So I'm in the market for a tablet. It needs to be able to run office, PDFs, good wifi capabilities  and have removable batteries.  I'm looking to add this in one of my departments at work for a roving inspector. Durability and upgrade is a plus. Primarily used for add info into PDF and access(traverse) a program we used based off of access. I'm open to ideas. Budget is semi limited to basically what is work vrs play. Needs to be more work than play. Ideas? I'm looking at motion computing as a viable option but would like more to compare and Or choose from.

It depends on whether that Access-based program has a web interface or you literally have to manipulate it through Microsoft Access. If the latter, the Viewsonic VPad is your only real option and it isn't a very good one. The battery life is bad. In short, the market hasn't quite caught up to what you're trying to do here. Any current option isn't going to be all that fulfilling.

P.S. Ugggh, why in God's name would you routinely edit a PDF? That's the exact opposite of what that filetype was intended for. I don't mean to rant towards you, since I doubt it was your choice. I'm just lamenting the ever-more common love of using PDFs in cases other than sending something to print.

Edit: Wow. I've never even heard of this Motion Computing stuff. This is all way over the budget I'm familiar with, so I won't be of any help here. Desktop GUIs in a tablet form-factor never work out though. In my opinion, the ARM-based tablets with proper GUIs will be blowing that clunky x86 crap out of the water in 2 years for less than half the price.

I'm not sure if it's web based. I know it's ran through our server, other than that I really don't know enough about Traverse other than they have over a million in the software and it's limited and sucks, especially considering the growth of our company, it's just not a good set up for our facility and instead of dumping it they insist on trying to make it work by have 2 full time programmers who can't seem to get anything completed on time.

http://www.notforprofitsoftware.com/Traverse.htm

link to more info specific to this junk above.

As for PDF's it's required for us to provide files for FDA regulations due to being a medical device facility, especially in my role as the Quality Manager I have to enforce document control, with the PDF's I can limit things such as non virtual copies that get lost, filed wrong, destroyed etc. There may be a better way, I really don't know. I do know that it allows us to edit individual fields and it is simple enough that even I can create a form haha.

I was at the dr office today for my kickass daughters 4mo checkup and I noticed they were using the Motions. I've been considering iPads and similar, however battery life is an issue for all devices regardless so, interchangeability is a must. I talked to three different people and they all have had really success with the 2 models they have in house. Only complaint was battery life of about 2-3 hours which is fine in my book. If an inspector only needs to swap out once when they come in and mid shift then I can justify that need.


Here's my needs. I have a roving inspector which is a new position I am trying to make successful. This job consists of walking throughout the facility with basically a tool cart work station. Ideally in my head a paperless inspection would make life easier to deal with plus give us another form of document control which again is highly regulated by the FDA specifically meaning I need traceability. I can scan employees badges as identifiers as to whom did what and when(electronic signature) for accountability. Plus it helps us with trending. They will be conducting in process inspections on material finish, measurements, materials, ink test(anodize) etc...I'm trying to bring out facility into a new realm of technology. I think improvements like this will cost the initial coin but over a years time pay for itself(minus licensing) 10fold.


I realize the above was poorly written haha It's all over the place  





Edit: go Boston

   Our Help Desk takes care of all of our subsidiary company's tech needs as well.  For our home efficiency auditors who needed something similar to what you described above so we bought the Dell half laptop half tablet mutant running Windows 7.  it has a joint in the center of the monitor that lets you rotate it 180 degress then fold it flat like a tablet.

   To be honest it's a pretty cool idea, and worked pretty well.  It was a touch sensitive screen, though it was sensitive enough you didn't feel like you were going to shove your finger/stylus through the panel.  The joint/swivel thing the monitor rests on is definitely the weak point but with some care it should be fine.  It was a business class Dell spec'd like a laptop too, I think it had an i5, 2 gigs ram blah blah blah.

   Anyways look into that, I think it would suit your purpose.  I forget the model number but I'll let you have the fun of combing Dell's website.

I'm going to openly disagree 10000% with the above comment. We issued 4 of these out a year ago to a sales dept in our company. I was responsible for setting them up distribution and repair. I hate these things deeply. The center hinge surprisingly does hold up, however I can't say for how long because all but 1 of them returned with in 4 months with multiple problems. Tablet XP is a shitty rework overlay application layer system that is a pita. The screens are notorious for going out, getting dead spots and losing precise calibration settings. They are very expenisve to repair and use a non standard battery for any other series making the battery expensive as well when it does and will give up after a year or two. Out of the four only one is still in use by a VP that wanted it more for commodity than anything and just uses it for email. 2 are now parts machines and have been scavanged to repair the rest when they break. The last one operates with the keyboard only and has been lost under a stack of 10 year old machines that still work better.

Maybe others have had better luck, but having 4 of these brand new and having them all take a multitude of shits in less than 1 year has given them my solid approval of turd device that is better left alone.

Well shit.  We've had them about 4 months now, I played with it fresh out of the box so of course everything worked flawlessly. So far we haven't had any sent back to us, but I can't attest to how many of the guys actually use it as a tablet.

I'm into mobile data now and work on Itronix laptops, its a lesson in slowness but you can beat the hell out of them.