Laptop computers loaded with wireless PC cards eliminate the need for complex wiring or external peripherals and end restrictions on movement. Facilitator Harry Powell, of the business engineering firm Powell & Co., in Atlanta, helped Modern Technologies put together a system using laptops connected by Xircom's CreditCard Netwave wireless LAN PC cards (adapter $399, access point $1,499, starter kit of two adapters and one access point, $799; 800-438-4526) and Ventana's GroupSystems software (prices vary; 800-368-6338). The wireless feature simplifies setup and makes it easier for participants to break up into smaller groups. "It's a lot more productive to use computers than flip charts and Post-Its," Powell claims.
Wireless technology has also been a boon to Ted Curtis, who, with his wife, Kara, runs Ted's Cafe Escondido, a 90-seat Mexican restaurant in Oklahoma City. Since it opened, in October 1991, the restaurant's annual sales have grown from $300,000 to $1.9 million. Curtis attributes a lot of that success to improving customer service through technology, including a table-management system and the pagers he gives patrons so they can choose a movie at a nearby Blockbuster store while they're waiting for a table.
Cafe Escondido serves about 1,000 people a day, and as many as 145 people can be waiting in line at any one time to eat. The table-management system, engineered by Dallas-based Rock Systems, manages reservations, seating, the service bay, the bus station, and even the tables themselves. "We used to have one employee just checking tables," Curtis explains. "Now it's automatic." In addition, the hostess uses a wireless Fujitsu ST-500 RF tablet PC with a Proxim RangeLAN2 PC-card adapter ($695; 800-229-1630) to enter waiting customers' names. The tablet communicates with the table-management system and then estimates how long customers will have to wait.
Curtis says the system has really paid off. "It used to take four to five minutes to reseat a table; now it can be done in two." That may not sound like much, but Curtis served 100 more people the first Saturday night the system was operating. That's a big increase for a 90-seat restaurant.
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The Final Frontier
As wireless communication expands the reach of computers beyond the confines of solid matter, space-generated information has joined earthbound data traveling the world. Businesspeople on the road using wireless systems are finding it easier to get where they're going using global positioning systems, which take information from satellites orbiting the earth. This is one of the fastest-growing applications for PC cards. Soon, two-way satellite communications should be available as well.
David Whitlock, a photographer for The Real Estate Book, a real-estate publication put out by Donnin Publishing, in northern New Jersey, has already found the GPS connection invaluable. Whitlock photographs up to 90 houses a day, so he needs to know where he is and where he's going. That's why he started using Road Scholar's City Streets for Windows mapping software on his IBM ThinkPad computer. The software highlights a house by city and street address on Whitlock's computer screen. "It is much easier to use than a map," he says.
Recently Whitlock added a Trimble Mobile GPS PC card ($599; 800-827-8000) to the system. A biscuit-shaped external antenna receives signals from multiple satellites whizzing overhead. A large map of the area tells Whitlock the general direction in which to travel. As he gets closer to his destination, he can zoom in on smaller streets and more details, right down to individual house numbers.
GPSs can help on the farm as well as in the city. Russell Anderson has a problem shared by many farmers: different soil conditions throughout his 600-acre Anderson Angus Farms, in Syracuse, Ind. "We need to augment the soil where appropriate, yet not waste fertilizer on land that isn't capable of high yields," he says. Like other small farmers, Anderson is turning to technology to solve his problems and to make his business more competitive.
Anderson uses a PC card to monitor the productivity of different fields. A sensor in his combine's temporary storage bin tracks crop yield as the machine cuts and threshes the fields. The farm's computer system then merges that information with GPS data. The data are stored on an Epson ATA Flash Card ($285 to $1,460; 800-922-8911) that holds one day's results. Anderson has two cards. He switches them each day so that his fertilizer supplier can read the output on a laptop computer and prepare yield-versus-location maps for the farm. The supplier uses the maps to plan fertilizer, pesticide, and other soil treatments in preparation for the next crop.
According to Anderson, the technology is "fantastic." "It would be prohibitive to do this by hand," he says. The system has been up and running for just two years, but it's already saved Anderson money on fertilizer. "It will take longer to test the system fully, but there's no way it won't pay for itself in the future."
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Paul Franson (paul@franson.com) is a freelance editor and writer specializing in technology.
PC CARDS THAT GO THE DISTANCE
1 ActionTec ComNet Fax/Modem + Ethernet adapter
2 Xircom CreditCard Netwave wireless LAN adapter
3 Socket PageCard wireless messaging receiver
4 Megahertz PCMCIA modem
5 Epson 20 MB ATA Flash Card
6 3Com EtherLink III LAN + Modem PC Card
7 Integral Viper 340 PC Card hard drive
8 Quadrant CardCAM-VideoIN video capture card
9 Trimble Mobile GPS card
10 Proxim RangeLAN2 wireless LAN adapter
Resources
Two good sources on the World Wide Web for information about PC cards, including vendor and product lists, are the home pages of the PCMCIA (http://www.pc-card.com) and of market researcher Andy Prophet (http://www.apresearch.com). n
