System Requirements
The beauty of cloud computing is that there aren’t really any system requirements. Our software will work on anything that gets an internet connection including, but not limited to:
Mac
Windows – XP, Vista, 7
iPhone and most smart-phones (Palm is the main one we know doesn’t work)
Digital Arborist is “cross-browser compliant”. This means we have tested it across all the major browsers: Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome. We highly recommend using Google Chrome to take advantage of Google Gears. This will allow for less band width usage and performance improvements. Internet Explorer works just fine, but it is the worst browser you can use in regards to performance.
If you have an iPhone or Android powered phone you can download our app from the App Store. Keyword search “digital arborist” **app is still in testing and debugging phase and is not yet available in the app store.
Hardware Suggestions
I personally use three computers on a regular basis to access the system. My desktop at home is a 10 year old Dell computer running Windows XP with dual 24″ wide screen monitors. You definitely don’t need two monitors, but it really is great to have for your primary work station. In my truck I carry around an iPad 3G to write up proposals in the field and navigate. Our system integrates a link for each customer into google maps so you can quickly get directions. And, my third computer is my iPhone. The one thing it will do that the others won’t is easily take a picture of a tree, geotag it and store it with a customer’s account. The process is made very simple using the iPhone app and the picture is stored on the server and made available when preparing reports.
The iPad
I’ve been using my iPad for a while now as my field computer. I love it. I use it aggressively all day long and it has 50% of its power left when I get home. Overall cost is cheap, $650 for the 3G version, and the 3G internet service for it is $25/month for 2 gigabytes of data (I use about 1/3 of the data plan each month).