Peaks and Plains Housing Trust is now using Motorola PDAs running Windows Mobile 6.5 and MobiControl device management software from SOTI for its 80 mobile workers, following recommendations from Spirit Data Capture.
Simon Penaluna, assistant director of ICT, Peaks and Plains Housing Trust, said, “We wanted mobile devices that would be semi-rugged and could be used as a phone as well as a PDA. We also wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t reach the end of their life within two months of buying them.”
The selection of the new mobile system was based on greater resilience to knocks and drops than the housing provider’s previous mobile devices, better reception in areas with poor network reception and longer battery life. In addition, the choice of mobile device was limited because Peaks and Plains’ housing management system only runs on the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system.
Penaluna said, “The reception from the Motorola device is much better than the others we tried, and it’s very robust and reliable – in my opinion, the ES400 is the best Windows Mobile 6.5 device available. The Motorola units link into Outlook to provide access to emails and also link into our housing management system, which communicates information about jobs to and from the operatives.
“MobiControl allows us to restrict access to the different aspects of the devices and to take control of them from the office if there are any problems. This cuts the cost of support for our IT team as it avoids the need for them to either travel to the operative or to get the operative to return to the office to resolve the issues.”
