I have been asked with developing an Access db/application for
construction inspection.  My firm will, at any one time, have 5 or 6
construction inspectors in the field inspecting the sites our project
engineers have designed.  Each inspector will have the use of a
ruggedized tablet PC to record their data.  No wireless internet
connections will be available.  This is strictly "gather data in the
field and then return to the home office" type of work.

My initial idea was to have a master db on our corporate network and
replicas on the tablet PCs.  The inspectors would enter their data in
the field and then, back in the office and with the tablet attached to
the corporate network, update the master db with the new data.  We will
definitely need a centralized data repository for efficiency in
reporting, trend analysis etc.

For the most part the remote inspectors will just be gathering new data
(a new inspection report), but they will need to have previous
inspection reports from that site available to them. Additionally,
there may be minor editing of existing data (contact info for people
etc) but there should be no multi-user data edit record conflicts.

Question(s):
1. Is replication the way to go?  Or should I look into code that would
merely append new data to the master and update any changed records (or
is that in fact, what the replication would do?)

2. Any other/better ideas for a solution?

I'll need to keep whatever solution I come up with very user friendly,
as the inspectors are definitely not Access gurus.

Thanks for any insights.

HGil