So, there I was in Carphone Warehouse. I’d decided to spend some money, and the thing I was spending the money on was the rather cool SonyEricsson HCB-300 Bluetooth car kit. It’s the mutt’s nuts, I tell you. Get into my car and it’s working; I can make calls and receive them without ever touching the phone. Coolness.
Well, it will be the case: it’s not being fitted until the 19th of February. Christ. However, over the course of the day, I went into Carphone Warehouse three times: once to see if they did BT carkits, once to see how much effort it would be to install it in my car, and once again to pay (or, more accurately, to have Sam put it on her credit card). So I spent a reasonable amount of time in there, and some of that time was spent waiting around, and when you wait around you look around. Well, I do, anyway. And they had eight computers in there. And each one of them was running some kind of text-based program to place orders and book stuff out: blue screen, text, cursor keys to move around. You know the sort of thing. None of this clickable GUI stuff here. Now, I have no problem with that: there is absolutely no need to throw away a perfectly working system, and all your years and invested effrt of user training, just to get something that looks more like other apps. No worries.
But every single one of these computers was actually running Windows, which was then running a full-screen 3270 terminal emulator.
Why? WHY? Why in fuck’s fucking name would you pay out for eight Windows licences and then use them as dumb terminals? Why? Why not put dumb terminals on the desks? Or install Linux on the machines and save yourself five hundred quid per Carphone Warehouse? Why would you not do that?
Some of you may be saying: I bet they do other stuff on those machines. I think the following: No they don’t. They might occasionally need to knock up a Word document or something; fine. So keep one of the machines as a Windows box and stick a very simple cut-down Linux distro on the rest, if you like. I’m not even going to say “use OpenOffice.org” here; if you want Windows, use it, on the machines you need it on. They didn’t ever switch away from the terminal emulator, not while I was in there.
I’ve been in small Carphone Warehouses with only two machines in. This one had eight. So let’s say that there are four, on average, in a CW. They’ve got 1300 stores, according to their operations information. At fifty-odd quid per Windows licence, that’s 1300*4*50 = quarter of a million quid. Now, a company that made 16 million pounds last year in retained profit should be thinking of £250,000 as a pretty substantial whack: that’s a 1.5% rise in profits. How do we convince these people?
hah..
One of our customers (a tool hire company) beat Carphone warehouse then :
They also just launch a terminal, and have e.g. local printers.
Moving to Linux they saved :
1) Cisco ISDN routers (Linux box can dialling and masquerading)
2) No need for MS Office (OO does all they ever need)
3) No need for Windows licenses… (obvious?)
4) Superior remote administration (it’s all over ISDN after all)
5) Superior customisation
6) Funky things like remote backups are easy
7) They choose their upgrade path
Sorry for the shameless plug :)
David.
Posted by DG on January 11th, 2005.
I suspect the following
1) They were sold/tricking into buying a new windows based order entry system
2) System installed with new Windows system and PC’s
3) New system was found to be totally crap
4) Decided to go back to their trusted old terminal based system.
5) They realised the dustmen had taken away their old terminals
6) Installed terminal emulation system onto Windows PC
Posted by Paul Freeman on January 11th, 2005.
Somewhere around 1997 or ‘98 maybe they moved to the new system that runs on top of Windows. I worked there for a few years. At the time all I was bothered about was the funky new rotating TFT screens we were given. Never gave any thought to the OS really, I started it up and it worked.
I’ve no idea why they might have chosen this solution. As far as I’m aware, it was actually very difficult to do anything other than use the emulator. There were no tasks required of the staff that needed other Windows apps. Actually, on reflection, I think you’d could access IE to browse a limited number of web sites controlled by head office – stuff deemed to be useful. I think they were cached and then delivered within the intranet.
One thing I do know is that the IT department was full of smart guys who were paid a lot of money. If the thing ever crashed on a Saturday we lost untold amounts of money to lost sales because we had to use the slow hand written system. The company really knew how important a good IT system was to them. With that in mind it seems even more bizarre that they’ve chosen to use Windows.
I know the guy who runs the company’s stock warehouse – I’ll ask him when I speak to him next. Although I doubt he’ll care much.
Posted by Rob on January 11th, 2005.
You don’t pay for Windows per-license though do you, they have loads of different schemes for rolling it out across companies for what seems to be a bargain (to the companies buying it ;)
If you go into a Barclay’s and talk to a personal advisor (or whatever they’re called), most of them seem to be using thin clients running Motif, although I’ve also seen the occassional machine with Windows on it. I wonder which one is the past and which the future?
If ATMs are all going to be Windows-run now that IBM has stopped supporting their ATM software, it would probably make sense for banks to move to Windows internally. Maybe.
Sorry about the ramble :)
Posted by Phil Wilson on January 12th, 2005.
I was in specsavers the other day and noticed that their CRM system was running on Mozilla, although I don’t know if it was on Linux; I suspect not.
Posted by mrben on January 12th, 2005.
Is that Rob Grant from Sutton CPW???U tosser!!!!
Posted by The Man With No Name on March 13th, 2005.
[...] A while back, I bought myself a cool Bluetooth car kit. Finally, after a month of waiting, it was fitted Saturday. And it was pretty cool. I rang half the people I know in the car on the way back from Kidderminster just to say “woo! look! I am talking to you without holding the phone! I am so l33t!” Now, however, I would like to register a number of complaints about it. [...]
Posted by as days pass by » Carphone Warehouse customer service on February 6th, 2006.
If anyone has any comments about CPW that they want to post here, please make sure they are not of a nasty nature.
I thank you
Posted by current employee on February 8th, 2006.
There is now a dedicated Carphone Warehouse discussion forum, set up by itstimeforchange, at:
http://www.cpwforum.zoomshare.com/
Please go there to continue your discussions. Best of luck!
Posted by sil on February 10th, 2006.