Accessing Premvet on the iPhone

I got tired of keep having to go and see the waiting list on a PC that could have been away from the tea-room, making you get up and walking to the other side of the surgery only to find out there is nobody waiting for you or, worse still, someone has been on your waiting list for 15 minutes and nobody has told you about them.

So after getting my iPhone I wandered if there could be a way of seeing the waiting list on it. To give you the short version - YOU CAN. But there are a few pre-requisites. First of all you need a relatively secure Wi-Fi connection and that connection has to be open to the internal practice's network and the Premvet server must be visible from it. you can try calling the server's website or you can use other iPhone apps to ping it.

Please be aware that WiFi networks are a potential open back-door to your system and should be set-up by a pro or someone who knows what he is doing. Don't complain to me if the system gets hacked so consider yourself warned!

If you have successfully established a connection to the internal network you can follow this by installing the appropriate terminal emulator app on your iPhone.

Many of the settings that need to be entered can be found in the configuration of you Anita terminal emulator. If you don't have an Anita installed on any PCs you might have a wee problem.

I have tried several apps for this:

1. pTerm (from Instant Cocoa), cost: £2.99
   which is based on the popular terminal emulator called PuTTy. Was the first one I tried and worked relatively fine.
   - You set-up a new host, enter a nickname - something that will distinguish this connection from possible others.
   - Enter the username - this s the username which you enter in the Unix system before you get to Premvet.
   - Port - this is the port number that is open on the Unix server. On our system it was 23 but check with an Anita connection to see what is yours.
   - Protocol - must be set to Telnet
   
   Advanced settings can help with some in-depth configuration. I set-up the Terminal (3rd one down). Set Rows to 25 and Columns to 80. Type strings to »ansi«. I left the variables as is.
   The emulator worked relatively fine but the age-old problem of drawing lines was repeated on this app. Instead of showing lines it is returning some weird characters. Also I could not make the delete button to work, if you use it it seems to freeze the emulator :-(
   
   This app is quite nice to manouver in, if you tapp the emulator window it will bring up the keyboard. Tapping it again will remove it. Premvet keyboard shortcuts worked fine - the ever popular w-s for the waiting list summary. However the emulator froze on many occasions when I wanted to leave that page to get back to the main menu. Closing the app did not help.
   
   
2. MTelnet (from Mocha Telnet Lite), cost: FREE
   looks like absolute winner, you set up the Server IP address, port (23), I left the Termtype to vt220 and it worked fine, using the username in this app actually worked and was able to auto-login to Unix, however pressing the return button is still needed. It worked like a charm and also drew the lines in Premvet - nothing garbled. Did I mention the Lite version of the app is free! The app is much different to pTerm and has a shortcut on the screen to the keyboard and has a permanent Return/Enter command button on top.
   Keyboard shortcuts worked nicely and the emulator seemed more stable than in pTerm. There is a more extensive payable edition (for £3.49) of this app but I'm not sure if you will need it. The Lite version just rocks.
   
   
3. Telnet (from ThroughPut Inc), cost £1.19
   This app fared the least. The setup seemed to simplified and the output was not impressing the whole Premvet login page was a complete mess.
   
   
4. iSSH (from Zinger-Soft), cost £2.39
   This app I have tested the least. Might give more info on it later.