At the date of its introduction a few years ago, the Symbol Technologies' PPT 8800 fit somewhere between consumer and ruggedized PDAs. It was smaller and lighter than the company's rugged Pocket PC products, yet more sturdy than an iPAQ or similar consumer Pocket PC.
Originally available only with CE .NET, the PPT 8800 was made available with more memory and the Windows Mobile 2003 for the Pocket PC environment to be a durable device for use in various commercial and light industrial markets. As of mid-2008, the PPT 8800 is once again listed as primarily a minimally equipped Windows CE 4.2 device with just 32MB of RAM and ROM each.
The 8800 is available both with minimal navigation and application controls as well as with a 15-key keypad option. Scan triggers on the left and right operate the integrated laser scanner. A 400 MHz Intel PXA 250 processor (300 MHz for the Windows CE .Net version) provides acceptable performance. Symbol offers 802.11b and Bluetooth capability via CF cards in this small, handy industrial PDA that fills many needs.
As of early 2008, the PPT 8800's lot is somewhat unclear. Now part of Motorola, Symbol is only listed as carrying bar code scanners, mobility software, and OEM scan engines. The former Symbol handhelds are mostly listed without brandname. The MC50 is simply listed as that, "PPT 8800" though the Symbol name is still on it.
Click here for the masterpage for support for all Symbol mobile computers.
