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Comment by misuba | Hacker News Reader

Convincing people that broadband is stable enough to bet their income on is going to be a hard one.

Agreed, that definitely a hurdle here :)

Most people using a POS system already require an internet connection for processing credit cards, so either way it's critical to a retailer.

If someone's connection isn't stable we recommend a dial-up as a backup plan. We're also investigating html5 and other options for offline functionality. You're definitely right thought, not everyone's comfortable with web-based pos software (yet)

You may just want to offer an additional piece of hardware that lives on site and does the same logic as the web-based piece (everything's just forwarded to your backend systems for processing), only stores data if their internet is down (with the ability to control how cards are authorized, as in up to $x auto authorize if internet's down and eat the cost later if it fails, or deny all, etc.). I think this would integrate well with the hardware options you have and would provide another sell-point without a large amount of effort. The trick is, they buy the hardware, not the software. The software is still a service that is provided (or you can have a more expensive plan that includes onsite hardware, in which case you own the hardware even though it's at their site).

It seems to me that using Gears (or similar technologies) is definately a must-have.

Gears is being phased out in favor of HTML5

http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009/12/01/google-is-phasing-ou...

A backup 3g/4g wireless data plan helps.

Do customers want a "web-based" system or simply one that they need not upgrade manually and which stores their data in the cloud? I ask simply because it might be feasible to deploy some client-side software to solve this problem. It's going to be run on dedicated hardware, right?

I haven't tried out their product yet, but it seems like that would be one of the first things they would've thought of. Probably a way to do transactions offline and upload when there is a connection.

I've looked into this problem too, and I think its hard for vendors in a mall type setting, where they may have access to a phone line but use it for credit card systems, or may not have access to separate internet connection.

The site looks polished, and product looks solid. Good luck.

An offline mode should work. Doesn't HTML 5 support something like that? Otherwise Google gears. Otherwise maybe an applet or something?

Yea we're working on offline support with HTML5 now. We were really happy when we heard about that :) I think it's a better way to go than having another completely separate application

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