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guest_
· 5 years ago
· FIRST
Those stupid scanners- the hand held phone things that you see at target or Walmart or Home Depot or even UPS that they use when running around the store to look things up or check in stock? Those cost between $1200-2100 each. It’s an android phone. Slower than whatever the current Android is (that the top of the line fastest best Android doesn’t cost that much), with a bar code scanner and a built in phone case. They are restricted so you can’t use most of the features it has like browsing the net- playing games, etc. etc.
guest_
· 5 years ago
$2100. Most of the people complaining about this have no idea what they are talking about. For YOU as an individual you wouldn’t pay $2100 for an android phone with a lousy camera and lower specs and a dedicated barcode scanner. You might be saying: “You can scan barcodes on any phone with a camera already. That’s stupid.” Well... it is stupid. If you don’t understand how large business works or the particulars of an industry that uses those devices. Replace everyone in a busy warehouses scanner “phone” with a regular phone and pay yourself on the back for saving a million dollars on hardware. Then realize a few months in that you’re losing millions A DAY in productivity and man labor.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
Realize that all your savvy android users have the ability to easily defeat any type of restrictions you place on the device. Recoil in horror as you start having to order hundreds of thousands of dollars in replacement hardware because you’ve got device failures and breakages all over, people are stealing your consumer grade stuff to keep or resell- people generally don’t steal huge chunky enterprise stuff and if they do it is by design going to be pretty useless to them. Shudder as you have to go through a warranty and support process that is designed to help individual users and not scale to many thousands of users and enterprise specific issues. Feel the noose tighten as in addition to the other problems your choice has made- the turn around time on issues and the effort required by staff equals up to huge investments and losses of time and bad customer experiences.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
But wait! Why not make your own then? Ok. Want it before it’s obsolete? You’ll need teams. Teams of programmers and engineers. You’ll need QA people and you’ll need to invest in the tools and machines to create what you need. It will all be in house- so you’ll need to have in house staff or contractors to take issue reports from users, offer tiers of support, continually work to keep ahead of security vulnerabilities, Android OS changes, changes to Google software suite, advancements or changes in network infrastructure and other issues of compatibility. Will your in house stuff keep up with next gen code changes or hardware? You don’t know. Unlike a third party you have no relationship with developers at these companies the way they do. What happens when 4G goes out and you need enterprise 5G? What will that require in dev and testing?
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guest_
· 5 years ago
The list goes on. Now- a monitor stand isn’t quite so complex- but it IS more complex than you think it is. We like to think that all these executives and such are idiots. If they were so dumb though- they’d lose their money. If the people running major businesses were all complete morons- those businesses would flop- unless we are just dumber than them. There are reasons for this stuff young Padawans. Learn how the world works. You can’t change the world- you don’t know what to change- if you don’t understand the WHY of things. That which exists exists for some reason as a general rule. Ask what the reason is.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
And don’t just write it off as the simplest most intuitive thing to you. I had a sales job once. I told my mentor sometimes I felt bad about the prices so I lowered them. He said to me: “price is a major concern to you so you think in prices. Not everyone is that way. Some people are happy to pay a price as long as their other concerns are met. Figure out what the other person cares about if you want to help them- and give them that.” And sure enough- you’ll find upset customers who you can throw free stuff at all day and they’ll still be angry. But if you find the thing that they care about- a feeling of respect, time, appearances, whatever it is- and you respect THAT and not the thing that YOU feel is important- they’ll generally be happy.
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cryoenthusiast
· 5 years ago
Just came to comment that Office Depot just buys iPods. They come new out of box and OD has to install a profile on theme They kinda suck because they dont have a dedicated scanner. Not sure how much they paid for it though. Employees can download the profile software for their own phones if they want.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
That sounds terrible. There’s a philosophy to it as well. As far as caring about image or the overall experience for customers or employees. For instance- many bottom tier enterprise- or consumer solutions can do what is needed- but might lack features that make it easier for other people to do their jobs. Like telling a kid they have to mow the lawn but buying them a junky old mower or a pair of sheers. The sheers will make the job difficult and unpleasant and the junk mower will need frequent maintenance, be unreliable etc.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
Somewhere it’s someone’s job to make sure devices in an organization are secure- from theft, cyber threats, employee tampering etc. it’s some managers job to make sure employees are working and not breaking rules. A nice shiny proper set up can automate a lot of that- allow you to have total remote visibility and even notifications for breaches- and will make the devices so locked down that anyone with the skills to get into them probably wouldn’t bother because they could make more somewhere else. The manager or IT guy doesn’t have to watch employees like hawks and monitor 10,20,50,10,000 individual users activities constantly.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
But- that doesn’t mean you have to go with a huge expensive solution to a problem. Especially if it doesn’t exist for you. I’ve worked at several large companies that basically had no restrictions to how users could access the internet. Effectively no “spyware” and no one monitoring the network for silly breaches like YouTube. They worked fine because by and large they hired professionals who might occasionally watch a video or go shopping- but did the work and didn’t abuse the privilege.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
I imagine Office Depot doesn’t have the urgency of many other businesses. They may get huge orders- but generally not “I need these 4,000 crates of paper today!” My guess is that absolute speed in logistics isn’t a primary goal for them. Low return on investment compared to accuracy or volume at semi regular intervals.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
Walmart uses real bottom of the barrel tech in general. You’ll notice that the registers are very simple compared to say- Target. Less options, less information and less possible input or discretion to employees. A very industrial look. Slow too. Slow machines and slow connections. If you watch the self checkout there is considerable lag between input and output as well as in transmitting payment information. Most retailers try to incorporate speed as an element when they use a velocity driven model like Walmart- but Walmart has a niche primarily based on price and access. An extra minute or less waiting on slow machines is annoying- but not as annoying as going to 5 different stores to get everything you do at one Walmart- especially if you live somewhere remote where stores may be spread out and have poor hours.
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guest_
· 5 years ago
Then you have companies that buy top end stuff and pay big money for trendy enterprise solutions. Converting to a given trendy protocol for user authorization, using whatever apps or tools are “hot” in the industry or because “Apple” or “Google” or “Amazon” or whoever does it. They spend huge sums- licensing and support for some of these things can be hundreds of millions of dollars- but don’t actually use it for what it and do. Like buying the newest greatest most graphics heavy gaming PC for $20k and using it to play NES emulators on a 13” black and white CRT.
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cryoenthusiast
· 5 years ago
Honestly if they just had reliable scan guns that didn't fritz out when Karen (63) is looking for her discontinued consumable that *might* be in stock
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guest_
· 5 years ago
lol. That’s a good start.
jokur_and_batmon
· 5 years ago
Has it not been long enough for us to end this argument? It’s a fucking “designer” stand but it or don’t BUT SHUT UP ABOUT IT. You don’t see me making a thousand posts about Gucci pants being ridiculously over priced
