Hi Mike,
(First off, thanks for the kind words! I am happy to keep this thread active as long as people find it useful.)
You bring up some great points - thanks for bringing them to the surface. My own take on 4G in the field is that it is valuable and worth the cost. I'm afraid, however, that I have let my perception on the value to fee appraisers from (much) earlier days lead me to not cover this topic in recent months. This is wrong of me, and I will take your suggestion and run with it. I already cover 4G items extensively for our Enterprise customers, who feel it is necessary in many (growing quickly to most) environments, due primarily to the way their software works. I'll boil it down and tailor my commentary toward a more "self employed fee appraiser" set of parameters in a future (series of) posts.
With respect to your comments on the particular combination of chipsets used, I would agree with your general observations. In the "race" to get Win 8 devices to the market, manufacturers have made blunders (IMHO), throwing in features more from a "spec sheet" perspective than a "truly useful (and reliable) in the field" perspective. I'm looking at YOU, Mr. 16:9 glossy screen!" ;-) That said, I see the situation beginning to show signs of fruitful changes with a few of the more recent devices. You'd think that ENGINEERS would understand these things and be able to overrule stupid (my acerbic terminology here) marketing types and do things the right way in the first place...
(
Note, true GPS geeks don't need to obsess over my wording here - this is written as more of a "layman's guide.") Anyway, true GPS does not require a cellular connection, but the availability of cellular certainly has an impact on how well a GPS feature works in the field with your average user. The type of GPS that uses a cellular connection is generically known as "A-GPS" (various definitions essentially define the "A" as being for "Assisted") and this basically helps the "real GPS" system cull out inappropriate items - it essentially narrows the focus down to your rough location based on "triangulating" (not really, but essentially) cell phone transponders which have known locations. "Real GPS", does take several minutes to locate the required number of satellites (varies between 3 and 7+), reconcile the various stream data and then fire an event to some "app" which can show you things in a graphical manner ("map.") A lot of the time, people with Windows devices tend to (unnecessarily) turn OFF their devices, which of course means when you fire up the device, you have to go through the whole process again. With "pads", we don't really turn them OFF - we put them in a "sleep" mode, so they remain active and can keep stuff in memory and even poll certain services to refresh applicable info. Email, tweets, Facebook, etc. are common examples of "services" that most folks leave running when they "turn off their phones/pads." Anyway, in the "Windows world", people tend to shut down their laptops/tablets vs. put them in sleep mode - mainly because they want to extend their battery life, secondarily due to just "habit." Anyway, you likely glean the root of the problem with most people using Windows devices, right? So, what to do?
In today's world, we use "Connected Standby" and only the last couple of generations of chips and OS/drivers support this feature in meaningful ways. Actually, "Connected Standby" is old terminology, but I use it here because it is still the most common nomenclature and thus you can search for additional info using that terminology, if desired. Here is a link to a pretty good (and short!) post on the various power states for modern Windows devices:
http://www.thewindowsclub.com/system-sleep-states-windows-8 Knowing about and understanding the basics would help some make sure their devices are configured and set up properly.
You folks may remember me writing about there being a delay in getting the 64-bit build of Win 8 onto Bay Trail devices - this was primarily a MS/Intel issue where Connected Standby wasn't working on that platform. This has since been resolved, though you may see various posts, etc. where folks were complaining that their (say) shiny new Surface Pro 3 was having WiFi issues, or was eating battery or locking up when coming out of sleep. There have been several updates which have progressively gotten things to a proper working state now. Anyway, Connected Standby (and the availability of same in newer devices) is essentially the "missing link" which will allow users with recent Windows 8 tablets to reliably "sleep" their devices (vs. turn them OFF) and thus keep a lock on GPS satellites (software and your settings allowing, of course - it does no good if YOU disable this stuff, LOL), get email, tweets, etc.
To add to (past) issues, it has been tough to find Windows Tablets which even OFFER a 4G option, and the few that were offered were not generally carried by "big box" stores since their focus is on "consumer grade" (vs. business grade) devices - flashy stuff, not "work" stuff. Today, there are still just a FEW manufacturers who offer a 4G option - HP, Lenovo, Dell, to name the top players - but unless you dig down into the options menu, most would not likely find it. MS doesn't even offer an SP3 model with 4G - it is (was?) only available for the WRT-based Surface models... :-\ My conversations with various manufacturers leads me to have hope that we'll see this situation improve slightly in coming months. In the meantime, I a, happy to report on units which I have tested and offer a 4G option.
I have (personally) taken to using my cell phone in "tethered" mode simply because I go through a LOT of devices during a year and dealing with various carriers (these guys are horrible to work with in this particular situation of changing tablets almost weekly) is a royal PITA. In MY situation the "tether" works particularly well, but I don't think that MOST users carry the phone(s) I do, and I have not bothered to test how well it works on a "mixed platform" (iOS/Android) and we all know that neither Apple nor Google has any appreciable interest in making things convenient to users who do not go "all in" with THEIR platform... Arrrghhhh! Anyway, I "tether" simply out of convenience - it works and works well for ME for testing 4G type things. That said, most of my customers work within a "mixed platform" and they are not reluctant to commit to a separate data plan for their Tablets. Hence I test them - I just don't report that stuff here - my mistake!
You seem to be interested in 4G tablets, so I will post on this shortly. I have a funeral to attend tomorrow, so I'll be away for a bit, but maybe by this weekend (?) FWIW, I have ordered my new V11P with built-in 4G since it is one of the units certain customers are desiring to deploy on a wide scale. We have an HP EP1000 with 4G now and I personally modified my TP10 to add the parts enabling 4G. It is frustrating that Lenovo STILL doesn't offer it built-in here in North America, especially since it IS available elsewhere...
Hope this helps for now!
-Randall Garrett-
+Apex Software+
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