PocketMail

PocketMail is a very small and inexpensive mobile computer, with a built in acoustic coupler.

History

Although actually a computer, its main function is E-mail. Its main advantages are that it is simple, and that it works with any phone, even outside the United States. It is a low-cost personal digital assistant (PDA) with an inbuilt acoustic coupler which allows users to send and receive E-mail while connected to a normal telephone, thus allowing use outside of mobile phone range, or without the need to be signed up with a mobile telephone provider. Although still in use, popularity of the PocketMail peaked around 2000.

In Australia, the company known as "Pocketmail" in 2007 stopped marketing the pocketmail technology, changed its name to Adavale Resources Limited and now owns uranium mining prospects in Queensland and South Australia.

Pocketmail, Inc. has gone out of business as of February 2010; without explanation or prior warning, it stopped providing contracted services, took its own website down, disabled customer service phone lines and has basically evaded questions and inquiries from remaining customers with subscriptions yet to expire who were no longer receiving services they paid for.

Websites

• Dan's Data Review: http://www.dansdata.com/pocketmail.htm
• Cracked.com's list of "The 5 Most Ridiculously Awful Computers Ever Made