We opened almost 19 years ago with Microworks POS. It was a DOS system (yes, a long time ago!) We have been with them ever since. Our experience this past weekend is why I would do it with them all over again if I were starting from scratch.
Our current system is a mix of six machines purchased over several years as we needed to replace units. In total we have replaced all of them twice in 18+ years. All are Dell. All provided fully programmed/plug&play from Microworks. The oldest machine was a tower that used to be our office machine. At some point several years ago we upgraded the office to a new machine and replaced a burned out order station with the old tower. My guess would be that it was 7-8 years old at least.
Saturday night that old tower decided to retire. Ordinarily, not an issue. With Microworks any of the machines can be plugged in to do the job of any other machine. A quick call to tech support and they configure the network to recognize that unit in the new job. That includes changing the address of any network printers etc etc. If the make-line or driver station goes down you pull an order station and plug it in there. Swap out a few cables and go. What made this challenging was that this machine was driving the label blaster and the credit card swipe and… that it was Saturday before Christmas Eve leading into our biggest week of the year by far. (4X our year round weekly average).
After spending quite a bit of time Saturday night (well after normal office hours) the tech determined that the machine was not going to work and set about making sure we could operate. On Sunday, Christmas Eve Day, we moved POS 3 into the POS 2 slot and got the CC swipe changed over. We tracked down a parallel card to drive the blaster (yes, I know… last parallel port in our system!) and installed it in POS 3 and got the blaster hooked up. Tech support dialed in the back end and set up the appropriate driver for the port and we were fully operational again. We were down a blaster printer for the last hour of Saturday night but that is it.
Meanwhile a new machine is built, programmed and configured to plug in shipping today (Dec 26) and will be here tomorrow. We have to do one huge day with two order stations instead of three so one order taker will sit in the office and use that machine but otherwise we are good to go today.
None of us like it when we get complaints but never hear from customers about the times we get it right. I wanted Microworks and the whole team there, after hours tech, sales and the guys building the new machines to know they got it right! Consider this a 5* review.
Our current system is a mix of six machines purchased over several years as we needed to replace units. In total we have replaced all of them twice in 18+ years. All are Dell. All provided fully programmed/plug&play from Microworks. The oldest machine was a tower that used to be our office machine. At some point several years ago we upgraded the office to a new machine and replaced a burned out order station with the old tower. My guess would be that it was 7-8 years old at least.
Saturday night that old tower decided to retire. Ordinarily, not an issue. With Microworks any of the machines can be plugged in to do the job of any other machine. A quick call to tech support and they configure the network to recognize that unit in the new job. That includes changing the address of any network printers etc etc. If the make-line or driver station goes down you pull an order station and plug it in there. Swap out a few cables and go. What made this challenging was that this machine was driving the label blaster and the credit card swipe and… that it was Saturday before Christmas Eve leading into our biggest week of the year by far. (4X our year round weekly average).
After spending quite a bit of time Saturday night (well after normal office hours) the tech determined that the machine was not going to work and set about making sure we could operate. On Sunday, Christmas Eve Day, we moved POS 3 into the POS 2 slot and got the CC swipe changed over. We tracked down a parallel card to drive the blaster (yes, I know… last parallel port in our system!) and installed it in POS 3 and got the blaster hooked up. Tech support dialed in the back end and set up the appropriate driver for the port and we were fully operational again. We were down a blaster printer for the last hour of Saturday night but that is it.
Meanwhile a new machine is built, programmed and configured to plug in shipping today (Dec 26) and will be here tomorrow. We have to do one huge day with two order stations instead of three so one order taker will sit in the office and use that machine but otherwise we are good to go today.
None of us like it when we get complaints but never hear from customers about the times we get it right. I wanted Microworks and the whole team there, after hours tech, sales and the guys building the new machines to know they got it right! Consider this a 5* review.
Last edited: