East Lake Fire Rescue Purchases new Laptops

June 2005

East Lake Fire Rescue purchased five Motorola ML 900 laptops for its front line apparatus for a total of $36,000.  Motorola was chosen after extensive research by the department laptop committee (Commissioner Dedman, Division Chief May, DC Hejl, and Lt/P Edling).  The laptops are mounted on a special swivel docking station inside E56, S57, E58, D57, and P57.  The ML 900 includes such features as an Intel Pentium 4-M, 1.7 GHz processor, 1GB SDRAM, CD-ROM, a patented thermal management system, fingerprint scanner, on-board digital video recorder, a removable, heated 40 GB hard-drive, 12.1” transmissive touch XGA screen, and a backlit keyboard. It also supports Wireless LAN, WWAN, GPS and Bluetooth™ wireless technology simultaneously. 

The new technology gives firefighters the ability to access the Pinellas County 911 system from the apparatus.  In addition it gives incident and pre-arrival information, maps utilizing unit GPS, hydrant locations and flow data, building pre-plans, and the ability to instant message from unit to unit.