1).

 

Regarding support, I can't remember having any problems with the tills since we started - it's all been back-end or Revals that have had issues.

 

Thoughts/comments?

 

Peter

[zag]

I'd be interested in this as well, I haven't spoken to Cunninghams yet.

 

I'm concerned about the security (ok I'm not really but i'd like to get rid of the final xp machines)

[IrritableTech]

I believe Cunninghams use Embedded XP? This has a different support cycle to regular XP.

 

Windows Embedded | Product Lifecycles

[howartp]

I believe Cunninghams use Embedded XP? This has a different support cycle to regular XP.

 

Windows Embedded | Product Lifecycles

 

Depends on the age of the systems you have in place - all ours, and many others on the other threads here, are Windows XP Pro.

 

Peter

[IrritableTech]

Depends on the age of the systems you have in place - all ours, and many others on the other threads here, are Windows XP Pro.

 

Peter

 

Understood - thanks

[DrPerceptron]

Depends on the age of the systems you have in place - all ours, and many others on the other threads here, are Windows XP Pro.

 

Peter

 

We have one that's running Windows 2000 I don't know how that managed to hide for so long.

[burgemaster]

Does anyone please have a cost yet?

We have 3 tills on XP Pro and a office PC on XP Pro.

[jbailey]

Had a cost of 250 quid - essentially a one day engineer fee - from cunninghams to migrate canteen office machine to new hardware and windows 7, this was unofficial via email convo with cunninghams rep. Would be good to know I'm not getting the paddy pants down treatment if anyone else has any price info. The kit was purchased through our lea who will not be upgrading any machines as "there is no features benefit to moving to windows 7".

[jbailey]

Oh, our actual tills are embedded so not doing Anything we with them. Just looking at the office machine.

[howartp]

Does anyone please have a cost yet?

We have 3 tills on XP Pro and a office PC on XP Pro.

 

I've seen a price of £630 for 4 tills, plus the travel/engineer fee bit - it's part of other work so don't know how it breaks down or what editions and hardware are involved. (Not my school)

 

Still waiting for my prices.

 

Peter

[timbo343]

@howartp Just thinking about this.. we have a spare till. Im thinking of taking an image of the till and sticking Windows 7 on to see what that does. The only problem is, i dont think i have all the passwords they use if they were to connect to them via vnc. Like you said, it all should just work. Hmmm maybe a little job for today..

 

I have got a till on my desk now and even though the machines are licensed for Windows Embedded... they have got Windows XP pro on (not embedded)

 

There is one way to check it via Registry.

 

As per this Microsoft MSDN article Windows XP Embedded Product version is identified from the following key-

 

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WindowsEmbedded\ProductVersion

 

The key does not exist on normal Windows XP editions such as Starter, Home Edition and Professional. It only exists on Windows XP Embedded.

Edited May 2, 2014 by timbo343

[timbo343]

@jbailey Have you seen what OS is running on the machines? We are using the Toshiba tills that have the embedded sticker on but its actually Windows XP Pro. Just used a key finder on the machine and seen that they have put Windows XP Pro with the Embedded license key. Surely this isn't allowed?

 

Also looking through the registry i can confirm that there is no \WindowsEmbedded container so this confirms that the tills we have do not run embedded XP which is why they are wanting to upgrade the software.

 

@burgemaster here is my quote from cunninghams:

 

Hardware to include -

1 x Revaluation Unit Communication Device = £ 332.00

(Win 7 O/S & 1Gb Memory)

 

Operating System Upgrade to include -

4 x PosReady 7 Licences for Touch Screens

4 x Memory Upgrades for Touch Screens

Operating System Upgrade Cost = £ 632.00

 

Implementation to include –

Delivery

Installation of Upgrade and Hardware

Setup & Commissioning

Testing

Implementation Cost = £ 595.00

 

Total Cost = £ 1,559.00

[Linfit]

We have XP embedded on our tills so have not been contacted by them yet. However, we have tried just copying the software folder onto a Win 7 machine and it works no problem.

Am now looking at the possibility of essentially building our own tills - ours are very basic so can easily be replaced by a cheap all in one touchscreen PC really.

[Jasbo]

Hmmm will check it really is embedded then... Thanks.

[timbo343]

Im struggling to get the till software to work. The Primary.exe will not work on a Windows 7 machine however i have just read up on POSReady7. This is the embedded version of windows 7.

 

I should mention that the tills haven't seen any windows update since 2010 either and the touchscreen on the toshiba ST-A10 tills doesnt work. I'm going to try the POSReady7 OS to see what that does.

[fiza]

@jbailey Have you seen what OS is running on the machines? We are using the Toshiba tills that have the embedded sticker on but its actually Windows XP Pro. Just used a key finder on the machine and seen that they have put Windows XP Pro with the Embedded license key. Surely this isn't allowed?

 

Also looking through the registry i can confirm that there is no \WindowsEmbedded container so this confirms that the tills we have do not run embedded XP which is why they are wanting to upgrade the software.

 

@burgemaster here is my quote from cunninghams:

 

Hardware to include -

1 x Revaluation Unit Communication Device = £ 332.00

(Win 7 O/S & 1Gb Memory)

 

Operating System Upgrade to include -

4 x PosReady 7 Licences for Touch Screens

4 x Memory Upgrades for Touch Screens

Operating System Upgrade Cost = £ 632.00

 

Implementation to include –

Delivery

Installation of Upgrade and Hardware

Setup & Commissioning

Testing

Implementation Cost = £ 595.00

 

Total Cost = £ 1,559.00

 

How long have you had the tills? If they were provided whilst Windows 7 was the current OS then surely Cunninghams should have provided tills with Windows 7 and not used an outdated OS? It then should be their responsibility to do the upgrade without cost to you.

[timbo343]

We've had them for about 2 years.. i think. We were just moving over to windows 7 when we got them and i remember deploying windows 7 just after sp1 came out.

[fiza]

We've had them for about 2 years.. i think. We were just moving over to windows 7 when we got them and i remember deploying windows 7 just after sp1 came out.

 

They provided the tills with an outdated OS then? If its not xp embedded (ours are) then cant you argue with them that they should be responsible for the upgrade at nil cost to you?

[timbo343]

The tills are not xp embedded as ive checked the registry keys and the embedded keys are missing which makes me believe its not the embedded version even though its got the embedded license sticker on and they have used the license key from the sticker. We have a meeting set up with them about this but i dont think ill get anywhere with them.