Review: E-mail appliances for home or the road

From...

by Joel Strauch

(IDG) -- VTech offers a new twist on e-mail appliances with its line of E-Mail PostBoxes. Unlike other, pricier devices--which often use a proprietary service and e-mail address--VTech is using Yahoo's e-mail services. That, in turn, means you can take your e-mail with you should you decide to graduate from using an e-mail appliance. The PostBoxes come in two flavors: the $80 handheld Express with a compact keyboard and the larger $100 Companion, which features a larger screen and a full-size keyboard. Both connect to Yahoo Mail using a dial-up service and a standard RJ-11 phone-line connector.

VTech's two models offer advantages in different situations. The Companion allows for faster typing on the full-size keyboard and has a parallel port so that you can print hard copies of your messages (so long as your printer is compatible with one of the 20 different printer drivers preinstalled on the unit).

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The less-portable Companion is best suited for non-computer owners who want to get e-mail in their homes, while the Express might appeal to the PC-savvy user looking for an inexpensive but wired e-mail device to tote around. The Companion weighs 2.4 pounds (including two C batteries), whereas the Express weighs just 7.2 ounces (including two AA batteries).

Easy-to-Use E-Mail

If you already have an existing Yahoo Mail account, you can use that one; if not, the PostBox will generate a new account for you. Since VTech uses Yahoo Mail, you can always access your e-mail via any PC or Mac Web browser, even if you're not using the PostBox. (You can leave your messages on the server after you download them to the PostBox--so that they're accessible from any Web browser--or you can choose to have them deleted once they're downloaded.) And when you graduate from the PostBox to a full-fledged PC with Internet access, you won't have to give up your e-mail address. Unfortunately, if you do have a Yahoo Mail account, you can't synchronize your online address book with the one stored on your PostBox.

Though different in appearance, both PostBox devices are designed with the tech neophyte in mind: Just push the Connect button, and the PostBox automatically detects a local phone number (or uses a toll-free number if a local number isn't available), makes the connection, and transfers your outgoing and incoming messages via its built-in modem. The e-mail service itself costs $9.99 a month, or $99.99 for an annual subscription, regardless of whether you're connecting via the toll-free number or a local number.

Both units come with just 32KB of RAM, and both have limited integrated storage (the Companion features 448KB while the smaller Express has 512KB, which VTech claims will hold up to 500 messages). You can also add an optional $20 storage card to the Companion, providing an additional 8MB of archive space. The Express ships with four games and a calculator, although typing messages takes a lot longer since you have to hunt and peck on the tiny keys.

The Companion's 240-by-80-pixel monochrome LCD extends upward from the center of the unit and holds eight 40-character lines. Meanwhile, the Express has a 5-line, 40-character, 240-by-50-pixel screen.

Both models support up to five e-mail accounts, and each offers advanced mail options such as a signature file, antispam filtering, and an Auto Download feature that you can program to automatically grab your mail each night.

Slow and Steady--But Is It Enough?

Both the Express and Companion PostBoxes feature a 2.4-kilobits-per-second modem, which is far slower than the 56-kbps modems that come in most PCs today. But for most text e-mail transfers, the slow modem speed isn't an issue; in fact, most of our test messages took less than a minute to send. But sending or receiving multiple messages slowed down the transfer time significantly, which proved frustrating at times.

The two devices have other limitations as well. You can't view HTML mail or attachments from the PostBoxes, as you can with Yahoo Mail and a full-fledged PC. Likewise, there's a cap on incoming message sizes (approximately 3KB), which can make receiving larger e-mails a trying experience. In our tests, lengthy text-only messages that we sent and received were separated into several messages. Even forwarded mail that contained HTML was broken up into multiple messages, with only the text portions visible.

E-mail veterans may balk at these devices' lack of flexibility and functionality, but neophytes might feel right at home with either the PostBox Express or the PostBox Companion. Both products offer an inexpensive and friendly e-mail option for people who don't want a full-fledged PC with Internet access. And when those users are ready to graduate to a PC, at least their e-mail address will still be accessible.

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