Tablet PC Talk Forums

[kinderhund]

OK, I need to pick the collective brain out there. Here's the situation:

We are a utility company in Alberta, Canada. We have a bunch of guys who go out in the field, doing construction, repairs, etc. Half of our workforce does work specifically inside customers' houses. These guys don't need to use drawings, just simple forms, and so have built a Work Management system around the HP Ipaq 3950 and now 5550. They use an AirCard to send info back to the office.

The other half of our workforce uses paper. And LOTS of it. As they have a need to see and redline drawings, there traditionally has been no other way around it. Pocket PC's may work for some limited applications, but for the most part we need something bigger. Laptops are out of the question due to costs related to our IT relationship. So we settle on Tablets. Given the work that we do, in ditches, dirty trucks, etc, I'd like to go rugged.

So here comes the brain picking part - which one do I use? I notice Chris has the specs listed on 4 of the major players, Intermec, Itronix, Walkabout and Xplore. Panasonic also has the Toughbook 07 which is of interest. I've tried the Itronix GoBook and the screen is a tad small -8.4". Haven't seen any of the others yet.

So what are your opinions as to what the best option is?
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[Guest]

We have been testing tablets in an industrial maintenance application . Lots of heavy equipment, oil, vibration, and rf. The xplore units have lived up to all the advertising. 0nly drawback we have noted is there substianl weight.