Uniquepos Mobile Shopping Experience

Uniquepos.com announced mobile shopping that lets customers to shop with iphones, ipads, mobile computers, android devices !

Consumer vs. Rugged Devices: The Great Debate

If you are like me, you are trying to keep up with mobility trends and the impact of consumer devices in our space. I came across a solid piece from the Mobile® Enterprise editorial staff regarding consumer vs. rugged devices with regard to field force automation recently, and I think it makes a lot of sense.

Many think that consumer-grade devices are well suited for field service, but they don’t consider every day wear and tear that will cause premature device replacement. End users need to consider the total cost of ownership when considering consumer-grade devices – not just the initial purchase price.

It is important to consider the following when comparing consumer vs. rugged devices:

• Environment – will it be too hot, too humid?
• Peripherals – will there be additional costs for peripherals for key functions such as card swiping?
• What is the failure rate or need for 3^rd-party assistance? Or, what is the potential of downtime and loss of productivity? How will the issue affect the bottom line?

Consumer devices aren’t necessarily the right way to go when automating the field force.

Mobile Computer Terminals: A Closer Look At Form Factors

Mobile Computers come in numerous designs and form factors to meet the ergonomic needs for many jobs and situations.

There are three main form factors categories:

• Handhelds
• Wearables
• Vehicle Mounts

Handheld Terminals

A handheld mobile computer is ergonomically designed to be held by the user. Some of the many options include:

• A choice of scan engine options (laser scanner, imager or camera for scanning barcodes)
• A touchscreen for ease of use.
• A number of different keypad configurations available ranging from simple PIM keypads to 53 key full alphanumeric keypads.
• Optional snap on devices that support a Mag Stripe Reader, GPS radio, RFID snap on or Cable Attachment Modules.
• Personal attachment options such as wrist straps and holsters for both hip and shoulder.

Handheld mobile computers are compact and easy to carry.

Many solutions may require add on items to accommodate printing or credit card transactions. Some mobile computers have optional snap on devices that support a Mag Stripe Reader, GPS radio, RFID snap on or Cable Attachment Modules.

Gun style handhelds:
Ergonomically best for scan intensive applications such as warehousing and back room inventory

Brick style handhelds:
Best for mostly data entry with a light scanning. Often seen in field service, route accounting and retail

Enterprise PDAs:
Compact form factor that incorporates WWAN communications and GPS, combining multiple devices into a single platform

Wearable Terminals

• Freedom of movement to perform barcode reading tasks quickly, safely and comfortably
• Wrist mounted or waist mounted with ring scanner
• Key based, pen based (touch screen) or both
• Hands-free wearable data collection

Wearable mobile computers are designed to allow the user to be able to use their hands to be able to perform other tasks, and be able to perform barcode reading tasks quickly, safely and comfortably. These units are mounted either on the wrist or waist, with a scanner that is worn on a finger or back of hand. The computer often has a keypad for data entry and a touchscreen for running applications.

Vehicle Mount Terminals

• Works with all forklifts (propane, gasoline and electric)
• Some designed for automobile use instead of forklifts
• Extremely rugged and shock tested
• Touch screen or full/compact keyboard options
• Peripheral ports for external scanners and/or printers
• Vehicle terminals support Win Mobile, Win CE and Win XP OS

Vehicle mount computers are designed to be used in vehicles such as forklifts, automobile, and trucks. They are built to be extremely rugged and tested against industry vibration standards. VMCs often have touchscreens and a variety of keyboard options for data entry. They have more real estate for dedicated peripheral ports for external scanners or printers. A variety of operating system options exist, such as Windows Mobile, CE and Windows XP.

Configuring 802.11 Wireless on Motorola Mobile Computers

ScanSource POS & Barcode Tech Services has put together this handy guide detailing setting up 802.11 wireless on Motorola mobile computers.

Mobile Computer Terminals: An Introduction

What is a Mobile Computer?

Simply put, a mobile computer is a fully programmable portable computing device that can connect to a networking infrastructure via cable or wireless to transfer data through either a real-time or batch process.

In this course, we will outline the features of many types of Mobile Computing Products.

These types include:

Hand-Held Computers

Wearable computers

Vehicle mount computers

All three types do pretty much the same function just in different environments.

Characteristics include:

• Operating systems – Mobile Computers have some kind of operating system or interface for user interaction.
• Displays – Most common are QVGA color touch screens. Lower end units may have smaller monochrome screens.
• Keypads – A range of keypad options allow for input using alpha or numeric characters.
• Scan Engines – Many of the same scan engines used in tethered scanners are used in mobile computers. Cameras are also optional features in some devices.
• Radio options – WWAN, WLAN and WPAN radio technologies are often available to communicate with data and voice networks, as well as mobility peripherals such as printers.

In order to do this, the mobile computer must run an operating system and some type of custom software application.

While the software applications are pretty much limited to the developers imagination, the possible operating systems available are:

• Windows CE
• Win PocketPC
• Windows Mobile
• Windows.net
• DOS
• Palm OS
• Proprietary operating systems are still available but no longer as popular as they once were

Mobile computers have a variety of communications options:

WPAN:

These technologies include Bluetooth and IRDA. Bluetooth is becoming very popular for peripherals such as printers and audio headsets.

WWAN:

Wireless Wide Area Network includes radios, such as GSM/GPRS and CDMA, for communicating voice and data over a cellular network.

WLAN:

Wireless LAN, or WiFi, radios allow mobile computers to connect to a local network through wireless infrastructure. Current radios support 802.11a and/or 802.11b/g depending on the manufacturer.