If I would have known...

[wolfie]

We're supposed to be getting new registers for the front end by the end of this year at my store (but then we've heard that tale for at least the last 3 years or so, so make of that what you will) and we got new handheld units about 3 years or so ago (which I think they bought in bulk at a church bazaar but I digress) yet we're still running XP on Dell workstations that are probably 10 years old by now

These are registers that handle payments by credit and debit card? Ever heard of what happened at Target last year?

Time to light a fire (be sure to use at least a couple gallons of gas) under management's asses on this issue. Microsoft is discontinuing support for their eXperimental Product next month, so ifwhen more security bugs are discovered, they won't be fixed. Not upgrading the operating system is BEGGING to have your customers' card information "harvested". Those POS (in both senses of the term) systems need to be replaced.

Well, this was too much work, so we contracted with Xerox for a new driver, they wrote it for us okay. Only cost us $10,000.

Each time Xerox replaced the printers (they were leases), it meant a new driver - and another $10,000.

And how many pages printed in colour (as opposed to B&W) would it take to equal the $10,000 cost of the new driver?

A politician had decided that in order to save money there would be a freeze on all capital expenditure. A critical camera system failed and the tech put a request in for a new one. The request was denied due to capital expenditure freeze but there was money in the repairs budget. The cost to repair the system was double the cost of a new one.

I'm sure the failed camera could have been replaced for less than double the cost of a new one - just jack up the builder's plate and slide a new camera underneath.