Small Tablet Proves Easy To Swallow

I found a Viliv S5 on my desk this morning to play with – our bright new hope in the field of wireless device solutions.

The Viliv is a tablet-style handheld PC basically – not much bigger than a PDA itself. It has a 4.8” touchscreen and a 1.33GHz processer; the idea here, for us, is to phase out the need for a completely different device to be used in a hospitality environment (to start with). This means we can centralise and standardise our software, removing the need to cater for PDA applications (cab files) and web services. This device communicates directly to the Amicus database via its built in wireless adapter.

To cater for its unique resolution, we revamped our full/touch screens (sales, finalising and login). The buttons might prove a bit fiddly on a 4.8” display for the fat-fingered among us, but most of us in the office seemed to navigate around alright, and with a stylus pen it proved very easy to use.

Since a full version of Amicus is running on it, anything is possible. Take sales (even cash; you could look into getting a Bluetooth barcode scanner that could dump its results straight to the device, and strap a wireless receipt printer to your belt. Bang, you have a mobile till), place meal orders or edit stock.

It’s very mobile, light and cradles in your forearm nicely. Not designed to be drop proof though, like some other rugged PDA’s, so make sure people have their strap on tightly whenever it is in their hands.

The manufacturer boasts a 6-hour battery usage life, which is more than enough to get you through a service (really depends on what you’re running on it). I can imagine it might be a bit shorter if you decided to run a redundant SQL server database on the device itself. Charging is done by plugging in a power pack into the side. A USB port also resides there, which was helpful for me being able to plug in a keyboard to install Amicus.

I tested the unit on a template database by running through a few sales, doing some table management and flicking over to a redundant database hosted on the device. I couldn’t notice any notable performance problems. I had some difficulties trying to reach things at the very top of the screen with my finger (not a problem with a stylus). An on screen keyboard is accessible from a button on the side.