We've just delivered and installed an OpenBravo POS system.

It's very easy to use, with slick key handling, and fast processing.

Some of the features we found appealing

• Straight forward setup
• Simple operation - easy for staff to use
  
• Simple administration and organisation
• Links into more complex OpenBravo ERP if more features are needed
• Supports images of products in the main sale screen
• Reliable
• Looks very good on screen, good graphics, good use of screen real estate
  
• Good hardware device support
• Straight forward database organisation, easy to see what is going on
• Some documentation, certainly a lot better than many similar open source products.
• Good activity on the project wiki and forums
  

 We've installed it with the following components

• Kubuntu 9.04 Jaunty 64 bit
• Slimline desktop PC, IBM Lenovo
• 19" LCD, to be upgraded to a touch screen later
• Epson TM-T88III serial thermal receipt printer
• Cash drawer, fired by the printer
• Motorola LS-2208 USB bar code scanner
• Winpos WD-304 customer display pole screen
• HP inkjet printer for occassional reports
• APC Smart-UPS 1000

The local data is stored in a Derby format database. It runs fast, and is reliable.  We've also hooked up the database to OpenOffice, both Base and Calc, so the user can view the POS data in different ways, and do master file updates in an easy list format.

 A couple of issues we encountered

• The serial control library RXTX needed to be manually upgraded to a 64 bit version compatible with sun java 6
• Manually loading the master file took a while, and there was no ready source to download it from. Each stock item and price had to be keyed by hand, and the bar code scanned.  Fortunately being a small shop, there were only 700 items, but it still took a while.

The total cost for the whole system with installation, hardware, cabling, support and tuning was $7,000.