Silicon Valley Musings

During Rajendra’s presentation today he mentioned that he would need both English and Telugu language support. I think most dot matrix displays and printers usually only support Latin character sets. I would confirm with specific hardware vendors to determine if this is the case.

Windows XP natively supports Telugu. I noticed there is an open source attempt to add Telegu support to Linux, but it seems to have stagnated. There is a company selling Telegu fonts for Mac OS X. I didn’t find any Telugu support for Palm OS. Windows CE.Net supports Unicode and International Locales, so in theory it should support Telugu.

I mention CE.Net because I would like to suggest the Psion Netbook Pro as a possible alternative to standard PDA for data entry in harsh field conditions. It runs Windows CE.Net, weighs three pounds, and has a PC Card Type II slot and CF Card Type II slot, as well as WiFi support and a reasonable battery life. Psion Netbook Pro is built by a popular UK based PDA manufacturer.

With the PC Card slot you can add a Smart card reader/writer, and in
the CF card slot you can add a GSM cellular modem.

The only thing missing from Rajendra’s “wish” is a printer. Canon makes a two pound battery powered printer that connects via USB. So in a six pound
satchel you could have Ragendra’s whole wish list except: 1) that it doesn’t
fit in one hand, 2) it would require carrying spare batteries, and 3) you
will need a large hardware budget (this stuff is pretty darn
expensive).

It does provide “out of the box” support for Telugu entry, display, and
printing. CE.Net also comes with a very rich set of development tools,
a wealth of existing applications, and an experience development
community that numbers in the thousands.