Email to go

Wireless companies want you to send photos, play long-distance video games, and message every detail of your life to friends all by using your cell phone. Those snappy wireless services also offer e-mail, but it, too, has drawbacks. Most phone screens are tiny and hard to read; seeing any more than a few words means having to scroll through a message. And digital coverage is limited. You can make voice calls outside digital coverage (if you have a dual-mode, analog/cellular phone), but you can’t access e-mail until you return to a digital area.
You can get around these problems with an old idea: linking your laptop computer to your cell phone. Ositech Communications (519/836-8063; www.ositech.com) is a Guelph, Ont., company that specializes in linking laptops with phone networks so you can access e-mail and the Internet. Ositech claims its CellFlex technology provides all the benefits of digital connections where available, and connects over analog service where needed (as long as you use it with a dual-mode phone).

Ositech offers what it calls Trumpcard kits that marry your cell phone and laptop. Each kit contains software and a card that fits in your laptop’s PCMCIA slot and a cable to link the card with the phone, as well as a cable to connect the card with a regular land-line phone.
Trumpcard kits connect to a range of phones made by Motorola and Nokia (a list of supported phones is on the Ositech web site. Ositech’s King of Hearts PCMCIA card includes a modem, while the King of Clubs card uses the laptop’s built-in modem. The King of Hearts costs about $200, the King of Clubs around $140.

Ositech offers another kit that connects supported cell phones to your computer’s USB port. It’s called the USB Cellular Data Kit with Integrated Cell Phone Charger. USB connections can power cell phones among them, so you can charge a cell phone battery from your computer as you access the Internet–handy if you run the laptop with your truck’s DC power. The USB kit only works on digital cellular networks, so choose wisely.

Q. What’s the difference between text messaging and e-mail?

A. Both let you enter text, press a button, and send that message to another user. The difference is that cell phone messages move over the cell phone company’s digital network. They originate in your phone and end in the phone at the other end. Even a message entered on a web site actually reaches the customer over the phone network–and only where there is digital network coverage. E-mail, on the other hand, travels over the Internet, from the sender’s computer to a server. Usually that server belongs to the sender’s Internet service provider, say, AOL. The e-mail is relayed from there across the Internet to another server, usually operated by the receiver’s Internet service provider. There the receiver can download that e-mail from anywhere there is Internet access.