[Novalug] Kiosk like setup advice?

[Nick Danger]

The dual monitor thing works, sorta. With the built on Intel and the
added in ATI I have all sorts of weird stability issues on the 2nd card.
It regularly gets all weirded out (ghosting, fuzzyness, fonts
unreadable) and occasionally the mouse pointer gets "stuck" along the
edge where it should wrap into the other screen.

I tell you this because my desire to use linux in this situation is
getting overun with the rest of the IT department saying rebuild it in
Xp. Since we have 5 others, and they are all working fine with Xp.

BUT: There are issues with the boxes that are being ignored. Namely, a
box operating in Kiosk mode needs to have a few considerations.

1) Screen burn in. These are LCD's, so I don't have to worry as much,
but its still not so good. I can't use a screensaver as I want to deploy
these machines with no keyboard/mouse. I can't do that if someone has to
make it 'wake up'. I left the keyboard on the ones I am testing with and
sure enough, it took only 2 hours before someone started messing with them.

2) Complete setup on startup. Right now you have to log into windows,
log into the website, move the IE windows around as you want, and then
you can be finished. I know I can do all of this on startup running
Linux, but I don't know how to get the windows positioned as I want. I
know how to lunch the app, even set my homepage, but how do I make it go
to position X/Y? I want it to launch, and then full screen (F11)  Anyone
know how to do this? I dont even need a window manager, so if anyone
knows how to make just FFox launch, no WM necessary, thats even better!

I've been reading some kiosk sites but most seem to deal with hardware,
and interactive type kiosks, physical security issues, and not a 'boot
and display' type. I figure if I solve #1, I can just do a power down
via cron at 1am on Sat (we are closed over the weekend) and the screens
will power down with no video input, thus preventing burn in. No idea
what to do about #2 though.

I have a zero $ budget, but I can prove I can solve the other issues
with Linux, I can probably get a few bucks free to buy dual head video
cards (nVidias most likely) that will prove much more stable then my
mix-n-match setup I have going now.

Anyone done anything like this before and care to share some advice?

Nick