PATS CHAT

They are good for people with dirty or sticky hands or times when things get spilled on keyboards.

I do have the 14 inch touch screen's fitted on some vans here, mostly the people doing drainage use them. You cant use a keyboard with cloves on !!!

We do run the computers using a mobile version of windows xp, the computers did come with windows 7, but it was far too slow to use.

There are benefits to using touch screen computers..but if your in an office there useless.

I can tell you have never unblocked a drain...

We have cam's we send down to inspect the under ground pipe work, it saves digging it up. The computers are linked to the cam's so we can see what is down there and recorded to a hard drive or dvd disk. It also saves sending someone else out for a look if there something unusual about the pipe work. They do find stuff like bricks, toys and clothing 10-30 meters inside the pipe work using the cam's and it saves a lot of time finding the cause of a problem.

But the live cam feed does save a lot of time and reassures the customer the job has been done.

We can also use them for point of sale invoicing and taking card payments.

Its still the same tools, but these days if a drain blocks up more than once every 2 years we need to find out why.

And most of the uk's drains are over 35 years old and some do need replacing. This is covered by building insurance and the insurance company's do like to see the video footage before they agree to the work.