This review is the culmination of a 2 year saga I’ve experienced with a potentially game changing product called Peek.  It offers unlimited email and text messaging using an always on cellular network for between $10 and $20 per month with no contract.  Unfortunately, the whole operation may go down in flames because of a total network shutdown due to poor operational planning.  First some history on how I picked this device and service.

I have access to a very bucolic, but remote mountain cabin, which I use for 3 months out of the year.  It’s a great place to get away, but there are times it would be nice to have access to modern technology, especially email.  For years I used dialup, but that tied up the phone and was very slow.  I could also run down to the library 10 miles away to connect my laptop using Wifi.  Also, cell service at the location is non-existent, except for one small spot where I could get a 3 bar AT&T signal most of the time.

The Peek intrigued me because it operated on the T-mobile cell network which has a roaming agreement with AT&T at the remote location.  I was also impressed by the cost of entry, being the $9.99 I paid for the device and the $20/month charge which didn’t require a contract.  Here’s what was promised:

The Peek device itself is solidly built and small enough to fit into a shirt pocket.

The color screen is easy to read.  The qwerty keyboard is acceptable considering the size of the unit and the unit feels very solid.

On the right side you have a scroll well that moves a cursor through the text and when pressed brings up context related menus.  The square button is the backup key and pressing it repeatedly will bring you back to the inbox which is considered the home screen.

On the left side it the port for the power connector which uses a micro-USB plug.  The port is also used to attached the upgrade cable needed to update the firmware.

The back cover is metal and conceals the removable battery.  The sim card is also behind the cover, but is not made to be removed.  You can find the pertinent serial and IMEI numbers under this cover.

When I first bought the unit, I didn’t realize it was a Peek Classic, which limited me to scanning 3 email accounts and it didn’t have the push email of the Peek Pronto.  No problem however, because the good folks at Peek offered to upgrade any Classic units to Pronto for no charge.  Well, no charge if one has the upgrade cable ( $14+) and the ability to perform a tricky install.  I opted to send the unit to Peek and have them do it for the cost of the postage and loss of use of the Peek for a week.

When it returned I had a full-fledged Peek Pronto which, had I bought it, would have cost me several times as much.  By the way, the differences between the Classic and Pronto were mostly a function of Peek’s servers determining which service they assigned to your device.  The upgrade was for the firmware to be able to talk to the servers correctly.

Now that the hardware was up to snuff, I began the learning curve to understand how to operate the device.  Unfortunately, at my main residence I have very poor T-Mobile signal, so I wasn’t getting connected very frequently with the Peek.  I did drive to a location with better signal and was able to set up my Peek with 5 of my email accounts and the stuff just started flowing in.  Reading the mail was intuitive, but writing and sending took some research which turned out to require web access because there are no instructions with the device.  You’ll have to search through the Peek website FAQ’s to figure out the keyboard commands.  For example, to move the cursor horizontally in text you are writing required holding down the shift key while turning the scroll wheel.  I did spend a fair amount of time on their web site getting to know the Peek.

Once I got the hang of the Peek, I initially found it very useful.  At the cabin home I was able to set it in a window where the cell signal was strongest and received emails.  I carried it with me everywhere and people I showed it to were impressed.  I even got my wife to like it and was able to cancel the dial-up internet access which cost more than the Peek monthly charge.

Shortly however, cracks began to appear in my enthusiasm and limitations of the device became apparent.  Getting the emails in a timely manner was great, but many of them couldn’t be read because the device is text only and the HTML and graphics only display as a link.  The device is supposed to be able to display PDF and .doc files, but they never were readable.  It is possible to send txt (SMS) message to cell phones and this did work, but for someone to send a message to the Peek, you would have to send to them first and they could then reply.  This is because the Peek, while operating on the cell system does not have a phone number associated with it.

I could accept the above shortcomings, because I could understand enough of the email messages to determine whether I needed to head to the library with my laptop to see the parts not displayed, but when system and hardware reliability issues increased, I began to have second thoughts.

Sometimes the Peek would do unusual things like spontaneously reset.  This would often lockup the device which could only be rectified by removing and reinstalling the battery.  No I’m not making this up.  It is one of the suggestions for clearing problems listed on the Peek web site.  This became more and more frequent over the months and was becoming rather annoying.  There are also issues of slow response of the unit itself.  Sometimes the scroll wheel takes a long time to respond to input, and when it does you’re in a screen where you didn’t intend to be.  During this time, multiple firmware revisions were issued that may have fixed some of the problems, but I didn’t have a cable and Peek removed the offer to upgrade the firmware at their offices.

The biggest issue was the downtime of the service.  It started out as only an hour here or there, but on several occasions complete weekends were without service.  Last July 4th weekend there was no service until the holiday was over.  The sad part is that Peek appears to be a 9-5 company working only Monday through Friday.  I’ve tried calling for support on the weekend and a recording said I should call during their work week.  There’s a bunch of comments on the Peek forums about this lack of support, so I’m not the only one who has this issue.

The latest fiasco involving Peek service is that one of their service providers recently shut them off, making all Peek Classics and Pronto’s paperweights.  To Peek’s credit they have offered to send all current Classic and Pronto users a free (in Peekspeak the $7.95 charge = free), Peek9.  This new device  does not require the “bum” (Peek CEO’s term) service provider to operate.  I have received mine after 2 weeks, but am awaiting activation.  The device looks exactly the same as the Pronto.

I haven’t totally given up on the Peek.  I have too much vested in the product and would like to see it succeed, but I have my doubts.  I can’t imagine a corporate user would be too happy about the situation.  I also see competition sneaking up on the benefits of the Peek in the form of new data plans from the wireless providers.  I’ll be looking at some prepaid data plans for a USB dongle for my laptop.  If I were newly looking at the Peek, I would probably wait 6 months to a year to see how their problems play out.

Filed in categories: Reviews, Wireless

Tagged: Email, Messaging

Peek 9 Mobile Messaging Device Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 28, 2010 at 10:09 am.

The makers of the Peek Pronto have introduced a new device; the Peek 9. Great!

What is it? Is it a phone? A scientific calculator? A digital dictionary? I got it, it’s an Electronic Foreign Language Translator!

Actually it is none of those things. It is an Email Device. It probably should be some or all of those other things, then perhaps we can have a reasonable expectation of people actually wanting something like this. In a world of the Smart-Phone and even the Feature-Phone becoming better at doing practically everything except cooking your dinner, what could a simple email device do for you?Simple Gone Social

The idea behind the original Peek was for it to be a simple way to get your email on the go. Period. No bells, no whistles. Just email. The later released Peek Pronto enabled SMS, Twitter and Facebook capabilities along with a few other enhancements (if you can call it that). Simple not so simple anymore…

Even with those features, it doesnt seem to be worth the 70 bucks they were asking. Not to mention the $20.00 a month for service.

New and Improved?

“Everyone else was doing more, we did less. Everyone else was chasing premium. We made it cheap. Everyone was focused on flash and trash. We made nuts and bolts. Cheap, simple, fast email,” said Amol Sarva, the Peekster-in-Chief.

“For some reason, while everyone is busy making $99 touch screen phones (we’re not), the average cell phone bill seems to be going up (including ours). But aren’t people talking less? Texting, email, etc, more? Isn’t that cheaper?”

True, most people do not talk as much on their phones. But we all still want the option. You ever try to give detailed directions through text messages or emails, going back and forth with the person? The fact is, talking is still the fastest form of communication. Sometimes you need an answer, quickly. Sometimes it’s an emergency. Sometimes we want to hear our loved ones voice.

Cheaper isn’t always better.

On the Otherhand…

Peek however, may have a chance if targeted at the right market. Business professionals.

If you have ever worked at a large office you would see just about everyone has a Blackberry that is provided by the company. A lot of corporate phones are used now for email only. Peeks would be a lot cheaper for the company to have for sure. That should be the target demographic. Not regular consumers. Consumers want more than just email. I mean, if I work at Target as a cashier I’m not gonna be checking email my entire lunch break. Twitter and Facebook is nice but I have a whole 30 minutes to an hour to kill. Can I surf the web, or listen to music, play video games or call my brother?

If its cheap its cheap, and aren’t we always surprised when cheap stuff actually does something cool? Why? It’s because we didn’t expect it to do much in the first place. That’s where Peek stands. Most people like simple things. But we aren’t asking for the world when we say, “Peek why not put a web browser on there and maybe we can talk.” Or someone would say, “Peek, how about a new hardware design if your gonna come out with a new model. I haven’t seen a scroll wheel on anything since my Blackberry 8700 from like 20 years ago.”

Simple is not better for everyone. But what do you think?

Is Peek 9 a deal or is Peek just not getting it?

Filed in categories: Articles, News, Wireless

Tagged: Email, Gadgets, SMS

Why the Peek 9 originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on September 23, 2010 at 8:30 am.

MailTones is an app for your iPhone that lets you associate email from different people with different tones.

Setup is easy if you already have a Gmail account. If not, set one up so that the forwarding fun can begin, as you have to have your email forwarded to the MailTones server in order to work. You really don’t need Gmail, but I suggest it because you can have all of your email accounts in one location, and then setup the forwarding from there.

I enjoyed the concept, but there is a slight learning curve in remembering which tone belongs to who! But once you get that down you can enjoy your email. Now instead of the plain ding you would normally hear you can be made aware of important email without constantly checking your phone.

Filed in categories: iPhone, iPad, iPod related

Tagged: Apps, Email

MailTones iPhone App Review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on October 19, 2009 at 8:44 pm.

Do you sometimes wish that you could email the latest family news and pictures to Grandma or Grandpa, but can’t because they don’t have a computer? Sunnygram offers an email service to connect to these “unplugged” people in your life. With Sunnygram, you assign an email address to a non-emailer (such as Grandma@sunnygram.com), and then friends and family can send messages and digital pictures to that address, which are then compiled into a bright and cheery newsletter which is sent through regular mail each week.  The newsletters are customized for each recipient, with special designs for birthdays and holidays. Grandma can even respond back to her loved ones by pre-paid letter or through Sunnygram’s toll-free phone system. When Grandma replies, the response is emailed back to the original sender.  If she responds by writing, the response is scanned by Sunnygram and emailed out; if she responds by phone, the voice mail recording is emailed as a sound file. A subscription is $9.95 per month, and they will be offering 6-month and 12-month gift subscriptions over the holidays.

Filed in categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Email, Gear Diary

Email your Grandma, even if she doesn’t have a computer originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on August 28, 2009 at 11:49 am.

I finally did it. I have untethered myself from my server based email. It’s something I had been thinking about for a very long time, but just never pulled the trigger. Two weeks ago The Gadgeteer server had a hiccup that made everything inaccessible for the better part of a day. That experience of being without my email caused me to stop dragging my feet and like Nike, just do it. So I did. Yay GMail for domains! Can you believe that I’ve had a Gmail account since the days when you had to have someone send you an invite? Well, I’ve had one, but I never used it. When I decided I would like to start sending and receiving my @the-gadgeteer.com, @ukulelereview.com and another domain through GMail, I thought I would need to do something with that original account. I was wrong. GMail for domains is a whole other animal. I had to sign up for a new account, which wasn’t a big deal considering it’s free (I like free), if you don’t mind a 7.2 GB storage limit, and some google text ads. If you need more space, no ads and some extra goodies, you can opt for the $50/yr deal. Right now, I’m trying the freebie version. I may upgrade at some point though.

Setup was simple as far as creating a new account on the GMail side, assigning addresses etc. But the task of actually switching my e-mail from the gadgeteer server to GMail, required a little bit of hocus pocus. Rob is my server sys admin magician, so he handled all that for me. And at the same time, he also switched his own domain to GMail.

I was able to migrate all my mail on the gadgeteer server (IMAP) into GMail relatively painlessly. I just installed Thunderbird and setup the gadgeteer and GMail IMAP accounts and dragged and dropped folders. Folders don’t really exist in GMail though, and will be converted into labels. Labels pretty much work the same way as folders though, so it hasn’t be difficult getting used to this new setup.

The best part is that this whole switchover is invisible to anyone emailing me. They don’t know I’m on GMail because all my mail comes from @the-gadgeteer.com or @ukulelereview.com. That’s the part that had caused me to hesitate moving in the past. Things used to be setup where the message by-line would say something like “From Julie@gmail.com on behalf of Julie@the-gadgeteer.com“ Not anymore though

So far I’m really happy with the switch and plan to follow this up with some more switches that will get even more things off my desktop computer and the  gadgeteer server and into the clouds, where someone else maintains the data / backs it up etc.

How many of you out there are totally in the cloud and how has it been working for you?

Filed in categories: Uncategorized

Tagged: Cloud Computing, Email, Gear Diary, Gmail

I’m Floating in the Clouds Now with GMail for Domains originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 12, 2009 at 12:10 pm.