All together now

When a forester takes one of our handhelds out to do a timber cruise, he may be using multiple technologies, but it all has to work together as one integrated system. That’s the message I got from talking with customers at the Winning Technologies in Forestry trade show earlier this year. They want the electronic maps, GPS, inventory management software and handheld computer to all work together seamlessly.

And with our forest industry partner LandMark Systems, we’ve done just that. LandMark’s RTI real-time inventory package combines our rugged handheld and SOLO Forest software with Tcruise forestry software and GPS. To the forester, though, it’s all one system. And that’s what counts.

Something else I learned at the show is the ruggedness we built into our handhelds has become the accepted standard. Most foresters know the Ranger and Recon work in the woods, so I get fewer questions about their specs. Occasionally, I’ll talk to a customer from Canada who might ask because “it gets pretty cold here, you know.” For the record, their operating temperature ranges from -22 to 140°F (-30 to 60°C).