Economical industrial keypad PDA
(by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)

Unitech America is a subsidiary of Taiwanese automatic data collection specialist Unitech, founded in 1979. The PA950, shown here, is the company's Pocket PC 2003-based economical data collection solution. It has a reflective indoor/outdoor color display, comes with a handy 19-key numeric keypad, can accommodate a variety of internal WLAN and WWAN radio options via CF and SD expansion slot for real-time data transactions, and incorporates a laser diode bar code scanner. Tech specs are all up-to-date. Despite its modest size and weight, the PA950 (also available as a CE .NET device with an older processor) carries an IP54 rating and can survive 4 foot drops. Unitech also offers the PT930S, a Windows CE-based, no-nonsense ruggedized industrial data collection handheld with an integrated 1D/2D barcode laser diode scanner.

Update March 2008: The PA950 is discontinued and has been replaced by the technologically updated PA962/PA963 that uses the same housing as the PA950. The above-referenced PA930S is also discontinued.