June 2015

Xplore reports record revenue and net income for fiscal 2015
Xplore Technologies reported financials for all of their fiscal 2015 that ended ended March 31, 2015. For the entire fiscal year 2015, Xplore reported record revenues of US$42.6 million, up from US$35.6 million for fiscal 2014. There was net income of US$0.25 million for the full year, compared with a net loss of US$1.76 million in 2014, attributable to increases in revenue and reduction in operating expenses. Note that these results do not include anything from the Motion Computing side, as Xplore only executed that acquisition on April 15. [See Xplore financials release] -- Posted Tuesday, June 30, 2015

The latest from Panasonic's Solutions for Business blog
The frequently updated Panasonic Solutions for Business blog is a constant source of interesting information on using rugged mobile technology in all sorts of deployments, from the commonplace all the way to the extreme. On the former side is a recent entry on the numerous ways RFID can benefit healthcare IT clients (see here). On the latter, an interesting account on how a 5-inch Panasonic Toughpad FZ-X1 handheld tablet was used to establish a working virtual machine in minutes... from the top of Mount Kilimanjaro (see here)! -- Posted Tuesday, June 30, 2015

IoT Evolution Expo — Learning about the Internet of Things
Our friends at FierceMobileIT remind that the IoT Evolution Expo will take place August 17 - 20, 2015, at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The purpose of the event is to meet with IoT ecosystem and worldwide business leaders and learn how to leverage the power of the IoT to transform and move your business forward. [See IoT Evolution Expo] -- Posted Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Honeywell announces rugged printer trade-in program
Honeywell AIDC announced a printer trade-in program for their rugged industrial, desktop and mobile printers. Depending on the model, maximum possible trade-in rebates are up to US$625. True-ins can be Intermec or any competitive printers. [See Honeywell printer trade-in program] -- Posted Thursday, June 25, 2015

Avalue introduces new Bay Trail-powered cost-effective 3.5-inch single board computer and COMe Compact module
Avalue Technology — which is an associate member of Intel Internet of Things Solutions Alliance — unveiled their new cost-effective SBC ECM-BYT2 3.5-inch single board computer and COMe Compact Module (3.7 x 3.7 inch) ESM-BYT2. Both are powered by either Intel Atom E3800 family or Intel Celeron J1900 system-on-chip professors, and are designed for intelligent systems and applications with low power consumption and high performance requirements. [See Avalue ECM-BYT2 and ESM-BYT2. -- Posted Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Why consumer tablets are not fit for industrial work
With many consumer tablets being so inexpensive, no one can blame enterprise and business customers for considering buying consumer tablet technology to save money. Problem is, in the long run low-cost products designed for consumer use rarely hold up out there in the field and on tough job. So what looked like a cost saving strategy can become very costly. Winmate's latest newsletter explains why consumer tablets are not fit for industrial work. [See Why are consumer tablets not fit for industrial work?] -- Posted Monday, June 22, 2015

8 reasons WHY the (Tablet) PC is thriving
In its blog, Xplore has been explaining why they believe tablets will be the PC form factor driving the predicted resurgence of the PC in the enterprise, as outlined in a recent InformationWeek article by Andrew Froehlich. In a new blog entry, Xplore's Bob Ashenbrenner shares eight reasons of his own for why the tablet PC is not only not dead, it's just as well positioned for growth in the coming year in many enterprise sectors as the traditional PC. [Read 8 reasons WHY the (Tablet) PC is thriving] -- Posted Friday, June 19, 2015

Esterline introduces recently acquired rugged display products
Having acquire the aerospace and defense display businesses of Barco N.V. in September 2014 (see press release), Esterline Corporation, a specialty aerospace and defense markets manufacturer, announced it is now introducing CODIS rugged displays and TREALITY simulation display technologies for use in the commercial aerospace, defense, and training markets. [See Esterline media release] -- Posted Sunday, June 14, 2015

Winchester adds mirroring to rugged removable disk arrays
Winchester Systems, a data storage solutions provider for COTS rugged storage and servers, announced that their RR2P Rugged Removable Canister disk arrays now offers Canister Mirroring. Each rugged removable canister holds ten 2.5" HDD or SSD drives with capacities up to 2 TB each. Canister Mirroring is implemented as RAID 10, where the same data is striped across all 10 drives in each canister. Striping is critical for read and write speeds, as all 10 drives in each canister are used in parallel. [See Winchester media release] -- Posted Friday, June 12, 2015

17 things to consider before buying a rugged handheld
People often ask us which rugged handheld to get. The answer is always "it depends." That's because every job and every project is different. Hardware that's perfect for one deployment may be completely unsuitable for another. The folks at Juniper Systems know that and just posted the "17 things to consider before buying a rugged handheld." -- Posted Friday, June 12, 2015

Revealing What Happens in Vegas...
You've heard the line "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas." It attracts 46 million visitors annually and they don't call it Sin City for nothing. Things happen that may be out of the ordinary for otherwise reserved people; things that are better left unspoken and thus, leaving no trace. MobileDemand CEO Matt Miller discusses some of the challenges of using consumer electronics for heavy-duty industrial jobs, and why rugged Windows tablets are a better choice. [Read Revealing What Happens in Vegas...] -- Posted Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Case study: Industrial PCs better serving the challenges of the food processing industry
Even cows are asking us to eat more chicken, and we're obliging. That means massive procedural and logistics demands for the whole "farm-to-fork" path that poultry processing plants face. Wet, humid, and cold are just a few of the environmental challenges that IT hardware typically has to overcome in the food processing industry. CAT2, a software company specializing in farm-to-fork traceability, was well aware of that when they chose noax S15 industrial Panel PCs. [See noax case study] - -- Posted Tuesday, June 9, 2015

RAM Mounting Systems and Socket Mobile collaborate on robust single-hand barcode scanning solution
Socket Mobile announced it is working with RAM Mounting Systems to address a need to connect, protect, house and charge its Socket Mobile Series 8 barcode scanner with popular devices such as the Apple iPhone, iPod Touch and Samsung Galaxy phones. This capability has been requested by end-users seeking a robust single handed solution for Apple and Android based devices. RAM has developed its patent pending IntelliSkin with Global Docking System (GDS) Technology to provide drop protection and an integrated rugged data and charge connector that’s compatible with any of its many GDS docks covering a variety of use cases.[See Socket news release] -- Posted Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Zebra Technologies introduces OneCare service portfolio to maximize visibility and availability of Zebra Solutions
Zebra Technologies Corporation announced the launch of Zebra OneCare, a portfolio of support services that maximize the uptime and availability of Zebra mobile computers, printers, bar code scanners, RFID devices and wireless LAN (WLAN) infrastructure. Zebra also introduced the Operational Visibility Service (OVS), a new managed service that provides a platform and dashboard for at-a-glance visibility into Zebra mobile device asset performance and operational business performance. [See Zebra OneCare and Operational Visibility Service pages] -- Posted Monday, June 8, 2015

MobileDemand: Five highlights of the new Microsoft Windows 10
MobileDemand's Ruggedized Computing Blog reports on highlights of the upcoming Microsoft Windows 10, which will be released July 29. MobileDemand summarizes Redmond's latest as "the Windows you know, only better" and comments on some other important areas of the new OS. [Read MobileDemand's Ruggedized Computing Blog: 5 Highlights of the New Microsoft Windows 10] -- Posted Monday, June 8, 2015

New: DT Research DT311 Series of rugged 11.6-inch tablets
DT Research also introduced the new 11.6-inch DT311 Series of rugged tablets that are available with either an Intel 5th generation "Broadwell" 2.4GHz Core i7 processor or a 1.5GHz Intel Celeron. Both versions come with 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and optional 4G LTE mobile broadband. The DT311's capacitive touch display offers 1920 x 1080 resolution, the battery is hot-swappable, and the IP65-sealed tablet weighs well under 3 pounds. [See description, analysis and specs of the DT Research DT311 Series] -- Posted Monday, June 8, 2015

New: DT Research DT398 rugged 9.7-inch Broadwell tablet
DT Research has introduced an updated version of its 9.7-inch DT398 rugged tablet. The new DT398H is based on an Intel 5th generation "Broadwell" 2.4GHz Core i7 processor, and also gets speedy 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, and optional 3G/4G LTE mobile broadband. Unlike the still available DT398B, the new version uses capacitive touch. [See description, analysis and specs of the DT Research DT398H] -- Posted Monday, June 8, 2015

Wearable market remained strong in the first quarter despite the pending debut of the Apple Watch, says IDC
According to IDC, the worldwide wearable market recorded its eighth consecutive quarter of growth in 1Q15. Vendors shipped a total of 11.4 million wearables in 1Q15, a 200.0% increase from the 3.8 million units shipped in 1Q14. In terms of marketshare, Fitbit, Xiaomi, Garmin, Samsung, and Jawbone were the top 5. While current devices primarily cover health and fitness, functionality is certain to soon include numerous other applications. [See IDC release] -- Posted Thursday, June 4, 2015

ADLINK announces Intel Braswell and Broadwell solutions
ADLINK announced several new solutions using the latest Intel Pentium, Celeron, and Core processors in conjunction with Intel’s Braswell and Broadwell-H launch at Computex in Taipei. These solutions include the cExpress-BW COM Express Basic Size Type 6 module and AmITX-BW-I Mini-ITX motherboard based on the latest Intel Pentium and Celeron Processors N3000 (codenamed Braswell), as well as the Express-BL COM Express Basic Size Type 6 module and cPCI-A3515 Series 3U CompactPCI Serial-compatible processor blade, both based on 5th generation Intel Core processors i7-5850EQ and i7-5700EQ (H-processor line). [See ADLINK releases on cExpress-BW and Express-BL & cPCI-A3515] -- Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2015

2015 IoT Evolution Expo August 17-20, 2015, in Las Vegas
The 2015 IoT Evolution Expo will take place August 17 to 20 at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas. The purpose of the event is to allow interested parties to join a worldwide community of IoT technologists, business leaders and strategists and learn how to leverage the power of the IoT to move your business forward. [See IoT Evolution Expo] -- Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2015

GE: Rugged GPU-enabled embedded computing can enable moon landing, exploration
GE announced that Team Astrobotic, in partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, is trying to win the Google Lunar XPRIZE. To secure the $30 million prize money, they need to land a spacecraft on the moon, and then send out a rover to capture high definition video and transmit it back to Earth. GE’s solution includes their MAGIC1 rugged display computer that's based on NVIDIA Tegra SoC technology and designed to enable high computing and image processing performance in applications that are size-, weight- and power-constrained, such as autonomous vehicles and robots. [See GE media release and video] -- Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Intel to acquire Altera for US$16.7 billion
Intel announced it will acquire Altera for US$16.7 billion. The attraction here is Altera's field-programmable gate array (FPGA, see Wiki) technology that promises considerable synergy in new classes of products in the data center and Internet of Things (IoT) market segments. Note that a few years back, Black Diamond Advanced Technologies offered the FPGA-based ultra-rugged SwitchBack (see review). -- Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2015

Avalue showcases latest IoT products at Computex Taipei
Embedded solutions provider Avalue Technology says the company is showcasing their latest products for Internet of Things applications during Computex Taipei 2015. Emphasis is on IoT healthcare solutions that connect devices, sensors, cloud services and data managements. Other solutions cover digital business, retail, hospitality, POS, and warehousing. Avalue also shows a semi-rugged Bay Trail tablet, in-vehicle and marine computers, and panel PCs. -- Posted Tuesday, June 2, 2015

What happened in rugged computing 5 years ago: June 2010
In June 2010 we reviewed Motion's new J3500 tablet with capacitive dual-touch. We alerted that Panasonic does not only make rugged computers, but also rugged cameras and reviewed the Lumix TS2. Motorola introduced the ES400 Enterprise Digital Assistant. RuggedPCReview presented at the Handheld Group Business Partner Conference, Stockholm, Sweden. Canada Post announced it was deploying more than 8,000 Intermec CN50s. Zebra released ab all-in-one printer/handheld for the Motorola MC70/75. Psion Teklogix added "Push-to" technology on its rugged mobile computers. Avalue released a rugged Intel Atom D510-based IPC. Getac upgraded their venerable E100 rugged tablet to a 1.6GHz Intel Atom chip. During a keynote address at Computex Taipei, Microsoft announced Windows Embedded Compact 7. LXE released four new Toughtalk headsets. And Datalogic Mobile and Ford Performance Racing formed a partnership. [See June 2010 news archive -- Posted Monday, June 1, 2015