Restrictions Really needs improvement for Business use

Question

Hi
We have written an app and are replacing our industry standard barcode scanning devices with over 100 iPod Touches worldwide using a third party barcode sled accessory. This is much cheaper (Around $800 vs $1500) and offers a much richer and less confusing user interface to the end-user. However our end-users are often low paid seasonal workers employed by our clients, so when it comes to the restriction settings in iOS we try to lock the devices down as much as possible.
I think more and more people are treating the iPod/iPhone/iPad in commerical environments and so the ability to secure and maintain these devices really needs to be improved. Our situation aside you can use your iPhone as a point of sale with a credit card swipe, if you have a retail chain with several of these devices for use by employees you don't want them to be messing around on them or making choices that you don't want them to purposfully or accidently.
For instance:
iOS6 upgrade seems to download automatically and prompt the user if they want to install. There is no way to turn updates off, and not even a password is required to do it. In my scenario if someone gets the upgrade push and then clicks ok they then can't work for 30 minutes, not good if there is a long line of people waiting to be served.
WiFi/VPN connections can be changed
Passcode lock can be turned on/off/changed
Date/Time / Keyboard / International / Accessibility settings can all be played with
Weather app always available
Stocks app always available
Maps can be used (location can be disabled at least!)
etc..
If I (as a developer) tell our deployment manager to tell our client's manager to tell their scanning manager to tell their temporary workers to not mess around with things like the above....someones not going to listen, and our IT department is just going to have to check each device and clean up.
I know that apple's portable devices are aimed more at consumers, but I personlly think it's about time that we have some more attention to more business scenarios.
I don't want to come accross negative so i'll finish by saying that a lot of the restrictions in place are very useful. Being able to disable the store, iTunes and safari are very big wins, without those we wouldn't have switched to iOS devices.
Anyone else have a similar need for more administrative ability?
Thanks for reading.

Answer 1

One of these might be good for a POS (assuming you need touch screen), but those are terrible for graphic artists to use.  All-in-ones are to be put bluntly, over-priced pieces of junk with crappy power supplies and worthless integrated video cards.  They will run too hot most likely and need maintenance more often than larger well-ventilated desktop towers.  Your graphic artists staff will hate the small low resolution monitors as well as the lack of decent GPU acceleration.  The only good thing about them is the small form factor,  a sacrifice well worth looking past IMHO.
Graphic artists should be using high-end monitors, IPS panels for accurate colors and high resolution displays of 2560x1600 pixels.  I strongly recommend looking at Dell's Ultra Sharp models (particularly the 30").  If you end up getting three Dell Ultra Sharps then you might as well get the whole system from them as well and develop some sort of professional relationship and support system like most businesses. 
 *The monitor should be the most expensive component by far and it is the most important for work productivity, do not skimp out here, you run a graphic design firm after all!
Look for reasonably priced desktops with 4-8GB RAM, Intel or AMD quad core processors.  Stay away from discrete graphics, Photoshop uses GPU acceleration found on higher end video cards and it is useful.  Larger hard drives perform better than smaller ones because of areal density, so buy larger hard drives than needed (1-2TB drives with 500GB or larger platters) and run them in RAID1 for redundancy, because I doubt you have a storage area network.