Please help me choose/build an audio kiosk for my local museum

[markuskidd]

I'm volunteering at the local museum to help put together an exhibit about the expieriences of some Holocaust survivors who relocated to our little town. We would really like to have a small listening station for visitors to listen to eight short interviews. Currently, we're looking at muesum-industry solutions, which even to play eight three-to-four minute interviews start at around $1000.00, which seems absurd to me and offends my inner-geek.

Can anyone help me figure out how to do this within a reasonable budget? Here's what we need:
* The ability to play back eight 3 or 4 minute long interviews
* Solid state recording -- this exhibit will be open long hours for months and we don't want media that will develop skips
* Simple interface -- this exhibit is built to bring to mind the conditions Jews had to live in in Europe during the 40s. This isn't all-encompassing, but on the other hand I can't just set up a computer monitor and a mouse for them to play back the interviews from a PC

I'm completely stumped and nearing the opening date for the exhibit, so any help would fill me with love.

 

[xsilver]

if new and for cheap you cant beat dell
museums however mostly use touch screen monitors though so that could take a major chunk out of your budget
because you have to figure out how to replay the 4 minute videos over and over again.... keyboard /mouse will be out of question due to vandalism

so try and get a dell system cheap (coupons or whatever) and then try and source a touch screen monitor

 

[markuskidd]

To make sure it's clear, all I have to play is audio--

 

[mkygod]

Solid state? Im not sure how you would go about that without using a flash mp3 player. Even if you do though, i how would you make it interactive?

If it were me, id get one of those shuttle size cases and put together cheap via/c3 cpu system and run the whole presentation in an interactive Flash with embedded audio. If you cant do flash, powerpoint may suffice. Or you can just make it out of plain html/java and have the page opened up and use administrative properties to restrict users from screwing around with the stystem or closing or opening other programs.

Another option, instead of putting together a pc is you can buy that mac mini.

 

[imported_Kensai]

Just get a cheap system, get one of those funky systems like at the resteraunts and you're good to you. 🙂
(By funky system, I mean their GUI system. Very simple click and use type thing)