Alternative to current hardware vendor

[Damon Payne]

One of my clients is currently using the DAP 8640 device
(http://www.daptech.com/products/ce8640x_) for a product. They are
very excited about porting their code to the new platform however this
vendor is really giving us a hard time about providing a CE 5 image for
this hardware.

I would like to find an alternative to this vendor but this particular
form factor and feature set seems to be oddly rare. It is a 1/2 VGA
device with the screen in landscape mode and a qwerty keyboard. The
only similar items I've found so far are truck-mount form factor which
won't work for a field-worker who carries these around.

Any suggestions are appreciated.

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

What other characteristics are important? Maybe a Windows Mobile 5 device
like an i-Mate JasJar or something like that (640x480, but in the small
Pocket PC form-factor), built-in phone, 802.11b, Bluetooth, etc. It also
has a qwerty (thumb), keyboard.

We have 1/2 VGA devices, but they're, as you say, not luggable.

Paul T.

 

[Damon Payne]

Barcode scanner, Wifi, CF storage card slot. Some ruggedness is good,
IP54 would be nice. The phone is not needed.

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

Yep, that's a tough combination and I'm not aware of any that fit that bill.
There are handheld devices with smaller screens (our LANpoint Mobile, for
example), and differently-arranged keypads, but unless you find a far East
supplier that we don't see much, I think you're stuck.

Can I ask what's the big deal with no CE5? It's not like it's some
revolution over 4.2...

Paul T.

 

[Damon Payne]

Currently the CFv2 and SqlMobile are not supported on CE 4.2; also we
have an occasional storage card issue and an occasional ActiveSync
issue, we are hoping that the new active sync and improved storage
handling in CE5 will help us out. SQL Mobile is probably the biggest
reason though.

 

[Paul G. Tobey [eMVP]]

Well, CF2 and SQLM are certainly things to look forward to, but unless you
are using things that don't exist in 1.0. Is it the speed of SQLM that
you're looking forward to?

Issues with Storage Card and AS aren't going to be fixed with the OS update.
Very little difference between 4.2 and 5.0 in those areas.

Paul T.

 

[Rüdiger Kardel]

Damon,

what about using a different database?
We still stay with CE 4.2 - it fulfils all of our requirements ( in
conjunction with OpenNETCF of course)

regards
Ruediger