That sounds like a success story, Jim. Congrats.

I'm curious why you'd use $500 iPads for internal purposes rather than
a $100 Android tablet. I'm guessing it's just familiarity at this
point?

Re size and carrying, the Android tablet is smaller, and there is a
carry case for iPad with a strap called "Simplism", which doesn't look
like it was meant for running around the commercial workplace, but in
the absence of anything else it's an option.

Note that with intelligent clients you can do more, including barcode
scanning, GUI, and background web services which will poll for status
changes or work. It seems a shame to use brand-spankin new technology
to expose a generation-old UI, but I suspect that's something you will
address as the need and desire bubbles up the priority list. Now
that you've migrated to Reality it would be as unfortunate for that
system to only be used in R83-emulation mode. The tools are all
there. With people using the devices on the retail floor I'd guess
you could be facing a quiet marketing issue that you might want to
address sooner rather than later: imagine a customer whispering with a
snicker to a friend "they're running DOS on the iPad?!"

Regards,
T

On Sep 13, 11:56*am, Tony Gravagno <tony_grava... (AT) nospam (DOT) invalid>
wrote:
Thanks, Tony:

I always appreciate your responses.

First, as to the iPad-vs-Android question, for now, anyway, it is
basically a matter of availability of the telnet app. I especially
went with Mocha because of the SCAN button. Not to say there isn't a
similar app for Android, but I haven't seen one with the scan
option. As of this date, Mocha does not show one on their product-
availability list for Android, but I have contacted their support site
to see if anything is planned.

As to the remainder of your response, we are strapped, mainly, by lack
of "resources" - namely, personnel. I have only one other person on
my full-time staff, and, although he is very deep in experience with
hardware, his PICK experience has been slow coming. Not because he
doesnt' want to learn, but because there are so many hardware issues
that he has to deal with, there isn't the time to get him up-to-snuff
on database-related issues. In fact, he has been able to build some
very useful web-based screens, using RealWeb, Reality's web design
app. Both he and I had a 1-week course, about a year ago, and at
that time, he was able to make the time to get involved with using the
product. I, on the other hand, had to keep up with all that was
happening in our day-to-day application maintenance/development.

I would love to be able to build more on the types of tools that I
read about here in this site. Unfortunately, time and cost (budget,
you know) interfere. My staff (both of us) have to support over 300
employees, spread out over 100,000 sq.ft. of retail space, as well as
two warehouses; one is attached to our store, and encompasses about
35,000 sq.ft. The other is 7 miles away, and consumes most of 80,000
sq. ft. Throughout all of this physical plant are some 60 thin
clients running on Microsoft's RDP; another 40-50 PC users at desks;
and a slew of printers and other periphrals, many of which are of the
RF variety, adding another area of support. It's very tough to keep
everyone happy, and expend the time to continue learning new
technology. And, budgets don't give me room for contracting out to
specialists.

So, jumping into iPads, or similar, and using something like telnet to
communicate to our database, may well have to be our closest thing to
"plunging" into new technology.

Thanks, again Tony, for your thoughts and suggestions. I certainly
understand where you are coming from. Unfortunately, I don't think
I'm real close to being able to take some of those leaps, at least for
now.

Jim