Welcome to our summer edition of Field Views — the early summer sunshine has been a pleasant surprise and almost makes up for the disappointing preliminary rounds of the World Cup.

As expected, Tablet PCs have been grabbing the headlines, mainly thanks to Apple’s high-profile iPad. Tablet PCs have been around for years now and they deserve some serious attention, especially now that the key usability issues of battery life, outdoor screen visibility and portability have been resolved. It was great to receive a recent email update from one of our Tablet PC field users, which declared: ‘Battery life is great – it’s lasting a full day easily, even with GPS enabled the whole time.’

In this edition of Field Views, we focus on the areas of usability and workflow, two subjects crucial to the successful adoption of mobile solutions. Once you have invested in a mobile working infrastructure, significant benefits can be realised from having the ability to drive your field work processes from simple user interactions with your mapping and asset datasets.

Productivity and data quality can be significantly increased when work is delivered electronically to the right person, and that person has all the data they need to complete the task with them on their mobile device, regardless of the location or conditions they are working in.

Enjoy the summer, and remember that you can get involved and share your field working experiences on this blog — we’d love to hear from you.

Best wishes

Paul Reid | Managing Director