For those of us for whom Palms, Pocket PCs, Tablet-PCs, and broadband are common, everyday items, it’s often easy to forget how the average Joe faces life. Imagine facing the day as a Road Warrior in some hotel without a PDA, or laptop, or any connection to e-mail. Oh, maybe you could try to keep up with e-mail on a three-line display on a web-enabled cell phone. But face it, without some basic hardware and connectivity life can be miserable.

If you’re among the connected, the laptop-toting, remote-connected illuminati, the Composer isn’t really for you. But don’t stop reading, because chances are you know someone (or are related to someone) who could really use this gadget (and we techno geeks just love hooking people up with gadgets, don’t we?).

At its most basic the Composer is a reasonable PDA. It has the standard goodies you’d expect: calendar, to do list, notepad, address list, alarms, a very clear backlit LCD screen (7 line x 40 char), and an integrated keyboard. A bit big for a PDA at 6.38Lx3.15Wx0.94H inches, (162x80x24 mm), it’s still light and easy to use. It also gets great battery life on a pair of AAs. Like any good PDA it can sync with a PC and integrate its data with Outlook. The mail application is very straightforward and easy to use. But the cool part is how you send and receive.

When you first look at the Composer one thing you can’t help notice is a little fold-out thingie on the back that looks like a small speaker. In fact, it is a small speaker. When you unfold the speaker, put the Composer against a phone handset and push a button, the Composer acts like an acoustic modem. If you dialed the 800 number printed on the back before you pushed the button, it connects up and gets your incoming mail and sends your outgoing mail. This worked with every phone I tried, including a speakerphone, most often first try. I only had to retry once or twice, both times because of what I must admit was user error. The transfer is very fast – not surprising considering you’re just sending text.

I used the Composer quite a bit and I found it to be easy to learn, well organized, and completely reliable. Its user interface won’t have for throwing away your Palm or Pocket PC, but it does the job and is reasonably attractive.

If you have a POP account, you can visit the Pocketmail site and set it up to forward that mail to your Composer when yon send/receive, as well.

Service is $49.95 per quarter ($149 per year) for unlimited mail, and they support free unlimited access from desktop POP3 clients. You can even send your messages as faxes, for a small fee.

So, given that I have an e-mail account, DSL for home, and a laptop for the road would I pay for the Composer and the service? No, of course not. But for a lot of people who don’t have e-mail at all or who travel and don’t have a laptop this is a very attractive solution. Instead of having to look for an internet café, you can compose and read mail whenever it is convenient and do the send and receive virtually any place, since it offers a very easy-to-use way to access e-mail from any location that has a phone. It’s a very elegant solution to the problem of easy, mobile e-mail access.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Composer is much smaller than a laptop and the process of sending/receiving mail is so quick and painless compared to the process of hooking up and logging on with a laptop that some people who spend their days doing business calls but want to check mail regularly might even prefer it to a laptop. Especially since the Composer can do its thing over most cell phones.

Bottom line? This is a very cool, reliable, easy-to-use gadget for the right sort of user. It works well and is well designed and simple enough that it won’t scare off the non-technical user. It isn’t the ultra powerful PDA that attracts the technophile, but at about $15 a month it would be hard to find a more completely mobile e-mail solution without investing much more than the $99 price of the composer.

Next time you’re talking to a non-technical friend and he tells you he wishes he could access e-mail on the road (like you do) but he can’t afford the laptop, ISP, and all of the trimmings, send him to the Pocketmail site. You’ll reinforce the belief that you’re god-like in your knowledge of all things technical and help him one step further toward embracing his inner techno-geek.

Oh, for the friends that are already Palm-enabled there’s an accessory that allows Palm I, III, V, & M users to access Pocketmail through the phone handset ($169 with a years service included), though I didn’t get to test it.

--Tucker Hatfield
Senior Palm Reviewer

Pocketmail Composer
http://www.pocketmail.com/us/
$99 (plus service)

SPECS:

ORGANIZE YOUR LIFE - A full-featured 512KB organizer with personal digital assistant features including Scheduler with alarm, To-do list, Calculator, Address Book and Anniversary Reminders and Memo pad.

SIMPLE AND AFFORDABLE E-MAIL: Send and receive e-mail and send faxes anytime, anywhere, on virtually any phone.

JUST HOLD IT UP TO THE PHONE - Use virtually any telephone in the world including most digital and analog cell phones, corporate and hotel PBX phone systems, home phones, cordless phones, and even public payphones.

TOLL-FREE ACCESS- Send and receive e-mail and send faxes from anywhere in the USA or Canada over toll-free 800 numbers. Worldwide access via direct-dial toll number to the USA.

E-MAIL ACCOUNT INCLUDED - After activation, your PocketMail Composer will include one PocketMail e-mail account, and can also store three alternate Reply-to addresses to help you make use of the Mailbox Consolidation feature.

CONSOLIDATE ALL YOUR E-MAIL - You can automatically download your personal POP3, IMAP, and AOL accounts, receive forwarded mail from corporate accounts, and reply as if from those accounts.

FAX FEATURE - Sends faxes anywhere in the world via the PocketMail® network, at a small additional charge per fax.

PC LINK - PC desktop and PC synchronization with Microsoft® OutlookTM, Lotus® NotesTM and other popular MS WindowsTM programs.

CONVENIENT SIZE AND WEIGHT - Dimensions are approximately: 6.38Lx3.15Wx0.94H inches, (162x80x24 mm). Weight with batteries is approximately 8.22 oz. (233 g).

BATTERIES: Two AA batteries are included for your convenience.

ADDITIONAL FEATURES - PocketRules® filters, SPAM filter, and password protection.