I am writing to let you know how satisfied we are with our Trimble Yumas. We bought 4 with 3 of them currently in the field collecting data on electric utility assets for a fiber optic project. We are using the Yumas with a custom ESRI ArcPad application that I developed. I set up ArcPad so that the users in the field can attach voice tags and up to two photographs per feature. I was able to create a work around so that the user can start the Yuma's internal camera from within ArcPad. This has been an issue since the Yuma was released.

The Yumas along with ArcPad are saving us money and time, which is the ultimate goal when using mobile GIS in the field. My only criticism is the size of the internal hard drive, it needs to be larger. The units we have are running Windows Vista. I understand the new Yumas with Windows 7 did away with the partitioned hard drive. We installed 32 GB ExpressCard drives to expand the storage capacity. After the user collects a photo or records a voice tag, I have the ArcPad application move the photos and voice tags to the express drive and rename each photo and voice tag with a unique name so that there can never be duplicate file names created between different users. This keeps the internal hard drive from being gobbled up.

I would recommend Yumas for a company that is looking for a small rugged handheld computer with excellent battery life. The units perform as advertised!

Sincerely,
Jarrod Harper
Team Lead for CAD/GIS
Vermont Electric Power Co., Inc.

Editorial comment:

Trimble Mobile Computing Solutions Marketing Manager Shawn Curtis responded to Jarrod. The following is part of this response.

Thank you for taking the time to send us your feedback on the Yuma rugged tablet. We greatly appreciate hearing from our customers, both good and bad. We have forwarded your request for a larger hard drive to our product management team, as well as shared your comments with the MCS team.  

Thank you once again for taking the time to keep us informed. It is with suggestions and input from customers like you that make it possible to improve and strive for great!!