Most of my customers started with E2's to get a low entry price. But the customers we support that have delivery drivers or route salesmen have found them to be a false economy. Many of these customer found they were replacing units every 6-9 months. I visited with one customer last month, and out of 6 units only one would align the digitizer properly, all due to rough handling. Right now his guys are putting up with it, since he cannot buy any new units. But Janam units are in his budget for this summer. In warehouses or restaurant usage I could not image the usage pattern would be much different. This is the same discussion I saw back when a Zire was available for under $100; it's just penny-wise and pound-foolish in my experience.
Janam will sell a color unit w/o scanner and Wifi, and I can match the Internet resellers and sell it for a price that's very close to the price of three E2 units. Over a three year period I estimate the Janam units will cut the TCO in half. And that's not counting the lost productivity due to a broken unit or the spare inventory a user had to stock. I run two small businesses so I understand the value of cash, but I also understand the value of a sound investment. As for doctor's, well that's an interesting group. If there was ever a bigger bunch of cheapskates who can absolutely afford whatever toy they desire, I've never met them. I've worked in the medical field before, and my experience is that if you sell them cheap, you've sold your soul. I listened to one guy tell me to my face that he could build a better system in 3 weekends or less, and run it on Zire units which I would not support. After whining and complaining for over an hour, he walked out and got into a car worth over $100K. I would never base any business plan around that group. BTW, the doc never ended up with a system. -----Original Message----- From: Ben Rittgers [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 9:31 PM To: Palm Developer Forum Subject: Re: Classic emulator interface on Palm Pre You are right. I support delivery drivers who use Palms as a Point of Sale device. Had a poor woman call that her E2 wouldn't digitize and Palm couldn't sell her one. She couldn't use a Unlocked Centro because a.) we don't support it, and b.) it won't hook to her printer. (Although I got one to work by jamming it against the leads on the printer and if she bought one I would tell her how to get it to work with our software, but we don't test on them.) My customers need PDA's. I redirected her to a reseller of refurbish Palms, but soon that source will dry up. We face the possibility of having to switch to Windows Mobile, and having the nightmare of supporting two platforms that the customers can't tell apart. (Trust me.) Cell phones do not work for delivery drivers. Janam has a Palm PDA for just such a use, but it cost $1500. Many of our customers are small family owned businesses that would rather buy or replace $200 or $300 PDAs as they break. Benjamin luis maldonado wrote: > Lee your comment about YOUR custmers not wanting to give up the phone > makes my point, these customers DO need both services and in that case > the phone/PDA combo wins hands down. Howerver, my comment was directed > towards those applications like restaurants, small warehouses, doctors > and others where the phone is NOT necessary and the PDA is only used for > data collection, then the phone is an EXTRA charge for a data collector > unit. In some of these areas a 200.00 unit is what the doctor ordered.... > > Luis, -- For information on using the ACCESS Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.access-company.com/developers/forums/ -- For information on using the ACCESS Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.access-company.com/developers/forums/
