The total mobile office - Page 2

Connected PDA
For those who want email on the move and some of the functionality of, say, Microsoft Office, a PDA offers a flexible and pocket-sized alternative to the BlackBerry.
PDAs come in two distinct flavours – those with Microsoft Windows operating systems and those that use the Palm OS.

The vast majority of PDAs do not boast any direct means to connect to mobile networks but you can use them to collect email or surf the web by hooking them up to mobile phones. The connection between the two devices can be made wirelessly using a system known as Bluetooth (both phone and PDA must be equipped with Bluetooth chips) or by lining up their infrared ports to transfer data.

However, some PDAs have built-in communications facilities. For instance, O2’s XDA has full Microsoft PDA functionality, as has T-Mobile’s recently launched MDA range. Both of these run on GPRS networks but not 3G.

There are certain advantages to running Microsoft or Palm-based machines. For one thing, they come equipped with an Outlook application that can be synched to your office system, enabling staff on the road to share not only emails but calendar and contact details just as you would if everyone was in the office. You can also download attachments.

A variation on this theme is Orange’s SPV C500 smartphone, which although not quite a full-blooded PDA runs Outlook and will synch with the office system.
To do this your office network must be running Microsoft’s Exchange Server. But as Mike Grady, SME group manager, business solutions at Orange points out: “Many businesses have Exchange Server anyway, so the investment has already been made.”

Laptops
PDAs are a great solution if all you want is to manage contacts, input a limited amount of data or edit files on the move. However, no-one would pretend they are a substitute for the office computer. If that’s what you need, then the only solution is to pack a laptop when you hit the road.

The simplest way to connect a laptop to the web is to use one of the so-called 3G cards supplied by the mobile phone companies. Designed to slot into laptop PCII ports, these devices will enable you and your computer to access the internet at speeds of around 300 to 400 megabits per second across 3G phone networks – in other words, they are just a tad slower than a standard broadband connection.

However, that’s not the whole story. The mobile networks have concentrated their broadband roll-out on urban areas and there are whole swathes of the country where data speeds are limited by an older network technology known as GPRS. It’s not unusable – speeds are just under those achievable on a 56kbs dial-up modem – but anyone used to broadband will notice a marked reduction in performance.

And unless your forays out of the office never take you beyond the reach of conurbations, you will need to access the mobile networks using both GPRS and 3G technology. For instance, on a train journey between London and Glasgow you could pass out of 3G coverage into GPRS and then back again a number of times. 3G wireless cards are designed to make this transition seamlessly by automatically switching band according to network status. In other words, you won’t lose your connection.

So how do you decide between email enabled phone, BlackBerry, PDA or laptop? As Phil Ledward, head of business data at O2 points out, your decision will come down to a number of factors. “It’s a case of what you do, how often you do it and whether or not you want to store information locally,” he says.