Mdt's And Radios?

[w4rez]

You are putting too much emotion into your OS selection.

Emotion has little to do with it. It's having enough experience to know what works well and what does not.

I have been hearing the same story about Linux on the desktop since 1995. It is not going to happen.

It will eventually happen. The Roman and Ottoman Empires fell and so will Microsoft's.

The MDT space started with dedicated purpose terminals and embedded OS systems. It has evolved past that point. I am not saying you are wrong, I am just suggesting you expand your understanding of these systems.

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I'm not saying that we go back to the days of Motorola 9100 terminals. Those days are long gone. However, maybe we're evolving faster than we should? This doesn't just apply to MDCs but to our obsession with technology in general. For example: While I like the extra features that come with digital cell phones, I hate the voice quality. I wish we could've stuck with analog until a better way of doing digital voice was developed.

What applications are really necessary to run on a MDC? The ones I can think of are: a) An interface to NCIC. b) A CAD/Mapping program c) Instant Messaging/E-Mail. What else is there? What is so complicated about any of them that prevents them from being run on an embedded system that's customized and optimized for the task(s) at hand?

 

[N_Jay]

Emotion has little to do with it. It's having enough experience to know what works well and what does not.

I don't doubt your experience, but I certainly don't doubt the experience of the people designing these systems and working with them on a daily basis either.
Never stop gaining experience, never start thinking yours invalidates others.

It will eventually happen. The Roman and Ottoman Empires fell and so will Microsoft's.

Not the issue. I would bet that MS will be superseded some day, and I bet it is not by any of today's "likely candidates".
Read "The Innovator's Dilemma" for some insight into one technology superseding another.

I'm not saying that we go back to the days of Motorola 9100 terminals. Those days are long gone. However, maybe we're evolving faster than we should? This doesn't just apply to MDCs but to our obsession with technology in general.

In some ways I agree, but even if we return to a non PC MDT/MDC it will not be what you are I expect today.

For example: While I like the extra features that come with digital cell phones, I hate the voice quality. I wish we could've stuck with analog until a better way of doing digital voice was developed.

Digital cellular was not implemented for features. It was implemented for capacity. There was no time to wait in many markets.

What applications are really necessary to run on a MDC? The ones I can think of are: a) An interface to NCIC. b) A CAD/Mapping program c) Instant Messaging/E-Mail. What else is there? What is so complicated about any of them that prevents them from being run on an embedded system that's customized and optimized for the task(s) at hand?

Report writing, Database look up, a whole host of image applications, all of which would have to be developed individually if the industry did not use a standard OS.

 

[w4rez]

I don't doubt your experience, but I certainly don't doubt the experience of the people designing these systems and working with them on a daily basis either.
Never stop gaining experience, never start thinking yours invalidates others.

The people designing these systems are restricted in ways that I am not. I imagine they're told "use this OS and make it work so we can get it out the door and make some moolah and make our shareholders happy."

Not the issue. I would bet that MS will be superseded some day, and I bet it is not by any of today's "likely candidates".
Read "The Innovator's Dilemma" for some insight into one technology superseding another.

Microsoft's successor may not be RedHat or Apple or IBM but I'm almost willing to bed that whoever they are, their core OS will be derived from one of the unix variants. If not, then something like AT&T's Plan 9. My reasoning is: Unix is time-tested, proven, and pretty much infinitely extensible. Plan 9 is extremely innovative.

In some ways I agree, but even if we return to a non PC MDT/MDC it will not be what you are I expect today.

My idea of the perfect non-PC MDC would be an extremely easy to use, reliable appliance-like device. The user interface would share many similarities with some of the better POS systems out there today, but would go beyond that in terms of functionality.

Digital cellular was not implemented for features. It was implemented for capacity. There was no time to wait in many markets.

This is true and again serves as an example of how our demands are growing faster than the technology to support those demands.

Report writing, Database look up, a whole host of image applications, all of which would have to be developed individually if the industry did not use a standard OS.

Yeah I thought about report writing almost as soon as I hit the Submit button. Still none of this is particularly difficult to develop cross platform applications to support. There's a host of development libraries that make it quite easy to write such code with a minimal of OS specific code.

Is there a trade organization for companies that develop these systems? If one could form something similar to the APCO P25 working group, but for MDC systems, then you could develop a system on an "alternative" OS and still have all of the vendors on the same page while abandoning the inferior MS platform at the same time. Unfortunately, as has been seen with P25 standardizing on IMBE, such an endeavor wouldn't guarantee that the standards would be free of proprietary technology.

 

[datainmotion]

Again, none of this matters until the software vendors have x amount of customers demanding this O/S. And frankly, most departments could care less about the mobile O/S.

And furthermore, let's hypothesize about another "open" O/S becoming the standard for the masses. Someone figures out how to make it propietary and no longer free. As it gets to gargantuan proportions and becomes everything it was previously the anithesis to, it will become just like MS.

And then what will we complain about?

 

[w4rez]

Again, none of this matters until the software vendors have x amount of customers demanding this O/S. And frankly, most departments could care less about the mobile O/S.

They really shouldn't have to care about the mobile OS as long as it works and works well. In my opinion Microsoft's offerings fall short in this department in far too many ways.

And furthermore, let's hypothesize about another "open" O/S becoming the standard for the masses. Someone figures out how to make it propietary and no longer free.

I really have no problem with this. One of my favorite OSen to play with at home for a long time, back when I still tinkered with such things, was Irix, which was pretty damn far from free. I got a "deal" on my Irix 6.5 CDs when I paid $180 for them.

I also have no problems with taking a freely available OS and making a commercial product out of it, if the software license allows one to legally do so. The BSD variants have such a license. If a vendor were to base their proprietary OSen (that's a dumb term but to me it looks better than OS's or OSs) on NetBSD they'd have a damn good foundation to build their own proprietary OS upon and not have all of the Microsoft cruft to deal with.

As it gets to gargantuan proportions and becomes everything it was previously the anithesis to, it will become just like MS.

This does not necessarily have to happen. Mac OS X has grown to gargantuan proportions and while people (including myself) do complain about Apple as a company, I don't hear (or have) many complaints about Mac OS X.

And then what will we complain about?

We will complain about municipalities that insist upon encrypting the dogcatcher.

 

[Rayjk110]

I think what matters is that the OS works.


In my personal opinion, I hate Mac's, and MacOS. I don't care if I'm into linux and mac is a variant of Unix, so what, just in my opinion, I'm not a mac guy, by any means. But if it made the MDT work, then so be it.

 

[datainmotion]

We will complain about municipalities that insist upon encrypting the dogcatcher.

:lol: :lol: :lol: