Patent ID: 6976626

Claim:
A wireless portable data terminal (PDT) system for use and communication with a base station by way of a electromagnetic-based RF 2-way digital data communication link, said wireless PDT system comprising: a hand-supportable housing having a bar-like geometry and a top surface, with a distal end disposed away from an operator when held in his or her hand, and a proximate end facing closest to the operator when said hand-supportable housing is held in his or her hand during operation; a rechargeable battery power pack supported within a battery bay formed in said hand-supportable housing; a data capture engine mounted within a data capture engine bay located at the distal end of said hand-supportable housing, for optically capturing data about objects optically encoded in information structures such as bar code symbols; a LCD panel with having a backlighting structure which is automatically controlled in response to the brightness level of ambient light sensed by an ambient light sensor located on said hand-supportable housing adjacent said LCD panel; a micro-computing platform mounted within said hand-supportable housing, and capable of (i) running/executing application programs on a first kind of operating system (OS1) that is emulated on a virtual machine that is supported on a second kind of operating system (OS2) so that the application programs can be developed on developer computers running the first kind of operating system OS1, and (ii) supporting a graphical user interface (GUI) on said LCD panel for graphically displaying and manipulating documents; a user control console having a manual data-entry structure for manually entering data into said documents, wherein said user console panel is disposed on the top surface of said hand-supportable housing and includes a multi-position cursor navigation control button, for controlling a cursor on said GUI by movement with the operator's thumb, and having LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN and IN movements, surrounded by at least four cursor navigational control function buttons for BACK-SPACE, ESCAPE, SPACE, and SYSTEM FUNCTION selection; a first set of circuitry within said hand-supportable housing and said base station for enabling said electromagnetic-based 2-way digital data communication link between said wireless PDT and said base station; a second set of circuitry within said base station for interfacing said base station with a host computer system or network by way of a standard digital communications interface.