Call it bad timing – the message below hit us as we wanted to award the Vaporware-of-the-year award to the MEZ1500 (which Tamoggemon wanted to deploy in a POS project over one year ago). As usual, important parts have been highlighted for you by yours truly:
2009 looks to be an especially challenging year for all of us. Everyone seems to have a different theory about what lies ahead economically. Here at Aceeca we are busy realigning ourselves to take advantage of what we believe will be an increasing demand for lower cost industrial computing solutions.
When we first released the MEZ1000 back in 2003, Aceeca set a new benchmark for low cost rugged handheld computers. Six years later, the MEZ1000 is still meeting the demands of many of our customers who do not require a color display or a multi gigahertz CPU. There are no plans to discontinue it in the foreseeable future.
Approximately 18 months ago we announced the “imminent” release of our new MEZ1500 low cost color device. In order to ensure the timely release of the MEZ1500, I decided that we would contract out some of the design work to a company with experience in the areas that would help us speed up the overall development ………………….well clearly that didn’t happen and we found ourselves in the embarrassing situation of having a design that was overly complicated, too expensive to manufacture and worst of all with an LCD that flickered due to faulty power supply design work. So after 18 months and getting as far as building a pre-production run we finally decided to abandon the project and start again. Anyway enough excuses – I am sure you want to know what we have done about it. As I type this our engineers are hard at work on getting the new design ready for production and we have made some exciting changes to ensure we deliver you a superior product.
The major change you will note is that we have switched the CPU from the PXA270 to the Samsung S3C2440. Originally the MEZ1500 was to be offered with a choice of either the 312MHz or 520MHz PXA270 CPU, however the Samsung processor offers comparable performance to the more expensive 520 MHz processor while consuming less power (read longer battery run-time), has more features and as a real added bonus, it is half the price of the 520MHz PXA270.
Originally the MEZ1500 was targeted to have a List Price of US$549.00. Market expectations have changed and while US$549.00 would make the MEZ1500 the lowest cost rugged device of its type in the world; we do not think it is low enough to meet the requirements of many of our customers. The revised MEZ1500 will now have a North American List Price of US$499.00 and if you think we have cut corners in quality or performance to reduce the price; please check out the new specs at www.aceeca.com/newspecs.
A key feature of the Meazura product range is the MZIO expansion bus which enables developers to add a virtually unlimited range of expansion modules. This has been a major selling feature for us and we have no intention of removing the expansion bus even though it adds cost to the Meazura in manufacturing and in supporting developers.
Having said that, many of our customers simply require a low cost rugged PDA with a decent amount of memory and so we are pleased to announce that we are going to release an additional handheld, the RDA1500. The RDA1500 is pretty much identical to the MEZ1500 except that it does not have an MZIO expansion slot. Same case, same super bright color LCD, same CPU, same memory, same rugged design, same IP67 sealing, compatible with our standard accessories – the only difference – no expansion slot. Well there is another major difference it has an incredibly low list price of only US$399.00 – Try finding a comparable rugged handheld for that amount! The specs are outstanding, a battery capacity of over 12 watt hours which is double the capacity of most competitive devices, accessories at much less money than our competitors – check out our new adjustable desktop cradle at US$99.00 (list) compared to competitive ones at twice the price.
We have also increased the standard memory capacity and added SD memory expansion under the battery pack.
The common question is no doubt going to be – When can I get my hands on one? Our target date is 8-9 weeks from now – around the end of April. We are going to be working night and day to ensure that we meet that date and regain some credibility on our ability to deliver on time.
Like Aceeca, we know that a lot of our customers are hurting due to the global downturn and we aim to work with our customers in providing new products, at the best prices available, to ensure we all have the opportunity to grow our businesses.
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Even though I love Aceeca’s devices, I fear that their credibility has been damaged too extensively due to the MEZ1500′s delay. One of my clients regularly bursts out into maniacal laughter whenever I mention the company’s name – he lost a huge amount of money as we expected the device to become – um, well – available in time.
Nevertheless, I am pretty sure that the two new devices will be extremely impressive: stay tuned!
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