Handheld And Heavy Duty

Intermec Technologies Corp. believes it has beaten its competitors to the punch.

The company's latest rugged data collection PC, the 5020, is perhaps the first of its kind to run on Windows CE, said analysts and industry executives.

"This lets us capture the whole community of software developers and IS professionals who know Windows and how to program in it," said Tony Black, group manager for developer relations at Everett-based Intermec. "So these devices become an extension of existing networks and current information systems," he said.

Intermec already held two developers' conferences for resellers and other partners interested in jumping on the 5020 bandwagon,one at the Microsoft Corp. campus in Redmond, Wash., the other in Europe. A third event will follow in December, said Black. To date, 75 companies have pledged applications support for the company's latest handheld PC, he said. Those partners will develop software for tough environments such as manufacturing and warehousing.

"The 5020 combines Intermec's high-performance wireless LAN technology with the latest in handheld PCs," said Paul Goldman, chief information officer of Infinity Logistics, a warehouse management solutions provider based in San Francisco. The company's e-Warehouse solution, developed in-house, will run on Intermec's 5020, Goldman said.

Previously a VAR house only, Infinity now consists of two businesses. Infinity itself is a software developer; Automated Logistics Corp., doing business as Evcor San Francisco, represents the company's reseller arm.

Intermec's new Windows-based handheld PC comes with built-in support for Visual Basic, Visual C++ and HTML, so IT personnel can use their existing knowledge of PC and networking environments to support automatic data collection systems, said an Intermec spokesman.

"Everyone's rushing to Microsoft because they represent a stable influence," said Paul Martaus of Martaus & Associates Inc., a market-research firm in Mountain Home, Ark. "The cost of getting programmers who know arcane [computer] languages is very high. But Microsoft has schools available for everything, so you can take people who know what you're doing in your business and apply that knowledge directly to a Microsoft-based system," Martaus said.

Other manufacturers of handhelds will follow Intermec's lead in the next few months, launching their own versions of Windows CE-based devices, said industry watchers.

All major players will be using the Microsoft platform in six to 18 months, said an Infinity spokesman. Intermec's Black agreed: "Everyone wants to bring Windows CE to the data collection marketplace." Other interested manufacturers include Symbol Technologies Inc., Telxon Corp., WPI Husky Computers Ltd. and LXE Inc.

For more on Windows CE, visit: www.crn.com/pos

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