Your #1 problem is likely to be painfully slow and
intermittent bandwidth. Don't design a system that
requires the agents to be on line in order to do their
jobs.
If you want the agents to connect once or several times a
day, a land modem or Wi-Fi solution would permit direct
browsing. (The agents would go to a Starbucks or whatever
to find their Wi-Fi connection). But if the agents are
going to use your application interactively as they do
their job, I would really recommend developing a local
app and a process for periodic upload/download and/or
sync.
If the application is primarily forms-based, you might
look into Microsoft InfoPath as a solution. This is
basically an XML-based forms program.
As to platform, I have a PocketPC Phone Edition, which I
like because the phone and the PDA are one unit. Of
course, any PDA is going to have a very small screen.
Unless your data entry needs are very simple, the small
screen size is going to require a lot of scrolling. And
of course, text entry is slow.
T-Mobile advertises 56KB bandwidth to a PocketPC Phone,
but that's if you get all eight possible channels. More
often, you get one, and you share it with other users. So
real bandwidth is more like 4.8KB, and latency is very
high. And, at least around Phoenix, there seem to be a
lot of dead spots where Internet connectivity doesn't
work at all. There's no Wi-Fi or bluetooth.
I also have a Toshiba Tablet PC, which is very nice
except that it doesn't exactly fit in your pocket. This
guy has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in. The Wi-Fi works
very well but I haven't used the Bluetooth.
Data entry on the Tablet PC is very easy. The pen input
is much more forgiving than that on a PocketPC or Palm,
and there keyboard is available if you can put the unit
on a table or lap. Sketching is very natural, a plus in
occupations like accident reporting, real estate,
remodeling, interior decorating, ...
-----Original Message-----
Trying to create a web application for mobile users with
laptops and PDAs.
The site will be simple, in that a backend database will
allow users at the office to update jobs for agents, who
will access their jobs via mobile devices.
The site will be written in FP2000, with either SQL2000
or Access2000 as a backend database.
I am unsure of the following, if anyone knows the
answers:
1. What is a good PDA for displaying web pages? The PDA
will need to create it's own dial-up connection - so I
need advice on this!
2. A laptop is quite simple in that it will run Windows
2000 or XP with IE. I need advice on a good dial-up
PCMCIA card or any other suggestions for Internet
Dialup - one possbility is using a mobile phone via
Bluetooth.
Advice please based on experience with the above project.
Jim Buyens
Microsoft FrontPage MVP
http://www.interlacken.com
Author of:
*----------------------------------------------------
|\---------------------------------------------------
|| Microsoft Office FrontPage 2003 Inside Out
|| Microsoft FrontPage Version 2002 Inside Out
|| Web Database Development Step by Step .NET Edition
|| Troubleshooting Microsoft FrontPage 2002
|| Faster Smarter Beginning Programming
|| (All from Microsoft Press)
|/---------------------------------------------------
*----------------------------------------------------
