[XCSSA] Geek-Sat: 15" Touch Screen Embedded Computer

[Matt Grooms]

As some know, I bought one of these this morning. Stumbled around the Arbor 
site looking for a matching model and documentation, and tried to DL it. 
Docs weren't posted and it prompted you to leave an email address and they 
would send you a DL link.

Well, just got this very interesting reply from someone at the company. They 
can't match it to an exact model of theirs so they pulled the docs on 
similar models so folks wouldn't DL wrong docs. He says they've been swamped 
all day with inquiries. Even went so far as to say he considered buying 4-5 
for his own home projects cause he can't justify the 20X price of their new 
products for such a venture. See below for the entire text of his response.
Nice guy to take the time for such a reply...


****** start paste******

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Carey [mailto:bcarey at arbor-usa.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 11, 2010 3:10 PM
To: 'mgrooms at satx.rr.com'
Cc: 'sales at arbor-usa.com'
Subject: RE: Request for Support Files for P1500

To Whom it may Concern:

If this inquiry is prompted by something you saw on a surplus website, these
are not the units that the surplus company has.

We don't even know what the model number is for the item that they show,
While it does appear to have one of our boards inside but we are unable tell
what model board it is from the image they have posted.

These things get sold to large OEMs either as incomplete panel PC units or
just as single board computers.

The OEMs usually wrap it up with their own sheet metal, glass panel and FPD
cable/inverter boards so the ones on the surplus site are a crap shoot as
far as being meaningful for us in order to be able to furnish information.

If you call them and if they can give you the part/model number from the
computer Board we can possibly give you board level information that you can
use. Other than that you could (once you had the data) go the flat panel
maker and get their spec Sheet as well.

These are generally are Intel x86 based units and are normally compatible
with DOS, Windows, Linux once you know what chipsets you are dealing with
and can locate all the driver that may or may not be included with
Windows/Linux


The documents attached are for the End of Life product you requested. This
product has since been superseded by newer/updated models like the P157x,
P177x and P197x units, the P1500, P1515 unit are only available on special
order by their existing "contract" customer base and then only in the agreed
minimum quantities of 300 per production run, not something we would suggest
for a new project.

I hope this helps to differentiate from the surplus stuff we have been
getting inquiries about all day, and the EOL things you asked about and to
move the inquiry to the now current products.

Please note that we pulled our 15" panel data documents down so people would
not confuse them with what the surplus folks had on line we had to do this
in order to make sure people knew that the Surplus Computer parts were not
something we could support and so we could control the data with the
appropriate caveats regarding the surplus items.

I am assuming that they have tested these units and at $99 each that is less
than 5% of what they originally cost as completed units... one could trim
these out with a wood or smoked lexan trim / bezel from TAP plastic or some
other plastics house and have a nice touch screen PC, not a lot of power or
storage but it could be a nice control unit for a smart house project or
alarm controller irrigation or solar system monitor...

They are cheap enough I was thinking of buying 4-6 for use in my own home,
since I can't justify using our new product for some home projects.... at
$1.5K to $2.5K each

If you find out the board ID info, I possibly will be able to direct you to
the correct driver sets



If you are interested in seeing the data on the current models we would be
happy to send it to you, but since we don't want to burden you with
something you might not be interested in... we will only send the
unsolicited datasheet if you ask us to, the caveat to that comment is that
while the surplus computer units are $99, that is only about 5% of what
those units sold for new, and that is only about 5% of the current price of
new fully warranted product that you don't have to stand on your head to
use...


Regards

Bill Carey
Arbor Technology-USA
800-550-5195

**** end paste ****
--------------------------------------------------
From: "Tweeks" <tweeks at rackspace.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 10, 2010 9:17 AM
To: <xcssa at xcssa.org>
Subject: [XCSSA] Geek-Sat: 15" Touch Screen Embedded Computer

> Arbor Industrial Panel PC w / 15" Touch Screen LCD
> http://www.surpluscomputers.com/349381/arbor-industrial-panel-pc-15.html
>
>
> Pretty sweet..
>
> Tweeks
> _______________________________________________
> XCSSA mailing list
> XCSSA at xcssa.org
> http://xcssa.org/mailman/listinfo/xcssa



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