I have "Microsoft .NET Compact Framework" by Andy Wigley & Stephen Wheelwright and it's a pretty good book. --Rob

Ditto on everything you said. I've been using a LCD now for about 6 months and it just so much easier on my eyes after a full day (or longer) in front of it. Happy New Years!

Yeah, I think Oracle is probably overkill for most projects. I'm sure you can build some Access tables that will handle the data. If I remember correctly (it was a few years ago), there was nothing magic about the geospatial extensions that Oracle was adding, it was just that it would be a "native" data type. I don't know if this solution will work for you or if it might be too expensive but one of the better solutions I saw when I was working on this was from Symbol Technologies. They had a handheld (I think it was a PocketPC) with both GPS and a barcode scanner. How it was used was to tag locations with a barcode and tie it in with the lat/lon position from the GPS. Also you might want to look at this link... http://www.linkspoint.com/white\_papers.asp . --Rob

Depending on the GPS device they can output either or both. And for database storage you might want to look at a database that has the capability to store "spatial" data. A while back Oracle had spatial data capabilities I'm not sure about other databases. I did some work for Autodesk that used handhelds (Pocket PC) with GPS and tied in with Autodesk's mapping software. Hope that helps, Rob

I have had both 17" and 19" flat panels on my development machines and I would recommend at least the 19" for getting the most on the screen (especially during debugging). As for brand, I looked around at a lot of different flat panels and the best I found was the Apple Studio Displays, but they are a little pricey. Good luck! --Rob

In the past I have used VSS a lot with some corruption problems as have been mentioned here. For the past year I have benn on a project where the company uses PerForce. It took some getting use to (a lot different than VSS) but now that I have finally have it figured out, it's been pretty good. It works fine remotely and on all different platforms. I think it's $$$ though. --Rob