Which Handheld for In-Field Service Work?

got_lost asks: "I'm trying to work out a mobile (read sub-notebook) solution for field servicing Cisco kit. I looked at notebooks but the cost/weight/battery use just outweighs the features I need. The possibles are Psion Revo & Palm or Visor + Keyboard. I haven't really played enough with these before to know their capabilities. I've also heard about a serial card + TRGpro PDA combo. Anyone care to comment? I guess I need suggestions for a portable (Palm/Visor/Psion) solution that allows serial comms. Ideally the solution would not involve the FS staff lugging a HotSync cradle around . I hope this makes sense and welcome all advice on this topic."

Psion is great

[mmarcos]

I used the Pilot for over 2 years and I gave it up. I need to take a lot of notes and write whenever I get the inspiration. Grafitti was too much of a hamstring for me. I went for the Psion after reading a lot of complements about their keyboard. I love it, the feel of the keyboard is great, it's touch typable, and sufficiently small to carry with me everywhere.

It's not a pocket device, though, too large for that. On the other hand, there's got some nifty software for the admin type available, telnet, ftp and such and you can program directly on the device. There is a serial port and infrared (I use the infrared with my Ericsson I888 to get cable-less Internet email and web).

If you need to do a lot of entry this is superior to the Pilot. If you can't lay it on a surface somewhere, though, it's not comfortable to use. Good luck.

PSION industrial stuff

[Wimpie]

Also have a look at the PSION industrial devices (workabout for example). Basically the same hardware as the PSION 3 but they can be expanded with printers,scanners etc. They are also availabe with strong casings (drop them from 1 meter on a concrete floor and they still work :)
The downside is the programming. You can use OPL (sort of basic), C on the industrial devices or C++ on the Revo and series 5. The leerning curve for the C(++) framework is pretty steep.

Use the 200lx!!

[Barrow_Boy]

I use my hp200lx, old tech but good. It is a XT (i186 processor, CGA Screen, MS-DOS 5.0), it has a serial port and a pcmcia typeII slot. There are network cards available for it so you can sniff too.

All this and it fits in the pocket!!

Try out the double-speed 96mb versions!!

• http://www.hplx.net/ [hplx.net]
• http://www.palmtoppaper.com/ [palmtoppaper.com]

Good Sites!!

Re:I do this exact thing

[GortsBrother]

Nuh-uhn. And it's the right time.

Tim Berners Lee would cry if he heard what you just said.

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these...

:)

I do this exact thing

[drix]

I highly reccomend a Palm for this application simply because there's no point in having color for serial interfacing. With that in mind you'll get way better battery life out of a Palm. There are plenty of good serial apps for PalmOS; I use ptelnet [em.com.br] and it's great. Using handwriting rec can be arduous, especially if you do a lot of tabs for command line completion (IOS has this IIRC), but a foldable keyboard would pretty much solve this problem.

As for the Hotsync cradle problem, you can buy a Hotsync cable here [beyond.com] for 20 bucks which has just a serial connector on one side and the proprietary connector on the other. It's way, way easier to use than a cradle for things like this because you can hold the Palm in your hand and still write.

This has been my setup and it's worked perfectly. For anyone out there who has a Palm laying around and wants to full with this, just stick a getty on a com port, download a serial program for the Palm, and login to your box. It's kind of cool :)

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Re:I do this exact thing

[drix]

Hrm it just occured to me that the folding keyboard you were talking about occupies the Hotsync port on the Palm. Unless it has some sort of passthru, which wouldn't really make any sense anyways, you're going to be stuck with Graffiti. My advice would be to use a handheld with a builtin keyboard.

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HP Jornada 680 / HP 95/100/200 LX

[Myrcurial]

I bought one of these to replace my aging HP95LX, and although it isn't as cool as the 95, it's still the best of all worlds. It wont fit in your pocket easily (you'll have size issues with the palm/keyboard combo) but it is more "full-featured" than most other palmtop/handhelds I've seen.

It's got a 640x240 screen (half VGA) that does 64K colours (recent bios update over the factory 256 colours),the keyboard is large enough - not perfect, but survivable, the internal modem reliably does 42k to my servers, it has a bulky com adapter cable - I do the cisco thing too and would love to build a custom cable that is smaller and more lightweight than the current big cable, adapter, and powderblue RJ cable setup)

I have a 32MB CF card that gives me enough storage for about an hour of low quality mp3 storage - with no headphone jack you're limited to the 3/4" peizo speaker - so quality isn't a concern - but it's loud enough to enjoy something other than fan noise when you're deep in a room full of racks.

It will not come with much useful software, but a VISA card can fix that quickly - you'll need all the usual network utilities. On an interesting point, VNC is available for it and comes at a lovely price point!

I've filled the PCMCIA card slot with a cheap DLink 10baseT card which gets me functional on either a tp or coax network - useful to do diagnosis from ether as well as serial.

The battery life is substantial! With normal operations, you can really expect 7 hours life out of it - running the network card will cut it back to about 5, but I'm sure that a more expensive low power ether card would make a difference there. There is also an extended life battery that claims (and I believe it) 21 hours of use.

While on the road, I connect to the net either with a cable into my Qualcomm 2760 or with a RJ11 into my truck's analog cell phone.

All in all, it's a workable combination, and has freed me for the most part from a laptop. I still carry my Thinkpad, and I'm getting very very close to dumping the desktop machine out of my life - I'd miss the 20" sony glass, but it still might happen.

If you've got questions, ask and I'll do my best to answer!

M