As I posted a few weeks ago, our church runs a food pantry and we use Fellowship One in a very creative way to track both those who come to the pantry and the food inventory.
After haulin' our kiosk PC's, touchscreens, printers, keyboards, mice, and way too many cables back and forth every 2 weeks we needed a better solution for checkin at the pantry. And of course it all has to be done "on the cheap".
So why not use some of the off-lease laptops I just procured?
Here's the breakdown on a great portable wireless checkin system...
$450 Off-lease Dell Latitude D610 from www.dfsdirectsales.com (could get them for less with lower specs than I wanted)
$380 Zebra 2844-Z label printer (you could find them for less on ebay)
$42 Hawking HWC54D wifi card (obviously don't need this if you don't have an access point)
$150 Magic Touch USB touch screen overlay (touch screen is really optional if you ask me)
Total price = $1022 and now you have a very portable checkin system that's easy to carry, sets up very quick and easy, and the laptops can be loaned out for other uses when not needed for checkin.
This was our first week using this new portable system ... and it was a bazillion times easier to get from Granger to the pantry and required like 2 minutes to setup and since we leave the printers at the pantry I can fit everything else into 2 laptop bags...now it requires only one trip to and from the car. I love how few cords are involved now...power for the laptop, printer cable, printer power, USB for the touch screen overlay (that's 4 cables). Compare that to, power cable, printer cable, printer power, keyboard, mouse, touch screen power, touch screen vga, touch screen USB (8 cables!). I wish I had a picture of the amount of stuff and the rats nest of cords we were dealing with prior.
So are the touch screens on the laptops really needed? Well, jury is still out. The 2 ladies checking folks in this time both use laptops where they work so they found it easier/faster to just use the keyboard and touchpad...their fingers never left the keyboard.
For workers unfamilar with using the pointing devices on a laptop I can see where the touch screen will be helpful. The other thing is that the laptop screen is not fixed...it's on a hinge...push hard enough and it will move. So we're kicking around ideas for a simple wooden brace that would keep the screen from moving backwards.
Here's some shots from Tuesday's event...you'll get a better idea of how the touch screen overlays attach
Sweet! I'd like to see someone do a handheld check-in over wi-fi with wireless printing. Now that would be portable? y'Know in your spare time :)
Posted by: Stuart Cowen | August 17, 2005 at 05:17 PM
Sweet setup. I love seeing how churches are using IT to help enhance other ministries. Keep up the great work.
dj
ps, are you sure those are D610s?? They look like C models.
Posted by: Darrell Jordan | August 17, 2005 at 08:55 PM
OPPPS...thanks Darrell...they are C series for sure :-)
Posted by: Jason Powell | August 17, 2005 at 09:42 PM
No problem. I have replaced enough of those keyboards and palmrest to drive a person crazy. Just watch out for the floating mouse :)
dj
Posted by: Darrell Jordan | August 17, 2005 at 09:59 PM
Jason if you want to cut down on cables even more, if you install any Zebra (well any printer drivers really) on one computer you can share it and use one printer from more than one computer in F1 checkin.
As an admin on the computer with out the printer from cmd
net use lpt1: \\computerwithprinter\printershare
The checkin app just ports printer data to lpt1 and it's then fwd to what ever printer you have shared.
This could also be used for a on the cheap printing soultion. I don't recomend for high volume checkin.
Posted by: Mo Murrey | January 27, 2006 at 07:57 AM
How do you like the Zebra's? Are they fast? Do they auto-cut? Do they require label rolls only....or do they need a thermal ribbon too? I'm considering this option for use with ChurchLogix check-in kiosks.
Posted by: Ted Sorrells | January 31, 2006 at 12:13 PM
I'm impressed with the Zebras ... after a year we've not had a single hardware problem. They are fast, but don't auto-cut ... gotta tear the tags off but that's not been an issue. I don't think there's a ribbon...at least we've not replaced any in a years time. So I give them 2 thumbs way up :-)
Posted by: Jason Powell | January 31, 2006 at 12:25 PM