Another Windows Error
September 25th, 2007I snapped this picture at a local grocery store, where a kiosk’s sole function of displaying catchy ads for coupons and new products was marred by a familiar Windows error, although not quite as attention-grabbing this time as the other one I had blogged about.
(click for larger image)
Interestingly, the command line reveals that the kiosk runs Laplink Everywhere, commercial software that allows remote access to a PC from anywhere. I guess all the kiosks from the store (and across the country) connect to a central machine that selects the advertisements to be run by the store, and thus rely on 24/7 internet connectivity for their operation. Given that the kiosk is using a capable machine with a complete Windows XP installation, I would have guessed that a better design would be to run local custom software and just provide daily (or even hourly) updates via the internet connection - which is also the way most Windows spyware work.
Of course, capital costs could have been cut significantly if the kiosk ran cheaper x86 hardware with a basic Linux installation - although I wonder if that was even an option considered by the company that designed the kiosk.
