Customer-tracking software -- please help

[RonJay]

Greetings all -- first post! 🙂

I have some software questions that I hope one (or more) of you can help me out with.

I am the Assistant Manager at a small computer store and I'm looking for some software that I can use to keep track of customers who use our internet-enabled computers in the store.

What I have is about a dozen Win98 boxes on a LAN with various multiplayer games and training software installed on them that my customers can rent on an hourly basis. What I'd like to do is have a central server (either running Win2k Pro or Win2k Adv Server) that runs the server end of a program so that regardless of which of the 12 computers I have in the store, using their login/pass, it brings up their desktop, copies over their files (say, saved skins from Counter-Strike), and so forth.

Being a small computer store, my budget is somewhat limited, so the most functionality for the least money would be ideal.

Recap of what I'd like:

1.) Customer sits at any one of my computers.
2.) Customer puts in their login/pass
3.) Client (Win98 box) pulls their information from the server and sets up desktop accordingly
4.) Server (Win2k box) logs time spent online and (ideally) sets up an invoice to charge them accordingly.

I'm sure this is possible. I've seen many internet-cafes that have programs installed like this. I am just unsure how to operate it. Any help would be much appreciated.

TIA,

-Jay

 

[ScottMac]

You maybe should look at a RADIUS server.

RADIUS can be used for authenticating, authorizing, and accounting (in conjunction with a syslog server/process/program).

It can be used with wireless systems, dial-up systems, and can be set up (with 802.1x) to not even allow the computer on the network unless authenticated and authorized (stopped at the switch port).

For a commercial operation, something like Steel Belted Radius would be good. Microsoft includes IAS (RADIUS features) with their WIN2K server. If you have a *NIX server, freeRadius works really well, but is only available in source code (gotta compile it and configure it).

Ease of administration is going to depend on which system you choose. For GUI based systems, entering new user information (or editing existing users) is fairly simple. If you're used to *NIX config files, freeRADIUS is no big deal either. I'm pretty sure there are some Open Source GUI RADIUS as well (but I don't recall their names).


Good Luck

Scott