Trimble Ranger 300X

Trimble Ranger 300X

History:

The Trimble Ranger has been out since 2006, just like the Trimble Nomad.  It is the only Trimble model with a full A/N keyboard.  It has proved itself to be a reasonably good unit, but it is getting dated and needs a face lift.

To our knowledge, there is a newer model in the works; but its release is not yet known.  The Trimble Nomad 900G came out in November 2010, so the Ranger, which was introduced around the same time, is likely to be upgraded soon.

TTS Usage History of the Trimble Ranger:

We started carrying the Trimble Ranger 300X in early 2008 when the Juniper Systems Allegro CX was still available.  To date, we have only sold around 200 of these units in the last 3 years.  This unit was meant as a lower cost alternative to the Juniper Systems Allegro CX (and now MX).  It was more ruggedly built, came with a color screen, and it had a full keyboard just as the CX and the later MX did; and it was hundreds of dollars cheaper.

We found over the years, though, that users tended to like the keyboard layout of the Allegro CX (and now MX) better, so some are willing to pay the extra money for that feature.  We carry both models since our customers like choices.  If it were up to me, I would use the Trimble Ranger for Log and Cruising applications and use the Allegro CX (MX) for all lumber-related applications.  The extra durability means something when out in the woods.

Problems and Trimble Knowledge Base:

The Trimble Ranger has not been without problems.  Three have been most aggrevating. 

• The first and worst of these is that the backlighting of the screen goes bad after 2 - 3 years and is costly to have it repaired.  Without backlighting, the screen is very difficult to read.
• The second and less problematic is that the lettering on the keys wear off after 2 - 3 years of hard use as well.  I was told that on more recent models this problem was corrected, but not enough time has passed since I was told this for me to verify this statement.
• Third, through a combination of keystrokes that have yet to be determined, the user can turn off the numeric keys so that they function as arrow keys, just as a numeric keypad would.  There is a yellow key that is used to activate special characters.  When this yellow key is pressed along with some other key, it  turns the numeric lock function off.  It makes the application very difficult to use.  The only choice is to exit what you are doing, normally with the Esc key, and then exit Pocket DOS, and then restart it.  This always solves the problem.  Trimble has yet to determine the solution either.

There is no Trimble Knowledge Base for this unit.   Questions and answers that you are looking for might be found in our General Questions section.