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This Network World Fusion <http://www.nwfusion.com> article was sent to you by Danny
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http://www.nwfusion.com/archive/2001/122709_07-16-2001.html :
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A report from the fieldBy John Cox
Network World, 07/16/01
The early word from Sun's field engineers is that the Linux-based handheld devices it
has started rolling out are pretty handy.
"I'm pleased with it," says Freddy Mock, a Sun field engineer in Denver, and one of
the first beta users of Sun's Field Service Appliance. Some of the beta users,
ex-IBMers, are calling it the Brick, after an old IBM portable device.
"I like the flow of it. We get all the information for [the job assignment], and we
can update the call as we progress," Mock says. "And the supervisor has
up-to-the-minute information on the call right on his desktop computer."
He carries it in a belt pouch and keys in his user ID and password to use the
applications. The 19.2K bit/sec speed of the CDPD cellular net is much slower than a
10M bit/sec LAN, but adequate, according to Mock. The on-screen graphical user
interface uses a flock of abbreviations and "you have to remember them," he says.
Mock says he can now quickly add notes on a repair job via the handheld's on-screen or
plug-in keyboards, and this information is uploaded to the field engineering databases
when he reconnects to the network.
"If the customer site crashes again, then the engineers online can see, 'Well, Freddy
did this thing, we can therefore check this other thing,'" he says. "In the past, I'd
carry that data around for maybe two days. They'd have to call me or page me, and ask
me what I'd done."
Copyright 2001 Network World, Inc. All rights reserved
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