Probably better for casual use...
Written: Jun 11 '01
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Pros: Email: Anywhere!
Ability to respond to pages.
Cons: Terrible 2-way coverage
Paging Delays
No Address Book Synchronization
The Bottom Line: Not acceptable for mission critical business use, but maybe fun for passing notes between friends or other recreational uses.
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| rcheek's Full Review: Motorola Talkabout T900 2-Way Pager (Black) |
Well, following a serious case of geek-envy, I finally got them to get me a T900 at work (via the Metrocall service: aka my2way.com). I currently carry a PageNet alphanumeric pager: I use it for work, mostly. I have my servers programmed to page me if they find a problem with themselves. You can also send email to an address that will forward the email to the PageNet pager. So, the only new thing with this device was the 2-way capability.
However, I really liked the idea of people being able to send me email and me responding without being at my desk. I usually carry my Sprint PCS phone with me, but digital coverage is not always there. So, I liked the T900 idea: use the more universal paging system for instantaneous replies to urgent email.
Well, I have to say, it is a cool little device. The keyboard works well for a thumb-typer: you cradle the device with your hands and hit the teeny buttons with your thumbs. Message length is OK: 500 characters, and you probably wouldn't want to type much more in one message on that keyboard. It has a backlight, and the keys are even backlit for night typing.
That's about where my good impressions of the device end. First, I was a little surprised to see all of the messages that I was sending end up in my "Mailbox". Why would you lump outgoing messages with incoming messages? It is difficult to tell the difference between outgoing and incoming at a glance (there is an icon to the left, to be fair, but an "Inbox" and an "Outbox" would be a much more familiar paradigm). Even more confusing is when a reply fails to get sent: it displays the "failed to send" icon, but you see your original incoming message when you try to edit it to send it again!
So, I shot out a few messages. About 15 minutes later, the pager notifies me that sending the email failed. Now, I work right smack in the middle of downtown Cincinnati: I would expect that there would be coverage there, if anywhere. Every once and a while, 2-way coverage would be indicated, and I could get a message out, but it sure isn't something I could count on. Plus, there's no signal strength meter, like on a cell phone, so I can't tell if turning it a certain way helps or not (it does with my phone).
The acid test was alpha paging. I sent an email to my pager number @ my2way.com at around 1:00. I wait. Nothing. 2:00 passes, then 3:00. Around 4:30, I finally get the page! That's right, a 3 1/2 hour lag in page times through email! Umm, not real good if my server has crashed. Frustrated, I leave for home. I manage to squeak out a couple of messages standing in the middle of the sidewalk waiting for the bus (so the pager isn't broken or anything: it can send messages).
So I get home, and try to resend the messages that I couldn't send from work. After all, it says "2-Way Service", right there in big letters on the initial screen. Nope, no dice. None of them go out. Granted, I live outside of the Cincinnati bypass (by no means the "boonies", but not downtown, either), but I thought the idea behind carrying a pager AND a cell phone was that the pager would have superior coverage!!! Apparently, not the case with this one.
OK, so at this point, the 2-way stuff is about useless. I've got an oversized 1-way pager with a keyboard. How does it compare to my old Motorola PageNet pager? Well, after a half day of reception, I've gotten a total of 3 news articles, where the PageNet pager would have gotten all 8 a couple times. The backlight in the T900 is manual: you need to hold a button for a few seconds, where there is a light sensor on my PageNet pager. Guess which one is handier for those 3:00 AM pages? The menu structure is much deeper and more complex on the T900: deleting a message is a 5-6 keypress job, where it was 3 on the old pager.
One final boondoggle: I've got address in my Palm Pilot, my cell phone, Lotus Notes, and Outlook 2000. I've found ways to synchronize the four of them and make them all get along. Now I need to type them all in ON A TINY KEYBOARD into my pager? Not providing address book synchronization on this device, out of the box, is just about a crime.
So, unless something can be done about the coverage, this puppy is going to have to go. I can't rely on it, and I can't get it perform 2-way messaging, so it is pretty much worthless to me. Maybe in a different area, with better coverage, it might hold some promise, but we had T900 using visitors in from Milwaukee today that also thought service was poor, so it may very well just be universal. Nice try, but just not quite there.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
rcheek
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Member: Robert Cheek
Location: Cincinnati, OH
Reviews written: 5
Trusted by: 3 members
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