Well a question that I immediately had when starting a lan center is how do I control my customers time usage. How do I pass out discs for them to play the games (Honestly handing out discs for the computers was not an option). This was answered by two different programs. One is Cyber Cafe Pro and the other is Smart Launch. I personally went with smart launch cause I found its interface alot more intuitive then Cyber Cafe Pro.
Smartlaunch, which is currently under going a CEO change, is the best option in my opinion. Smartlaunch allows you setting up profiles for your customer has PUF management (Personal User Files) and License management. The license management is a big plus. For example you have 25 computers and you only possibly have 8 people at once playing a single game. The License management feature will allow you to distribute a license to each computer up to your total of 8. So all 25 computers can play the game but only 8 can be in use simultaneously. That allows you to have to buy so many copies of the lesser popular games.
Smartlaunch allows has a built in POS that worked extremely well for my Game Center side of things and all your reports can be easily exported at the end of the day to input into your book keeping system. Smartlaunch has many many more features but this post would unfortunately be 5 -6 pages long to detail each and every one of them. So I’ve just touched on what made me go with Smart Launch at my Center. Also if your an Igames member SmartLaunch will give you a discount for each client license you purchase. Last time I check it was a total of 20% that added up very quickly.
All in all a program like Smart Launch will allow you to handle the menial task such as profile management, time management, promotion management, Product Sales and much more in a single effective solution. There forums are also quite helpful if you come upon any problems with the software. Also the New CEO states that support is going to be a top concern for the Smart Launch Cyber Cafe software from here on out.
If there are any questions on how to specifically do something in Smart Launch feel free to comment here and I will try my best to assist with the issues you are having. I probably had one of the most difficult smart launch installations due to the fact all my computers were running Vista at the time and I didn’t have a Professional Server Solution when I first started. So if there was something that could have went wrong due to my setup I probably experienced it.
