Wifi E-mail Device?

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subigo

subigo

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Before someone says, "iPod Touch or iPhone", let me stop you there. No.

I'm looking for something simple: A device that can check e-mail via a wifi connection and alert me (via speaker) over and over again until it's checked. Not a computer/laptop, not a phone, not an iPod. There's gotta be something like this out there for cheap. Oh, and it has to fit in my pocket.

I need it to alert me of unanswered tickets from customers. If my support agents are backed up and it takes them longer than 30 minutes to answer a ticket I currently get an automated e-mail sent to my phone. The problem is I currently use t-mobile and the e-mail servers suck. Over the past month it has been taking up to 24 hours to receive e-mail on their network. It's just not reliable.

I'm not going to get a new phone or change phone companies just to get e-mail alerts. I'm not going to buy an iPod touch, because I'm not going to spend $200+ to get e-mail via wifi.

Any suggestions?
 


Nokia N800? It runs a stripped down linux distro, so you should be able to customize some sort of alert.
 
What about this: [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Peek-Mobile-Email-Device-Gray/dp/B001FC0BWE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1228719158&sr=1-1]Amazon.com: Peek Mobile Email Device (Gray): Electronics[/ame]

I saw it in Wired and I think David Poque reviewed it too..
 
micfire said:
What about this: Amazon.com: Peek Mobile Email Device (Gray): Electronics

I saw it in Wired and I think David Poque reviewed it too..
Click to expand...

I looked at one of these the other day at target and almost bought one... until I realized it has no speaker. I need something that can wake me up at night.

And the Nokia N800 would be cool, but it doesn't look to be any cheaper than an iPod Touch.

I just found a Palm TX on craigslist for $100... anyone ever use one of those?
 
I'd suggest something like a blackberry curve, except it doesn't have a recurring tone, at least not that I know of. But you can make em damn loud.
 
subigo said:
I just found a Palm TX on craigslist for $100... anyone ever use one of those?
Click to expand...

I have one, got it back in like '06 I think.

Used it for about a month, but it never really grew on me.

I'll try to dig it up and see if it has the features you are looking for.
 
TakinThePlunge said:
Although, why don't you just set your [current] phone to use your own mail servers instead of the telco supplied ones?
Click to expand...

Agreed, If SMTP had the problem of waiting 24 hours before it delivered an email ... we would have moved to a different system by now.

To add to the conversation, you could even take a step further into redundancy and get your emails forwarded to a text message on your phone. Then you get the constant beep notifying you that you've got a text.

I've heard some pretty damn annoying phone beeps in my time, so I'm sure you could work something out where it will wake you up.
 
subigo said:
Before someone says, "iPod Touch or iPhone", let me stop you there. No.

I'm looking for something simple: A device that can check e-mail via a wifi connection and alert me (via speaker) over and over again until it's checked. Not a computer/laptop, not a phone, not an iPod. There's gotta be something like this out there for cheap. Oh, and it has to fit in my pocket.

I need it to alert me of unanswered tickets from customers. If my support agents are backed up and it takes them longer than 30 minutes to answer a ticket I currently get an automated e-mail sent to my phone. The problem is I currently use t-mobile and the e-mail servers suck. Over the past month it has been taking up to 24 hours to receive e-mail on their network. It's just not reliable.

I'm not going to get a new phone or change phone companies just to get e-mail alerts. I'm not going to buy an iPod touch, because I'm not going to spend $200+ to get e-mail via wifi.

Any suggestions?
Click to expand...

Any smartphone PDA with wireless will work, don't need phone service to make the wifi work. I have an old audiovox PPC6700 I use for this purpose. Whatever you buy, get the largest battery (and backup battery) you can find, wifi on PDAs really drain the batteries!
 
erect said:
Agreed, If SMTP had the problem of waiting 24 hours before it delivered an email ... we would have moved to a different system by now.

To add to the conversation, you could even take a step further into redundancy and get your emails forwarded to a text message on your phone. Then you get the constant beep notifying you that you've got a text.

I've heard some pretty damn annoying phone beeps in my time, so I'm sure you could work something out where it will wake you up.
Click to expand...

I would do that, but I'm using a sidekick and the way it checks e-mails is lame. Their e-mail server does all the fetching and relays the e-mail to the phone... so when it's down you can't get any e-mails or texts.
 
For something dirt cheap, look at the older palms; people can't even give them away these days. The m500 (monochrome, M505 I think is the color version) will take a wifi card that fits in the SD slot and can be used for sync operations. As long as it can get some kind of connection to the internet, you could point it directly to the AP and have it poll whatever mailserver you want.
 
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