All kiosks and self service equipment need an operating system. It seems such an obvious thing to say, but it is surprising how often this item gets in the way of customers being able to use their kiosks for what they intended.
From a K4B perspective it seems that different parts of the market use different operating systems for their kiosks and self service pods more or less exclusively. The medical market has just got past windows 7 to 10 and looks like a dedicated user of Windows.
ANDROID: (all our kiosks are available running Android)
The fast food and restaurant self service seems to use Android mostly. QSR restaurants had no real use for IT until recently when ordering ahead and table ordering with mobile phone technology came about. Using Android was the easier option with many developers starting to create apps for mobiles with Android. Tablets (basically large phones technically speaking) went the same way. Hence, simply said, most tablet based self service systems are android powered and most other self service systems are windows based.Sample Text
LINUX: (all our kiosks are available running Ubuntu)
Linux is probably the most stable and reliable of the operating systems for kiosk and tablet
continuous and faultless operation. We also offer the customer service to help if needed.
For kiosks and tablets running browser based apps Ubuntu is a great option and is so simple to set up and run. Its controls are similar to windows, its free and virtually bullet proof.
But what happens when you want a tablet that can handle more hardware or you want a “large tablet" – say 21"?
At K4B we can help. We make all our kiosks and larger tablet kiosks with Android OS or Windows. So for whatever reason you need a specific tablet size or spec we can offer the size, OS and any peripheral you need.
WALL-21" or 24" large tablets shown here with RFID reader and running windows, but Android is a standard alternative for K4B
WINDOWS:
For Windows based kiosks and tablets the situation is slightly different in that there are a number of options to choose from – the obvious being the now standard windows 10, or soon to be available windows 11.
At K4B, for Windows based kiosks we use the Enterprise version of Win 10. It has all the games and other items not required for kiosks removed. The few updates that happen are about security mainly. It means that our kiosks that run windows 10 Enterprise generally keep running uninterrupted.
