To: Carl who wrote (359 ) 9/10/1998 6:29:00 AM From: SCOOBEY-DO Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 2909
Hey Carl and BETT shareholders, I received the following information from Harry Hargens regarding the Pay Master. "Tom Hughes asked me to send you a copy of the SWYW catalogs, which have just been printed. I put a catalog and an update on SWYW in Priority mail yesterday afternoon, so you should receive it tomorrow or Friday. "In addition to the info in the update I mailed, I should hasten to add that UniPay is trying to modify two units for SWYW, so we can get them into the field in September; but it is too soon to know for sure if this can be done by the end of September. There are several items being worked on, some of which address "child-proofing", others which address "idiot-proofing". Both are crucial to smooth operations in the field. "Regarding child-proofing, Tom is working with a plastics company that is creating a protective cover with some sort of latch. This device will go over/around the paymaster in some secure fashion. This will keep small children from doing damage. We are not too worried about kids pressing keys and entering garbage data, since the latest version of the software ignores all keystrokes until a card is inserted; we are more concerned about kids tearing out the receipt paper, dropping small toys into the receipt printer mechanism, spilling juice on the machine, etc. The plastic cover should drastically reduce the frequency of such problems. I say "drastically reduce", rather than "eliminate", since mom and dad are also perfectly capable of spilling things on the machine after they open the latch... (The SWYW budget does include dollars for shipping out replacement machines when abuse causes one in the field to fail; dealing with these situations is a normal part of supporting equipment in the field. There will be a SWYW help desk which locations can call to request a replacement. As the scale of the SWYW operation ramps up, the help desk will eventually become a 24-hour operation). "Meanwhile, I have worked with UniPay on idiot-proofing the unit. We have made the SWYW ordering software as simple as possible, given the amount of info that must be entered. The rule I have given the programmers is that someone's grandmother, who has never operated a computer and is afraid of the phone, must be able to operate this device. The programmers refer to this as the "blue-haired-lady rule". "Another concern in this area is the ease with which paper tears off after printing a receipt. We found that the original plastic case design does not do enough to guide the paper, so, unless you tear a receipt off just right, the printer starts to misfeed and jam when printing the next receipt. In the long run, we will make changes to the case design to fix this. For at least the first 50 units, probably more, we will use an external printer. This is the fastest way to get to market with something functional. This has forced us to add an external RS232 port, which is part of the reason we have some last-minute parts procurement going on. "I would estimate that we have a 75/25 chance of getting two units with the external printer in the field by the end of September. I would say there is a less than 50/50 chance that the plastic cover is also ready by then. In any case, we are confident of having 50 units built before the end of October. "If we have units with the external printer but no cover September 30, we'll go ahead and deploy them. Deploying a few units without the cover is not a bad thing. Since the plastic cover is an incremental cost, we need to determine if it is really needed. So, we should deploy some units with it, and some without, to compare the frequency of problems at the two groups." I don't know about anyone else but I am very excited about BETT's future. I feel that BETT is interested in its shareholders and wants to keep everyone updated on Betting Inc.'s progress. Go BETT!! Scoobey