Honeywell has announced the retirement of the Dolphin 9900 and Dolphin 7600. In both cases, orders will only be accepted until either Feb 29th 2012 or June 30 2012 (Depending on SKU) with final orders shipping before June 30 2012 or Dec 30 2012.

Z-Space Technologies will be closing Friday Dec 23rd at Noon, and closed Monday Dec 26th. In addition, we will be closing at Noon on Friday Dec 30th and closed on Monday Jan 2nd. Happy Holidays!

Read the latest ITScriptNet News for December here!

We will be closed Thursday and Friday for the Thanksgiving holiday. Happy Thanksgiving and we will be back in the office on Monday morning!

Microsoft has announced some information about the future of Windows on embedded devices. Apparently the next version of embedded Windows will be called Windows Embedded Standard v.Next. Windows Embedded Compact 7 will be available until then. this appears to be a path towards merging Windows CE and Windows Desktop in Windows 8. This makes sense since Windows 8 will support ARM processors, so a version that can run on hand-held devices and tablets seems logical.

Datalogic has announced a new Vehicle-mount computer, called the Rhino. This computer features a 640x480 (Landscape) display, Windows CE 6.0, and Wifi. An Ethernet port is optional.

Honeywell has just announced a color imager for the Xenon product line. This imager will support taking color images and scanning colored barcodes. At this time, the imager appears to be supported on the scanner line only, but may make its way into the Mobile Computing line in the future.

If you are attending Vartech 2011 in Miami, stop by and see us! We hope to see you there!

Honeywell has announced that they are purchasing EMS, parent company of LXE. This adds another line of Mobile Computers to the Honeywell family. One of the unique offerings of LXE is a Freezer unit line, which include heating elements to run in very cold environments.

Honeywell has introduced a new device, called the Dolphin 6000. This device is an extremely small form-factor device, similar to a smartphone, but with a laser scan engine.

We have a device in house and are working on ITScriptNet support.

Honeywell has launched the ISV Store we discussed a few weeks ago. We have several products listed on the store, and we will be adding more as time goes on. You can read the press release here.

Datalogic Mobile has announced that the new Elf device is now available in Windows CE, joining the existing Windows Mobile Elf version. Interestingly, the Windows CE Elf will be availble with a QVGA display, instead of the full VGA display used for Windows Mobile. Datalogic says that is to maximize backward compatibility with the J-Series and Pegaso devices.

We will be adding support for the Windows CE Elf to ITScriptNet, but in the mean time you could use the Pegaso CE client on this device and we expect it will work.

Honeywell has announced that it will support Windows Embedded Handheld 6.5 on the Dolphin 6100 and 6500 along with Windows CE 5.0. We have a Dolphin 6500 with WEH6.5 in-house, and support is being added to ITScriptNet in our next release.

Honeywell is starting an ISV store where they will have live demos of ISV applications. We are putting together demos of some of our Solution Packs and Ready-To-Go Applications for the store. Yesterday Honeywell launched an ISV Store blog. We'll keep an eye on that as the store moves forward.

At the MMS conference in Las Vegas, Microsoft has announced some new tools for managing Windows Mobile and Windows Embedded devices. Once of these called System Center Configuration Manager 2012, and is used to manage devices that connect to Exchange Server, including Windows Embedded, iOS, and Android devices. In addition, a new version of Windows Embedded Device Manager is coming, which will help large organizations manage their fleet of Windows Embedded devices.

Honeywell has just introduced the Dolphin 99EX mobile computer. We have had a pair of these devices in-house for a few weeks, and we are adding support to ITScriptNet. They are very impressive!

Datalogic has posted an article discussing the best practices to maximize battery life on their mobile computers. They emphasize reducing the backlight brightness and the use of the WiFi and WWAN radios. There is also a discussion of battery charging practices.

The National Inventors Hall of Fame has announced that Joe Woodland and Bernard Silver, inventors of the optically scanned barcode, are being inducted. In addition, the inventors of the Digital Camera (Steve Sasson) and the CMOS imager (Eric Fossum and the team at JPL) are being inducted as well. Congratulation, and thanks for making Automatic ID possible!

Via the Raco Pulse, here are three RFID myths addressed by Ray Cronin, Intermec Vice President and General Manager of RFID, at the RFID Live conference.

According to the presentation, RFID read rates and reliability now rival traditional bar codes, but still compliment barcodes instead of replacing them.

Psion has changed its name from Psion/Teklogix to just Psion.

Motorola has introduced an upgrade of the popular MC9090 line, called the MC9190. In much the same way that they upgraded the MC55 with new hardware, this device maintains backward-compatibility with the MC9090 accessories, but improves the device with higher-performance processors and memory.

We expect the ITScriptNet MC9090 client to run unmodified on this new device, and we will test as soon as we can.

We will be exhibiting during the Partner Showcase at Intermec’s North America Sales Kickoff event in Tucson, AZ Wednesday, January 26th. If you are attending the event, be sure to stop by and see us!

Intermec has announced the 70 series of mobile computers. This is a complete line of devices in 4 different form factors, from a full size flashlight-style device to a smaller, PDA-sized unit. All four devices share a common set of specifications, and are based on Windows Mobile 6.5.3. This commonality should make management of devices easier, while allowing different form factors for different applications.

The model names are CN70, CN70e, CK70 and CK71.

Read the latest ITScriptNet News to find out what's new at Z-Space!

Motorola Solutions has introduced a new version of the MC55 mobile computer. This new version (MC55A0) has a faster processor, larger memory size, and increased ruggedness and than the previous generation (MC5590). You can compare the features here.

Motorola has been going through the process of splitting into two companies for a while now. The split is finally official. The mobile computer business is in the Motorola Solutions company. As of today, the website points to http://www.motorolasolutions.com.

From all of us at Z-Space Technologies, we want to wish you a safe and happy holiday season, and a Happy New Year!

Our office hours for the holiday season are:

• Closed all day Friday, Dec 24th
• Closed all day Monday, Dec 27th
• Closed all day Friday, Dec 31st

Our normal office hours resume on January 3rd, 2011.

Datalogic has announced that it will be showing the Falcon X3 at NRF in January. The National Retail Show takes place January 10-11th in New York City. We are looking forward to seeing this new device!

Honeywell has announced the retirement of the Dolphin 7850. Last orders for the device will be accepted until Feb 25, 2011. The final ship date is May 2, 2011.

We will maintain support for this device in ITScriptNet 3.x, but will likely remove support in future versions.

We will be closed on Thursday, Nov 25th and Friday, Nov 26th for the Thanksgiving holiday. The office will be open again on Monday, Nov 29th.

Honeywell AIDC and Zebra Technologies have announced a sales and marketing partnership. It appears the idea is to allow each company's products to be available through the distribution channels of the other, and presumably each company will recommend the others hardware when selling systems.

Here is a post from Raco Industries that explains the IP Rating scheme, used to quantify how dust and water resistant a mobile device is.

We've discussed the factors that affect the performance of mobile devices, and one of the factors is the speed of the Flash Memory used by the device. Now, Elpida Memory Inc and Sharp Corporation claim to be developing a new memory technology that could be 10,000 times faster than todays chips. If this technology becomes available, it could lead to significant performance improvements for mobile computing!

We will be exhibiting at the Honeywell Scanning and Mobility North American Partner Event, October 26-28 in Las Vegas. If you are attending this event, come see us at the ISV Solution Fair, where we wil be showing our latest offerings on Honeywell hardware. Contact us for more information!

Motorola has announced two new devices: The MC65 and the MC959B.

The MC65 is the next generation EDA device, similar to the MC55 but running Windows Mobile 6.5.

The MC959B is in the MC9500 line, but includes both GSM and CDMA radio capability.

Here is a video on the new Intermec CS40, giving a good feel for its size.

Have you ever noticed that most popular wireless communications methods use 2.4GHz? This includes Wifi (802.11), BlueTooth, cordless phones, and more? Gizmodo provides a very understandable explanation. Basically, it turns out that the 2.4 GHz band of the RF spectrum was set aside by the FCC for unlicensed communications (this means you don't need an FCC license to run your WiFi Access Point or BlueTooth headset). Furthermore, because all of these systems use frequency-hopping technology (which means the radios check a particular frequency to make sure it is open before transmitting), you can have multiple products running in the same physical area without interference from each other.

We are exhibiting at Vartech 2010 in Cincinnati today. We are in both #816. We hope everyone enjoys the show!

Are you going to Vartech 2010 in Cincinnati? If you do, be sure to stop by and see us! We will be demonstrating several exciting products, and Tim will be giving a presentation. We hope to see you there!

GS1 Databar is going to be phased into Grocery and Retail applications starting in Jan, 2011. GS1 Databar is a stacked symbology, meaning it requires an Imager to read and decode. A Laser scanner will not be able to read it. Are you prepared for the transition?

We have posted the July ITScriptNet News. Read about the updates to Solution Packs and new Ready-To-Go applications in the works.

Motorola has filed paperwork to split into two companies. The Enterprise division (formerly Symbol) that produces portable data collection devices will be in the 'Motorola Solutions' company, along with the Networking business. The Mobile Devices and Home and divisions will be the new Motorola Mobility company.

The press release can be found here.

Here is an interesting article on recycling depleted mobile device batteries. Most devices use Lithium-Ion batteries these days, and these are very hazardous to the environment if simply thrown in the trash. The right thing to do is to recycle them properly. Call2Recycle is expanding their pick-up program with a new collection box. Make sure to dispose of your batteries responsibly!