Symbol handheld suits the shopfloor

Symbol’s MC50 fills the gap between standard PDAs and fully ruggedised devices used in specific industries. Essentially a Pocket PC, the MC50 has features to support staff who are not desk-bound, in environments such as the sales floor. This makes it pricier than standard handhelds, but cheaper than specialised devices for particular industries, and it is well worth the cost for firms that need a workhorse instead of an organiser.

The device ships in three basic versions: one with a 1D barcode scanner, one with a 2D scanner and monochrome image capture, and a third supporting colour image capture. All three can be specified with either a five-way navigator control or a 37-key qwerty keypad.

We looked at a keyboard-based model with 2D scanner and monochrome camera. All models feature a 520MHz Intel PXA 270 processor, 64MB memory, and 802.11b Wireless LAN. Each unit has a removable 1560mAh battery pack as standard, which offers a higher capacity than most other Pocket PCs.

The MC50’s USB desktop cradle can also charge both the device and a spare battery at the same time.

Symbol’s keyboard makes it easier to use the device without recourse to the stylus. A blue modifier key turns the top row of buttons into shortcuts to the menu bar and applications, while a block of keys to the right of the keyboard become navigation (arrow) keys. The orange modifier key accesses secondary characters such as “@”, and the same block of keys to the right serves as a numeric keypad while it is active. Although the MC50’s keys are small, anyone used to text messaging on a mobile phone should have no problems.

The MC50 is more robustly constructed than most Pocket PC devices. A fitted strap makes it less likely that users will drop the unit, while a screw-down cover protects an SD memory card slot.

A sample application on the MC50 let us scan both 1D and 2D barcodes and see the information they contained. Business applications could use the scanner to look up prices for retailing, or IT staff could barcode assets for quick lookup on their inventory records.

The barcode scanner can also be used to speed deployment of MC50 devices. Using Symbol’s Mobility Services Platform (MSP), an administrator can print and distribute custom barcodes to staff, who scan them using the MC50’s built-in Rapid Deployment Client. This configures the device and tells it which apps to pull down from the network.

The MC50 also comes with a built-in client for Symbol’s Airbeam Smart software. This is another part of MSP and allows IT managers to update the device firmware and applications over the air.

A tool also allows the user to disable the MC50’s radio to save battery power, but the likely roles for this handheld will typically need constant wireless LAN access.

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