John Deere, Moline, Ill., and Qualcomm, San Diego, announced an alliance to create an equipment and machine monitoring and information delivery system that will be sold by certified John Deere construction and forestry dealers. Customers can order factory- or dealer-installed JDLink^™ on select John Deere construction and forestry equipment. JDLink automatically collects, transmits and manages information about where and how construction and forestry equipment is being used, as well as critical machine health data to help equipment owners improve utilization, productivity and revenue. The system uses Qualcomm’s GlobalTRACS^® equipment management system to provide customers with information about equipment location, machine health and service status. In addition, it issues special alerts to notify customers if equipment moves outside pre-set boundaries. Four levels of service will be offered with JDLink. The standard level, introduced last fall, provides owners with machine location status, machine service hours and location monitoring capabilities. The advanced level of service will provide customers with the standard level, plus dash indicators and fuel and equipment utilization information via engine load monitoring. The ultimate level of service expands upon these offerings by adding current and stored monitoring of component pressures and temperatures in addition to fuel consumption, as well as transmission gear selection and full-featured diagnostic information retrieval. The direct level enables customers to download machine operating history and diagnostics directly to a laptop computer. The advanced, ultimate and direct levels of service will be available in 2007. (800) 447-4004; www.deere.com.