The UMPC Arrives

A couple of years ago I started seeing articles on a new style of PC that was smaller than a laptop but still ran a full version of Windows. I figured that these new devices would be perfect for taking ZonePro out into the field for inspections; more portable than a laptop and more useful than a PDA. I was excited about the prospect, but the hardware never arrived...until now. Yesterday I installed ZonePro for a new customer, the City of Ashtabula, and discovered that they have ordered Samsung UMPCs for their housing inspectors to use in the field. UMPC is a Microsoft acronym for Utra-Mobile PC. I had a chance to look over one of their devices and was impressed. If you want to learn more about thes little marvels a good place to start is Microsoft's web site: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/umpc/default.mspx.

Customer Service Kudos

This week we had a customer who added some new modules to their ZonePro installation and ran into a few problems. We fixed the problems right away via e-mail and received this positive feedback:

"Everything looks like it is working now.I just want to say that the most impressive feature of ZonePro is your customer service.Our Finance Department struggles almost daily with their billing software. A problem like you just fixed would take their service techs a whole day or days to fix. Even simple changes like printing a document in landscape instead of letter head are deemed impossible by the people who sold us the software. You either tell me how to do something or tell me it can't be done and why. Very simple and honest. I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate how good you are at what you do. Thanks."

Holiday Pie

Is there anthing better than pie for the holidays? Now you'll be able to have pie all the time! In the next release I'm adding pie charts to the Activity Report, Item Count Report and Cross Tab Report screens. You've had the option of printing bar charts on these screens for some time. Now you can print pie charts too. Both charting options will be listed in the "Output" drop-down boxes at the top of the report screens. Hmm, hmmm, tasty!