Written by James Hartley
Many of you may have heard the development team at TWO MEN AND A TRUCK®/INTERNATIONAL, Inc. has been working on a Movers Who Care® 2 Disconnected Application (MWC2DA). If you haven’t, no worries, I am going to give a brief explanation.
The MWC2DA started out as a tool that would allow our customer service representatives (CSRs) to keep scheduling moves in the event that an Internet outage occurs. Its current functionality will allow users to look up and edit customers and estimates up to 90 days back while in disconnected mode. It will also allow the user to create new customers and estimates. Once the host computer has an Internet connection, it will synchronize new or edited records with the MWC2 database. Once this application is fully developed and in production, it will provide a safety net to ensure our customers are being serviced.
MWC2DA can also be a useful tool for our in-home estimators. Imagine how easy it will be for them to create an estimate and automatically synchronize that estimate to the MWC2 database upon returning to the office. To make things even easier, MWC2DA can be installed on Windows 8 tablets. These devices typically have a small form factor and better than average battery life. According to David Robinson, software developer on this project, the system requirements are very modest. To run the disconnected application at optimal performance, he recommends the following: Intel Core i3 processor or higher, 4GB of RAM, 500MB of free disk space, and Intel Integrated Graphics 4000.
We have been getting a lot of questions lately as to which tablets currently on the market are compatible with MWC2DA. Parker Olson, a member of the test team, has compiled a list of all the Windows 8 tablets to help answer these questions. I have taken that list and further organized based on hardware specifications. The following list is broken down into three categories: Incompatible, Non Optimal, and Optimal. Please note that these prices were collected at the time this list was made; they are subject to change.
The Incompatible category is comprised of Windows 8 tablets that will not work with the disconnected application. This is because they are using ARM based processors that will not allow the installation of desktop applications. They are only capable of running applications downloaded from the Windows App Store.
The Non Optimal category is comprised of Windows 8 tablets that will work with the disconnected application. However, because of the hardware used in these tablets they may be prone to slow performance. This is especially true when trying to multi-task.
The Optimal category is comprised of Windows 8 tablets that will work with the disconnected application. Furthermore, these tablets will run at optimal performance. Users can multi-task without worrying about performance issues with the tablets hardware.
Please note that Home Office is not recommending any particular brand of Windows 8 tablet. This list is only to serve as a guide to what hardware will provide users with the best performance when running MWC2 disconnect and web application.
Thank you for following me on Movers Who Care and Blog. Please keep an eye out for more blogs from me in the near future. Also, if there is a topic you would like me to write about please feel free to email me with requests at james.hartley@twomen.com. Please put Blog Suggestions in the subject line.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: James Hartley is a application/software tester in the Technology Support department at TWO MEN AND A TRUCK/INTERNATIONAL, Inc.
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