On Thu, Apr 1, 2010 at 9:31 AM, John Cook <[email protected]> wrote: > For those of you that have companies that use name badges > what systems do you use ...
Are you looking for just names, or photos, or full-blown magstripe/RFID/etc cards? We invested in a system of the "full blown" variety last year. Currently sold by "Honeywell" as "NetAXS". It used to be the "NS" series from "Northern Computer". I guess Honeywell just bought Northern and started stamping their own name on it. Uses software called "WIN-PAK". The printer is a "Tango" from "Ultra MagiCard". It's been a fiasco. About the only parts that work right are (1) printing the badges themselves and (2) unlocking doors when you swipe a badge. The software logs spurious alarms and other weird messages constantly. To the tune of 100s per day, sometimes. Good luck actually getting useful reports or notifications on things like propped doors, forced entry, etc. Configuring it to actually unlock the right doors for the right people on the right schedule, and not otherwise, is also less than ideal. I think a large part of that is the reseller/installer did a crappy wiring job, and their tech guys don't really understand the system that well. That's what we get for going with the lowest bidder. But the system itself is crappy, too. The web UI built-in to the hardware is slow and flaky. It's not good for much, so you need to use the WIN-PAK software for most anything. The WIN-PAK software is also slow, and even flakier. And requires admin rights. And must run foreground as a logged-in user. And has a cumbersome UI. And occasionally hangs when talking to the hardware. And takes an hour to update our 6 control units (~20 doors). The printer driver causes weird spooler error messages and hogs the CPU and must pop up obnoxious windows when you print. We've even had a mfg rep in a few times. He couldn't answer a lot of our questions. He's stopped returning our calls now. "Would not buy from again." -- Ben ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
