D-Series Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

One of the major features of the 15D1 is a powerful processor. The more powerful the processor, the more heat it produces. At a certain heat level, a fan is necessary and the 1.8Ghz processor exceeds that level. We decided to use a powerful processor over having a completely silent unit.

The system is cooled continuously with fans, which considerably extends the life of the equipment. The 15D1 has been developed for hospitality and retail environments where the background noise level is generally fairly high and fan noise is not usually a concern.

For quieter environments where fan noise may be a concern, we recommend choosing one of the Elo fanless all-in-one models: B-Series.

The 15D1 has four fans. With these fans we are able to keep the complete unit at a low temperature. Low temperature equals longer lifetime! There is one fan to cool the processor, one to cool the power supply and there are two small ones to create a constant airflow over the PC board. Why two fans? If one should fail, the second fan acts as a backup to maintain this airflow.

We also use "smartfans" in the 15D1. This means the fans operate only when needed, by adjusting their speed according to the usage of the unit.

We currently use an industry standard hard disk drive with 5400 rotations per minute (RPM).

Clockspeed (Ghz) alone doesn't reflect the actual performance of a processor or CPU. In fact, the performance of a CPU is determined by four factors:

• Architecture of the chip
• Clock speed
• Cache memory
• Front bus speed.

For example, one all-in-one touchcomputer on the market uses the Pentium 4 521 chip (2.8GHz), where the Elo 15D1 uses the Celeron 430 (1.8GHz). At first glance, it might seem that the 2.8GHz CPU unit offers better performance than the 15D1 1.8GHz. But, the 15D1 actually has a higher performance, thanks to the other factors.

The computer industry utilizes benchmarks to compare different systems. Example.

The image of the 15D1 on the website illustrates all peripherals available.

A 1D scanner reads only single line patterns like a classic striped barcode. A 2D scanner can read more complex patterns (like squares) and has a wider scanning angle.

In addition, it has more data representation capability than a 1D scanner. So the choice of the type of scanner depends on the application.

The 15D1 MSR comes as an HID device but includes keyboard emulation mode.

The MSR can be changed to keyboard emulation with software that will be available on our website. Alternatively it can be downloaded.

Our MSR can only read single-sided cards. This means that all the necessary information is printed on one side of the card and this is the side that is inserted into the MSR. An icon on the MSR indicates how to hold the card correctly.

However, the MSR can read three "tracks" on the card. The magnetic stripe on the card contains up to three tracks. Each of these tracks holds different type/quantity of information according to international ISO standards.

When the Elo fingerprint reader is purchased, the drivers and license are automatically provided. Through an ISV that develops the software including fingerprint authentication, it can be determined which software development tool to use.

The 15D1 is intended for POS applications in retail and hospitality environments.

Typical POS applications include peripherals like a barcode scanner, a ticket printer, a cash drawer, a magnetic stripe reader and a customer display. In order to connect as many peripherals as possible, we designed an All-in-One with a wide range of I/O ports. This wide range of connectivity options is desirable in the market and distinguishes the 15D1 from similar products.

Cable management means that cables can be routed to prevent them from getting tangled and enables the 15D1 to look clean and organized. In the case of the 15D1, the cables can be routed to the left, the right and the back of the unit. Also important is that the connections are nicely hidden. In the case of some other systems on the market, the cables are just connected in the back of the unit where they are facing the customer and can be accidentally disconnected.

We opted for an excellent price/performance balance for all of 15D1 elements and also for the motherboard. That's why we use the standard µATX motherboard, which happens to have only one VGA port. Since this port is needed for the Elo monitor, no VGA port is left.

Unlike the 15A2 and 17A2, there is no internal antenna in the 15D1. However, a wireless mini PCI card can be installed and an antenna (aerial) can be connected to it. The antenna can then either be put inside or outside the unit. The wireless mini PCI card is available as an optional field-installable kit.

To insert a mini PCI card in the 15D1, a "bridge" needs to be installed in the slot. Otherwise the mini PCI card does not fit into the unit.

The bridge is not available separately from Tyco Electronics Elo TouchSystems; it is included in the optional wireless package.

It can be expanded in any configuration and doesn't have to be in pairs.

The unit has been designed to provide a good balance of price and performance. An 80GB hard drive is fine for most POS applications and has a good value.

If a different size is needed, the user can swap the original hard disk or, very importantly, install a second hard disk.

There is no intention to provide this as an option. An external Dallas key reader can be connected via USB.

The power supply is hidden at the bottom of the unit. It is easily accessible by opening the front cover and can be replaced if needed. Refer to the manual for more information.

Currently, the power supply can deliver 335W of power. A switching power supply has efficiency around 80%, which means that more or less 270W is available. The printer power port is designed to deliver 24V and 1.9A, which means 46W for continuous operation. We also took into account the possibility of a peak charge of 10A during 10s for full thermal operation of the printer.

The power rating of our printer port is 46W. This is enough to drive the most popular thermal printers on the market.

Yes, we have tested the unit with Vista, and we provide a complete Vista Business image. The Vista image is indicated by V2 in the description.

We provide a Windows XP Professional for Embedded Systems license. We have an agreement that this can be bought until 2014, with support until 2016.

Windows XP - 24 language groups: Arabic, Brazilian, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Hong Kong), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish

WEPOS - 5 language groups: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish

Windows Vista Business - 9 language groups: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Hong Kong)

WEPOS languages can be changed via a MUI (multilingual user interface).

With a cloning device, it can be done quickly. It will take about 15-20 minutes to remove the hard disk, clone the image and attach the hard disk again.

If it is done via an external CD/DVD drive, it can take up to two hours. This implies an additional cost of two labor hours due to the installation of an OS.

OPOS was the first widely-adopted POS device standard. It was initiated to help integrate POS hardware into applications for the Windows family of operating systems.

Today, OPOS or OLE consists of an architecture for Win32-based POS device access. It is deployed on Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows CE.

It also consists of a set of POS device interfaces sufficient to support a wide range of POS solutions and POS peripherals.

OPOS only works with Windows. It is a driver that is pre-installed on the 15D1 with the XP version.

No, OPOS only works with Windows. The standard for interfacing POS software on Linux is JavaPOS (short for "Java for Point of Sale Devices").

JavaPOS has been developed by Java.

In that case the OPOS driver can be downloaded from the website, under driver packs.

No, the OPOS driver will only work on the 15D1.

Java is a platform-independent programming language. One main characteristic of Java is portability, which means that computer programs written in the Java language run similarly on any supported hardware/operating-system platform. It can run on Windows, but also on Linux or other operating systems; basically, it works on everything.

The same is valid for JavaPOS, which also runs on any supported hardware/operating system platform.

JavaPOS (short for "Java for Point of Sale Devices"), is a standard for interfacing point of sale (POS) software, written in Java, with the specialized hardware peripherals typically used to create a point of sale system.

"RAID" is the term used for computer data storage schemes that can divide and replicate data among multiple hard disk drives. With RAID, you can determine how your data is stored over multiple hard disk drives. There are three key concepts in RAID:

• mirroring (copying of data to more than one disk)
• striping (the splitting of data across more than one disk)
• error correction (where redundant data is stored to allow problems to be detected and possibly fixed)

The 15D1 provides the option of a second hard disk drive. However, the 15D1 does not have a RAID controller; the user must install his own RAID software or use options available from Microsoft.

We do not provide a hardware RAID controller in the 15D1; it can only be installed via software.

Under Windows XP and Vista, RAID 0 is supported. RAID 0 improves speed, but is not redundant; data cannot be recovered if one of the two disks fails.

For redundancy, RAID 1 is recommended. Certain operating systems support this RAID mode, but Windows XP doesn't. Other utilities can be used.

We currently do not support Linux. Also, a customer who buys a no OS version is only supported for hardware issues, not for software.

At launch, the only available color will be black. Other colors might be possible through our customization department. Contact Customer Service for more information.

Customization is possible, same criteria as on any other product apply. Contact Customer Service for more information

The unit can be mounted to the table via the holes in the bottom of the unit. More information can be found on the drawings (PDF).

The format is µATX (microATX).