[ic] some newbie questions

[Florian Kleedorfer]

Hi, all!

I am absolutely new to interchange, and I haven't set up 
any comparable e-commerce system so far. I am in the 
process of choosing the open source solution that best 
suits my needs: hosting several online shops on a single 
server and offering the use of this e-commerce system 
to small to medium size businesses.

Interchange looks and feels nice, but I would like to 
hear about your experiences with it. To be a little more 
precise, these are questions that matter to me:

*) Why did you choose Interchange?

*) What other open source solutions are worth being tested?

*) What difficulties did you encounter when using what is 
referred to in the manuals as "multiple catalogues"?
 (which seems to be what I referred to as "several online
  shops on one server, correct me if I am wrong)

*) I would like to hear your opinion on this problem: In many 
cases, it is desirable to restrict access to certain items to 
certain customer groups (like resellers, ...) or to display an item's
price according to the customer's group. (with / without taxes for 
resellers, ...).
Would you set up one catalogue for each customer group and
manage access control on the first page, letting customers log
into "their" catalogue, or is it possible to do all this using only 
one catalogue?

Thanks in advance for your comments

Flo