Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

[simonb]

Can anyone recommend a combined phone with an ability to log jobs on for the day, and also store address details of completed jobs with other info. also to transfer onto pc afterwards with ease?

what does irritate me i get calls anytime day or night on my mobile and dont have a bloody pen handy 👿
simonb

[kwatt]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

Hi Simon,

Your problem isn’t the phone, any Windows Mobile or Symbion based mobile will pretty much be able to do that. The problem is the software to enable you to do it in reality on the road as it were.

Most will have a simple diary system but, in the main, they’re not that great really and certainly little use for service work IMO. They would synch with the PC but not very well for what you are looking to do.

And, trust me, it doesn’t matter how smart the phone is you will still need a pen and paper as it’s awfully difficult to tap in info with the phone to your ear and, in any event, not as quick as a keyboard by a long way so you won’t capture it all as people speak to you.

HTH

K.

[bobokines]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

I use an O2 XDA Exec.

It has its own keyboard. I always use a bluetooth headset and rarely need to write anything down on paper.

It is a bit limited on built-in memory and the calendar function has to use the built-in RAM and cannot store to the SD card. The lack of memory means that it can only carry 6 months or so history on the calender. This is the only real problem that I have encountered.

Bob

[Martin]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

simonb wrote:what does irritate me i get calls anytime day or night on my mobile and dont have a bloody pen handy

I know bobokines is well into XDA technology and I’ve seen him demonstrate it’s capabilities very well indeed …all good stuff. 😀

But, I’ve yet to come across a system that fully answers your question Simon? 😕

On the one hand you have a mobile, you couple that to Bluetooth for all that good hands free stuff. You get customers phoning day, night and hurtling down the motorway. No pen, no diary…. = NO WAY! :rolls:

Technology can only go so far, truthfully speaking!

At some point you (like me) have to realise that an ‘all in one’ package just don’t and won’t exist?

The very latest technology therefore = Hands free mobile, pen, diary, laptop and plenty of bottle. If all that can be put into a black box the size of a fag packet, then I want one….PLEASE!

Meanwhile my advice is ……Carry a pen and notepad with you everywhere you take your mobile. 8)

[kwatt]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

Martin wrote:The very latest technology therefore = Hands free mobile, pen, diary, laptop and plenty of bottle. If all that can be put into a black box the size of a fag packet, then I want one….PLEASE!

Can I hold you to that? 😉

It is entirely possible and has been for some years now, you just need more than just the phone to do it.

K.

[Martin]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

kwatt wrote:Can I hold you to that? 😉

Yep!….That’s 2 then already ordered….BRING IT ON! 8)

[Honeywood]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

HP ipaq 6515. Phone, sat-nav, web, outlook + exchange, office apps, databases, camera, MP3 player, video etc. and yes Ken, you can also write notes on its touch screen while talking to your customer on the phone using your bluetooth ear piece!

Better still, these notes can be attributed to any program your in, which is especially usefull as entries into your outlook diary and it will even also convert your note using OCR into text!

Then you can either syncronise over the web to your exchange server and diary there and then or wait till you get home and do it on the PC.

i do agree tho, that there are a lack of decent programs out there that will cater exactly for what we do but, there are some out there that come close but at a price.

[kwatt]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

Honeywood wrote:HP ipaq 6515. Phone, sat-nav, web, outlook + exchange, office apps, databases, camera, MP3 player, video etc. and yes Ken, you can also write notes on its touch screen while talking to your customer on the phone using your bluetooth ear piece!

Yep, I know that you can use a BT headset for this, just as you can for gaming and VOIP as well if you so wish.

I just have a problem with walking about looking like an extra from a Borg episode of Star Trek. 😉

K.

[simonb]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

thanks HP ipaq 6515 sounds good to me, i have been looking and like the sound of touch screen, i take it is touch screen with a pen and can you write in your own handwriting and save it?, were do you keep the pen? sounds daft but id loose it within five mins
iv been trading now for few years and iv come to see the benefits of retaining all information about customers, especially for bookkeeping ease and for also i want to begin to focus on sales as upto now just sell the odd appliance her and there

funny the other day i received a handwrited letter from a customer, i thought “what a complaint!” but then it said “can you repair a hoover twin tub……..” asking for a booking? obviously no telephone number, what do i do write back saying “yes id do repair them” and when would you like a booking?
simonb

[kwatt]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

You’ll be fine with an iPAQ Simon, they all run Windows Mobile which can talk to Outlook easily as well as the rest of the usual Office raft of products, the most useful of which for PDA or tablet PC use IMO is OneNote which has a raft of nifty features for the application.

The problem, so far as we lowly repairers are concerned, is that none of this really solves the problems we have. Fantastic if you’re selling on the road or working remotely from a desk but they are not in any way designed for field service use and that, is the ultimate limitation.

They will transfer basic data for you and they will allow you to take notes and suchlike but you will still have the administrative burden of transferring that information you’ve gathered on a 5” screen into a useable format at base. Some of this you can automate, but not a lot out the box.

I’ve used an extensive list of phones, including smart phones. The HP ones are neat but bulky IMO. The HTC based ones, such as the O2 one mentioned is okay, but again bulky and if it’s the one based on the HTC Tiny it’s flaky as well. That said, it has it’s uses but it’s not a great phone and don’t touch (har har) the HTC “Touch” one that looks like an iPhone rip off as it’s rubbish.

In the end it comes down to simply what you want to use it for however you have to remember that a lot of that decision on what device to use will be determined by what software you want to use it with and whether it can work with that well. After all, it all well and good getting all this juicy information onto your phone but, if you can’t get it back off again easily, then it’s pretty much a waste of time as using the pen and pad would be faster and less hassle.

For what it’s worth I use an iPhone at the moment and have been since long before the UK launch (don’t ask) and it too has some serious failings depending on what you want to do. For example, synch a database at the moment or develop any custom apps for it, forget it.

HTH

K.

[whitevanman]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

Just bought a pda hp ipaq 214 enterprise(£188 + vat) from pc buisiness work, IMHO i dont think there is anything on the market that will touch it Windows Mobile 6, processor 624 MHz, internet, email, 4″ screen, office apps, WI FI, bluetooth, printer function, sd & cf slot, facility to connect to net through mobile. (no cost incurred when on free wireless zone).

Personally I think it the dogs when it comes to Pda’s

Hope this might help if considering purchasing a Pda.

Wvm.

Ps It is new on the european market took 3 months to get one, so you may want to take a rain check untill some good reviews, works well with connect and ukwhitegoods online.

[bobokines]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

Has anybody tried to use Quickbooks through their PDA yet? I believe the latest version of Quickbooks supports Windows Mobile.

If it works it would be sensible to upgrade to the latest version as I use quickbooks for my accounts.

Bob

[Toni]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

I use an Orange SPV M3100 with a BT headset, the slide out keyboard is very usable.
Apart from the usual diary etc I have a database of all my parts usage and price etc, and keep all my calls on via a customer database. (the database stuff can be saved on to a micro SD card although so far I have not needed to)
I really run most of my business on the road from this, although the important stuff stays on the laptop mostly at home.
Regards
Toni

[kwatt]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

You know, I’ve had a long running battle over the benefits of a PDA or a laptop, especially the small format lappys with some of the most staunch believers in technology that you can possibly imagine, some of them have had a real go at me over my views about PDAs.

The short of it is this, I have, on my desk in the office, two N95’s, an HTC Tiny which is a Vodafone 1605, I use an iPhone and I have several PDAs knocking about as well as at least one tablet PC that’s reasonably up to date. I’ve run various OS on these including hacked versions to increase functionality and, in the end, with all these things it comes down to this simple one statement, they’re great for synching remote data with a desktop or server system. Outside of that, other than browsing remotely or picking up email, they’re pretty much useless.

Now, you have to understand something here, I am the world’s greatest believer in getting technology to work for you as Sean, Dave and countless others will tell you but, where it increases the workload or simply adds complication for complications sake I am also the first one to berate it as well.

PDAs without a specific application beyond that outlined above are as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike. Fact.

If you can live with looking up spares on a (at best usually) 640×480 resolution then fine, fire on in there. Most websites don’t even have a decent zoom and, other than the iPhone, scrolling around a zoomed in document is a just a pain in the butt to me. You’d be better with an ultra-portable laptop and connect that to your Bluetooth phone to browse for spares than messing about with a silly little screen like that.

Not that I am opinionated. 😉

The PDA has it’s place, of that there is no doubt, but for non-specific tasks they are incredibly limited in what they can do.

Pen and a bit of paper… you don’t have to power it up to take a note, enter a specific application, HOPE that the handwriting recognition software knows you can’t write or spell or even tap away on the smallest of keyboards with a toothpick.

In the main with technology you get one of two things. You get hardware designed around a solution to a problem that often doesn’t exist or that hasn’t the software developed to fully realise the potential. Or you get the software that solves the problem but reliable hardware doesn’t quite exist just yet.

It is rare that the two meet.

With PDAs there is a bucketload of software out there that actually can do what a field service engineer needs it to do and, a lot more besides. But it usually isn’t cheap.

You can carry one little device and push/pull all the service call data, have satnav, routing, tracking and a host of other whizz bang features in one simple device. But, to date, there’s not one system I’d recommend as there’s too many people (manufacturers, insurers, WPs) all pulling in different directions and all wanting their own bespoke system and information for it to be worth the while for most of us. Until they all get some sense injected I would imagine it will stay that way.

So, in conclusion, if you buy something that runs Windows Mobile, any device you fancy the look of, you’ll be okay as it should run most anything you’ll ever need.

If you want it to do all the whizz bang stuff though, you need that backend to make that happen and that, is the tough bit.

They do synch your calendar and contacts though. 😕

HTH

K.

[simonb]

Re: Looking to buy a a Pocket PC or Smartphone?

our local mobile phone shop is selling a HP ipaq 6515 for £150 he said its refurbished :rolls: (he’s wiped it over!)

i was impressed, he let me have a go, just the right size not too big he said it multi banded??, how do i go about getting contract pay monthly if i buy this? is it worth laying out for one as most are free with a contract anyway arnt they? anyone know of good deals with pay monthly contract, iv been looking at t mobile web site, i got ripped off a few years ago with redemption, the firm who supplied the phone went bust when i tryed to claim my rental money back,

simonb

[Author]

Posts