Web palmtop offers life-time no-limits mobile surfing for £60
Datawind has upgraded its PocketSurfer web browsing palmtop with a new airtime package that offers unlimited internet access for life, all for a mere £60.
That's on top of the £199 you'll pay for the PocketSurfer 2R itself, which uses cheap GPRS cellular access and server-side site cacheing and data compression to give you what …
If they truly can offer £60 "for life" internet access, they need to ditch that crappy looking palmtop and start offering the service for existing devices. I'd happily shell out £60 to get my phone and netbook online on the move, even at glacial GPRS speeds, to avoid the truly ridiculous prices being asked for 3G broadband services at the moment. The last thing I want, however, is yet another single-purpose device to carry around.
Am kinda interested in it, but as with the AC, do think that it sounds like they are going to disappear in the near future and as such, buying one on such a plan would sadly be nothing but a waste of cash sadly.
Well it might be a cheap looking, but it sure beats all the touch screen crap that everyone else is using. Id really like to see a company like this go international. I live in Mexico, and airtime rates are so expensive as to make date access impossible (40cents USD per minute) which is why Carlos Slim the owner of Telmex is the richest man in the world. Id really welcome this here in Mexico.
Your palmtop connects to a PC in DataWind (or whoever's) datacentre and in the datacenter your pages are rendered by IE or whatever *they* have chosen. Then the resulting display is compressed and transmitted to the pocketsurfer gadget.
SO it would seem anyway.
Still liking the concept? Think about the confidentiality implications - NO end to end SSL, for example...
And that screen and that keyboard... my Psion3 keyboard was better, and the Jornada720 display was better. Neither of them are still around though...
I had the head honcho from the UK arm of this company in my officeto give me a demo of the unit.
All I can say is that the unit sucks, its basically like a thin client running VNC to a web client server farm, Pages are rendered and sent to the device as little image tiles.
when you a clik link it sends the co-ord back to the web client server farm to get that to get the page and send you the new image.
No need, Opera Mini does it for S60 already surely? It's a bit awkward without a qwerty kbd, but better (imo) than the crappy iPAQ-stylus kind of thing. YMMV.
Back around the turn of the century there were all sorts of Pyramid type schemes for Internet access. These usually had the hook of 'unlimited internet access for a simple one off fee'. Invariably these all collapsed into a heap when econmic reality caught up to them. There is no way that you can offer free internet access for life in this manner unless you expect the life to be of a finite length. The economics just don't add up.
I enjoyed the pay once, eat all you can, times. I hopped between ISPs for a while but was pretty good while it lasted.
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Web palmtop offers life-time no-limits mobile surfing for £60
Datawind has upgraded its PocketSurfer web browsing palmtop with a new airtime package that offers unlimited internet access for life, all for a mere £60. That's on top of the £199 you'll pay for the PocketSurfer 2R itself, which uses cheap GPRS cellular access and server-side site cacheing and data compression to give you what …
This topic is closed for new posts.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 13:16 GMT
Anonymous Coward
"life-time no-limits mobile surfing" #
...until the company goes out of business.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 13:31 GMT
Jerome
Shame #
If they truly can offer £60 "for life" internet access, they need to ditch that crappy looking palmtop and start offering the service for existing devices. I'd happily shell out £60 to get my phone and netbook online on the move, even at glacial GPRS speeds, to avoid the truly ridiculous prices being asked for 3G broadband services at the moment. The last thing I want, however, is yet another single-purpose device to carry around.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 15:03 GMT
Allan Rutland
Interesting #
Am kinda interested in it, but as with the AC, do think that it sounds like they are going to disappear in the near future and as such, buying one on such a plan would sadly be nothing but a waste of cash sadly.
Hope to be wrong, but can't see it sadly.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 15:28 GMT
Joe K
Looks like shite #
Its like a cheap chinese knock-off, only not at all cheap.
Wouldn't pay over £100 for that horrible bit of kit, and do you *really* need to access the net while away from a desk, all the time?
Like mentioned, if they offered this as an app for iphone or S60 they'd get much more business.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 15:55 GMT
Dave The Cardboard Box
You guys aren't thinking positively #
You could die long before the company goes bust.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 18:00 GMT
Drak
please bring it here to Mexico #
Well it might be a cheap looking, but it sure beats all the touch screen crap that everyone else is using. Id really like to see a company like this go international. I live in Mexico, and airtime rates are so expensive as to make date access impossible (40cents USD per minute) which is why Carlos Slim the owner of Telmex is the richest man in the world. Id really welcome this here in Mexico.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 18:00 GMT
Shalroth
Nice idea... #
...but the hardware is terrible. The web access works well enough, but that horrible PASSIVE matrix screen looks worse than the old Jornadas.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 18:00 GMT
Chris
Unlimited? #
How is 5p a minute for roaming unlimited lifetime access?
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 18:00 GMT
Anonymous Coward
Do folks know how this works? #
Your palmtop connects to a PC in DataWind (or whoever's) datacentre and in the datacenter your pages are rendered by IE or whatever *they* have chosen. Then the resulting display is compressed and transmitted to the pocketsurfer gadget.
SO it would seem anyway.
Still liking the concept? Think about the confidentiality implications - NO end to end SSL, for example...
And that screen and that keyboard... my Psion3 keyboard was better, and the Jornada720 display was better. Neither of them are still around though...
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 18:00 GMT
M
Pocket surfer? #
Cock Surfer more like!
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 18:00 GMT
Anonymous Coward
The device is pants. #
I had the head honcho from the UK arm of this company in my officeto give me a demo of the unit.
All I can say is that the unit sucks, its basically like a thin client running VNC to a web client server farm, Pages are rendered and sent to the device as little image tiles.
when you a clik link it sends the co-ord back to the web client server farm to get that to get the page and send you the new image.
Do not buy.
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 18:00 GMT
Dazzz
Dongles #
They might do better offering USB dongles with gprs to all those netbook owners...
Posted Thursday 9th October 2008 23:42 GMT
Anonymous Coward
"if they offered this app for S60" #
No need, Opera Mini does it for S60 already surely? It's a bit awkward without a qwerty kbd, but better (imo) than the crappy iPAQ-stylus kind of thing. YMMV.
Dunno about the ithing, nor do I care.
Posted Friday 10th October 2008 07:19 GMT
Gareth
Shame #
Its a really good deal, and a hell of a lot cheaper then anything else out there over a period of time.
Maybe they should consider putting their SIM into USB sticks to let currently existing laptops and webbooks access it.
When you can pt up the EeePC701 off Ebay for a mere £120 or even a 900 for £200 this looks really overpriced.
Posted Friday 10th October 2008 12:17 GMT
andy gibson
I've used one #
It's shit, I got better web access from my old Psion 5mx connected to my mobile phone via infrared. Seriously. Don't waste your time.
Posted Friday 10th October 2008 14:10 GMT
Mick Sheppard
pipe dream #
Back around the turn of the century there were all sorts of Pyramid type schemes for Internet access. These usually had the hook of 'unlimited internet access for a simple one off fee'. Invariably these all collapsed into a heap when econmic reality caught up to them. There is no way that you can offer free internet access for life in this manner unless you expect the life to be of a finite length. The economics just don't add up.
I enjoyed the pay once, eat all you can, times. I hopped between ISPs for a while but was pretty good while it lasted.
This topic is closed for new posts.