Hola Luis,

There are two parts to this project:

1. You need to program the handheld in order for it to capture the data in the correct "fields"
2. After data-gathering, you connect the handheld to a serial port or the keyboar port in your PC, upload a text file to the PC and have your vfp app read the file and process it.

At my store, we use the M5000 with a barcode reader (a laser gun) attached to it for inventory counting. Unlike the palm pilots with laser readers, this device is very straight forward and you won't need to learn an entire programming language to get it up and running in about an hour. If you visit http://www.amltd.com/aml_portabledata.asp, you will find that they now have a model with the barcode reader built into it, which might be very practical in your case.

Programming the handheld is extremely easy. You just tell it which prompts you want to use (on its screen), whether you will be collecting several barcodes in a single record (row) or each barcode will be in a new record, etc.

The handheld is VERY rugged and the battery life is VERY long (it uses regular 9Volt batteries, which is an additional advantage of this unit over anything that requires proprietary batteries or chargers).

If size is a consideration, I kinda remember that Symbol had a reader that was the size of a credit card. It would charge while on its cradle, and to capture data, you would just swipe one of its corners over the barcode you want to read. When returning it to the cradle, it would upload its data to the host pc.

Good luck!

Alex

>Hi to all.
>In my company wich investigates markets, we are triying to subtitute paper with handheld for every one of our operators. I need to know if anyone of you have experience using VFP or any other tool to program for handhelds and read barcodes from the handheld.
>
>Thanks in advance.
>
>Luis Navas