One of my clients in Taiwan is doing Linux-based POS for China
Petroleum. This client is a very small company but China Petroleum is
one of the Forbes 1000 companies in the world. They have been doing
that for about 2.5 years. As I am told (actually they never tell me
anything), things are going very well.
This client of ours also makes IDE thin-client cards with embedded Linux
and flash to replace HD.
Based on the large number of posts, it is not difficult to detect that
there are a lot of interests here in "thin-clients" and "POS systems".
Man, you don't need me to remind you: This is our future. I have been
paying close attention to Linux since Red Hat 4.2, and I am fully
convinced that timing couldn't have been better. But the opportunity
window could, and very likely will, pass by us.
I remember almost a score of years ago when I was working for Exxon in
Houston, a University of Texas student came to our office trying to sell
IBM clones that his company, "PC Limited", built (in his dorm) with
components from Taiwan that are identical to what IBM uses. At that
time, it was unthinkable to buy a PC that was not built by IBM. But his
price/performance was simply too attractive. One of my colleagues
bought one for home use. Eventually our department began purchasing his
PCs, and he changed his company name to "Dell". The rest is history.
Wouldn't it be great if we could repeat the history (somewhat) in Hawaii?!
