Today’s WSJ’s Mossberg column mentions a device, the only one on the market today, called the Mailbug, which is a text-only terminal for sending and receiving e-mail over a dial-up connection. Costing $125 plus $100/year service, it doesn’t permit exchange of photos (check out Presto and Celery) for that. There's also a hand-held device called PocketMail Composer for $99. The nearly complete absence of simple devices to enable the elderly to read and send e-mail is a testimony to the inability of vendors to approach the elderly with a product they could use. People who don’t want to deal with Vista, backups, reboots, and e-mail configuration. Only 19% of those 65 and older have broadband connections — but I am willing to bet that the other 81% have telephones.
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What was I thinking...
What was I thinking — of course there are more products — it is just that Walter Mossberg (what a surprise) doesn’t know about them. And neither did I — here’s another:
http://www.mycelery.com/
Celery automatically prints
Celery automatically prints incoming email including image and PDF attachments. Celery also lets its users send outgoing handwritten messages via email. It’s the best of both worlds. http://www.mycelery.com