Dell moves into point-of-sale hardware by Tom Krazit

DELL COMPUTER'S ROSTER of hardware products now features a device to help retailers count the money. The company's new POS (point of sale) terminals, announced at the National Retail Foundation show in New York Monday, combine an OptiPlex desktop with the familiar cash drawer and barcode scanner found at retail counters.

Dell sees the POS offerings as "just another addition to the portfolio," said Jon Weisblatt, a Dell spokesman. The POS device, as yet unnamed, is designed for large corporations that already use Dell products in their data centers and cubicles, and want to standardize their hardware across the board, he said.

One of those corporations is The Wet Seal, a Foothill Ranch, Calif.-based chain of clothing stores. Dell recently installed over 1,100 POS terminals in stores through the U.S. for The Wet Seal, Dell said.

The company's POS terminals use the existing Optiplex SX260 desktop. It can be remotely managed over a network, and is one of the smallest desktop systems offered by Dell, making it ideal for cramped checkout counters.

For a base price of $1,794, retailers can purchase an Optiplex SX260 with a 2.0GHz Pentium 4 processor from Intel, 128MB of memory, a 20GB hard drive, Gigabit Ethernet connections, a 15-inch CRT (cathode ray tube) display, and Microsoft's Windows XP. A thermal receipt printer, handheld barcode scanner, programmable keyboard and cash drawer come with the systems, and make this desktop a little different from the one that graces most cubicles.

Most retailers run POS applications specifically tailored to their business, so Dell partnered with software vendors such as Retek, AutoGas Systems, GERS, and MSS Global to make sure the client POS terminals will work with a customer's back-end systems.

IBM and NCR are the leaders in the POS terminal market, said Weisblatt. If Dell repeats its strategy from other business lines, it will compete aggressively on price. NCR recently signed a deal with The Home Depot to supply the home-improvement retailer with POS terminals, while paint retailer Sherwin-Williams is installing POS terminals from IBM running Linux.

Dell, based in Round Rock, Texas, has sought to diversify its products offerings amid a global slump in PC sales, although the company continues to grow its PC market share. At Comdex in November, Dell announced an inexpensive handheld device meant to compete directly against PC archrival Hewlett-Packard's (HP) Compaq iPaq, and earlier last year said it would enter the printer market, HP's bread and butter, with Lexmark International.