UPS to Deploy Ultra-Connected Wireless Handhelds

Lyle E. Dodge writes "According to this article at Yahoo.com Symbol Technologies announced (on Tax Day of all days) that in 2004 UPS would deploy 70,000 handheld delivery computers based on Symbol's Fourth Generation hardware. Color screens, 128 megs of RAM, and uber-connected (GPS, GPRS, CDMA, WiFi, Bluetooth, Infrared, Analog modem), and, of course, the familiar barcode scanner. The obvious /. question is: Can we run Linux on Brown? Maybe UPS can fund an OSS startup, "BrownHat"? We'll see..."

How

[Subnirvana337]

Is this any different from the black and white touch pads they had before? It may have all the gizmos and gadgets, but is it needed? Are they going to be more productive now?

Re:Going wireless inside too...

[digitalhermit]

I helped deploy the Symbol technology in the South Florida District a few years ago and we were one of the original beta sites. We had lots of problems with the scanners dropping into "batch mode" and sometimes locking up. Battery issues were also common. The sort shifts were around 3-4 hours but the batteries, though rated for that length, didn't really live up to the claims. Still, the technology was still fairly cutting edge during the delployment.

Eventually the technology was supposed to help loaders determine which packages went into each feeder, but this would require more information (such as destination zip code, service level) to be present on each barcode; or, have some way for the scanners to query a central database in real-time. It would also allow packages to be "intercepted" and rerouted at a request from the shipper.

Anyhow, the technology that lets a relatively low performance terminal (in this case a wearable scanner) query a much more powerful server (PC or even mainframe) is pretty cool. There's a very, very strong case for putting Linux on these devices rather than some other proprietary solutions.

Symbol Technologies Incompetancy & Greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Mark this OffTopic if necessary, but please read it.

Take a peek at this as I would not at all trust Symbol Technolgies with anything IT related.
Check the head lines here: Symbol Technologies in the news [yahoo.com]

Take a look at this: Former Symbol Technologies Exec Pleads Guilty to Fraud [yahoo.com]. Its just the tip of the iceberg.
Symbol Severance Assailed [newsday.com]
Critics: Delay $2M payment to ex-CEO

I had worked for their manufacturing team on Long Island, NY from 97-99 & did web development/IT stuff for them from 99-2001. The IT management is clearly incompetent & personal greed (not even greed to make the company better) is their God. Since distribution of their own personal performance related bonuses hinged on how budgets were spent (IT hardware: replacement HDs, etc; salaries; job related tools: like having pagers or cell phones for those on call) they cut the budgets like MAD.

They killed off pagers for the sysadmin team. Yet, they had to remain on call/available if necessary. They took IT staff on salary (off hourly wages) & then demanded that they work an absolute minimum of 45 hours a week. So some staff left & that meant that the work load for the existing staff went up but salaries didn't scale. "Oh, we can give you comp time." But the rub was that you have to ask permission to use your comp time. Since the work load went up, you can't use your comp time.

They killed the budget for replacement hardware. They had a good system for deploying a PC (Norton Ghost or a hardware HD copier) but they had no $$$ to buy a new HD or a new switch 'cause the old one gets smoked on Monday logins.

They ignored Java & ColdFusion as a means of developign internal systems and instead chose VB/ActiveX, MS IE, IIS, & even MS ACCESS for their three-tier system.

They have moved 95% of all their manufacturing to Renosa, Mexico. This company used to run radio ads on how it has helped Long Island & specifically the town of Brookhaven. They laid off their manufacturing workforce (both engineering & assembly) in order to cuts manufacturing costs.

TOMO RAZMILOVIC ex-CEO, This asshat ran the company into the ground & then gets a servance package. About half of the folks that were laid off received 2 months salary & then they got 6 months of New York State Unemployment. This jackass' contract gives him $2 million. WTF is up with that?!?!

What I'd really like...

[Dr. Mu]

...is a way to access the system to find out where my driver is when he's got stuff for me. That way I could go meet him early and get it, instead of waiting for an afternoon delivery.

symbol makes some cool handhelds

[AssFace]

they are making a handheld barcode scanner that would be used for grocery shopping. as you walk along putting groceries in your cart, you scan it in to the scanner that you have.
then when you check out, instead of them scanning all of your groceries, they just take your handheld device and plug it in to see how much your bill is.

the obvious point that came up is how easily one could steal. so the store would instate a rule where they randomly scan all of someone's groceries.

I, and apparently many others at the major grocery chains that were approached with this idea, was skeptical that people would steal like crazy.
so there were a bunch of test stores that were setup with the system to see how well it works out, and apparently it worked really well - they saw less theft that way than they did the "normal" way and the main problem they actually had were people ringing the same item up multiple times (accidentally I presume).

I don't recall the numbers off the top of my head as to how much faster this made the checkout process, but it was a very impressive number.
every time I find myself standing in checkout lines and I see that they are using Symbol checkout scanning equipment (which is nearly every grocery store I've ever been in) - I always wish that they had that new personal scanner system.

I haven't followed Symbol's stock in over two years, but they used to have a pretty solid system last I looked. not sure how they are lately.