I have a marina that stores hundreds of boats in a stack storage building and we launch & retrieve the boats using a very large marine forklift. I am considering installing a Tablet PC on the forklift with wireless LAN connectivity to our marina network. I envision users anywhere on our network being able to send messages/orders to the forklift operator to schedule launches of customer boats. What I'm thinking about is a tablet mounted in the forklift cab that will receive & display an ongoing 'launch list' of boats to be launched. As they are launched, the forklift operator would click on the the name of the customer just launched (tablets do have a touch screen, don't they?) and the application would move that boat to the 'boats out' list so that inventory of boats in and out could be maintained. As the boats come home to roost and are retireved and stored, the operator would record this event and complet ethe launch/retrieve cycle and data concerning this event captured in Access.

My main questions are: 1. would a tablet with Windows XP be able to run an MS Access application? Do tablets have a touch screen enabling the operator to select a block on the scren with his finger rather than a stylus? Can tablets run on 12V power supply on an ongoing basis? I don't see the need for a keyboard, mouse, printer, etc and would have a mount built to secure the tablet to.

Please help me!

1. Yes, i would assume that any tablet could run MS Access.

Some tablets have a touch screen capability so that they can be used sans stylus, but to my knowledge, it's not especially mainstream as of now. Try Motion Computing for touch screen tablets.
I think tablets can run on a standard power supply indefinitely, just like a laptop.