Dell, HP Deliver POS To Retail

Dell Inc. and Hewlett-Packard & Co. separately introduced complete point-of-sale (POS) platforms for retail on Monday.

Geared toward the restaurant industry, Dell's POS system uses Restaurant Pro Express software to take orders and track inventory, employee and customer information. The system integrates a Dell OptiPlex desktop computer, Restaurant Pro Express software from pcAmerica, touch-screen monitor, credit card reader, receipt printer and cash drawer.

The Dell platform offers three-year hardware warranty service and optional packages for extended software support, upgrades and training. Pricing starts at $3,399.

HP's bundled POS system with its own branded peripherals focuses on transaction management. The company has offered the POS platform for about three years, but has begun to bundle it with HP peripherals.

Introduced at the Retail Systems 2006 Conference and Exposition in Chicago, the bundled HP rp5000 platform includes receipt printer, scanner, cash drawer, magnetic stripe reader, keyboard and touch-screen display.

HP has shipped about 300,000 units in the past three years. The division brought in about $3 billion in total revenue last year selling equipment to retailers. "In three years we went from zero to 10 percent market share in POS systems," said Carol Potts, vice president, Retail Industry Solutions at HP.

The HP system has four serial ports, four USB 2.0 ports, two-standard USB 2.0 ports and two full height PCI slots to connect easily, and comes with a five-year lifecycle and three-year warranty, Potts said.

The system also incorporates the Intel Pentium 4 processor with 845GV chipset, and a choice of Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows Embedded for Point of Service operating systems. The Microsoft Point of Sale application is available pre-loaded as part of the package.

A few customers are testing the system, HP said. The price for the HP system starts at $3,600.