Trimble unveils rugged lineup of Nomad handheld computers
By Darren Murph 
posted Jul 17th 2007 10:32AM
posted Jul 17th 2007 10:32AM
If Trimble's Juno ST PDA wasn't rugged enough to handle your oh-so-critical field duties (or unexpected drink spills), you'll be thrilled to know that the firm has you on the brain. The Nomad lineup of handheld computers weigh just 21-ounces, are designed to "fit comfortably in a user's hand," and pack a fairly decent array of specifications. Internally, you'll find an 806MHz processor, 128MB of RAM, and optionally, you can tack on integrated Bluetooth, GPS, a bar code scanner, two-megapixel camera, and 802.11g; additionally, an SDIO and CF slot, up to 1GB of flash memory, a daylight-visible VGA touchscreen, Windows Mobile 6, and a rechargeable Li-ion are on board. Trimble is offering up four separate Nomad 800 flavors depending on your level of necessity (and budget), all of which can be found real soon ranging from $1,699 to $2,499.
It's survey gear boys and girls. Unless you are doing land survey don't count on this little item being very useful as it's going to be custom tailored for working with Trimble's Survey Stations (total stations run around $21k and that's a hell of a cost for a required accessory) and likely isn't going to have uses other than such. So in other words if your daily job isn't land surveying this isn't much of an announcement.
PDA doesn't always mean what tech blogs think it does. And honestly what is with all the coverage of the transportation engineering/construction field without regard to any understanding of it. The least you could do is get a staff member that has the ability to look up what business Trimble (and realize they are in that business and are not branching out into PDA sales to the general populace) is in before you get some geeks hopes up.
in response to Trent:
The Nomad is really a PDA. It can do anything something like a Dell or HP PDA can do with the addition that you can drop it and dunk it in water! And it is one of the first Windows Mobile 6 devices on the market. It is really a generic windows mobile platform that is made by Trimble that can be bought with specialized surveying software (or not), but really any sort of windows mobile developer could write any sort of application for this thing and would not be limited to the office to use it...
check out http://www.outdoorrugged.com for more info
As the product manager for the Nomad, I can tell you without hesitation that the Nomad was NOT designed for Surveyors only, but for anybody who needs state of the art mobile technology in outdoor situations. This is not primarily a device for consumers, but for people who are working in the field and need a dependable full-featured PDA to collect data and run applications.