Battery life

Mail delivery seems fine lately. Unless I notice some slowdowns that persist more than over the course of a few hours, I think that’s all I have to say on that.

Now for battery life. The battery does not quite last 4 or 5 days between charges, but more like 3 or 4, depending on how often you use it to send or receive mail. What’s very nice about the Peek is that you can have it running while charging, and charging doesn’t take long anyhow — 90 minutes or less. I’ve noticed that the battery life indicator seems to jump the gun a bit — it turns orange well before you’re anywhere near to running out — and you’ll see that if you switch it on and off it goes back to green.

A week with a Peek

It’s been a little over a week since my Peek arrived – weird, because it feels like I’ve had it for much longer. I’m enjoying it and it’s doing exactly what I wanted it to do for me: forward my work e-mails to me so I can keep tabs on what’s going on when I’m in transit (at a red light – I don’t text while driving, and neither should you!!) or out and about on the weekend. The e-mail arrival times vary, but I’m not noticing a significant slowing trend — which was something I was afraid of, but seems an unwarranted worry.

It’s also proven to be a nifty notetaker – but I have small fingers and nice fingernails to really zip through that ram-tough keyboard.

Some scattered thoughts:

–One bit of added functionality I’d really like is the ability to read Word documents, even just in plain text form. I get forwarded Word documents a lot and would like to see if they’re important enough for me to drop what I’m doing and head home to take care of… If they can show JPGs, surely Word docs aren’t too much to ask.

–Also, the option to break large incoming emails into segments. I don’t know if Peek’s mail servers can really do that, but “Too long for Peek! Read it online!” is a little disappointing (even though I knew there was a length limit).

–A decent complete online manual, please. This gadget can do more than what’s in the quick start guide, but you’d never know it.

–I’m wondering if Peek could be marketed as a low-cost mobile communications device for the deaf. It seems to me that deaf users would have little use for smartphones with pricey mandatory voice plans or fancy ringtones, but would find mobile e-mail or messaging to be just as vital as the rest of us do.

By the way, the best solution for grabbing online content through your e-mail is SnapAsk. Their e-mails are prompt and clean, especially the “Wiki request” function.

Another neat service is TweetBeep, which bundles the latest Twitter tweets on subjects of your choosing, and delivers them in a digest e-mail to your box about once an hour.

Gotta go. The boss just sent me another after-hours e-mail. Thanks to Peek, I can figure out whether or not it’s really important, without having to sell my soul to a phone company.

Ease of use

My dad (69 years old and fairly tech savvy, but by no means a gear-head) had heard I was trying a Peek, and when I met him for lunch today, he was interested to see how it worked. I simply handed it to him and, saying nothing, let him figure it out for himself. He did — in about 30 seconds. It’s that intuitive. If the Peek has its natural limitations or any rough edges, its design is absolutely fantastic.

He uses a Samsung flip phone with web and (supposedly) e-mail capability, although for some reason his web browser can’t access his Gmail account any more. In order to find out why, he’s got to plow through Verizon customer service – something he’s been putting off, because he hasn’t got the time. “Could this thing check my Gmail?” he wondered. “Sure,” I told him, “I can just register your e-mail as my third user account.” We didn’t do that, but it just underscores the appeal of having a Peek around.

While we were talking, he noted that his Samsung phone had started heating up again. The battery gets hot after going on the Internet for a while. I had my Peek on almost continuously for the last 3 days, with no heat coming from it at all. I have a feeling the Peek is not an explosion hazard…

Other places to read and talk about the Peek

As listed on the official Peek blog, here are some other folks with blogs and forums about the Peek… check them out!

Geeky Peek

Le Journal de Peek

Peek eMail Blog

PeekUser.com

More books by e-mail

Another service of interest to Peekers: DearReader.com, which will send you free excerpts of books that are currently in print. Of less interest than something like Daily Lit, but kinda neat.

Posted by email from twentyfour01’s posterous

Why a Peek?

Having read David Pogue’s glowing review in the New York Times, and following up reading other kind reviews for the Peek on other websites, I thought it just might be worth checking this thing out for $100. $20/month isn’t a super-cheap price, but quite doable for me, so I ordered a Peek from getpeek.com. (Good thing too, since apparently Targets were not putting them on the shelves right away on Monday the 15th.)

As for the inevitable question of Why would anyone want one of these… Listen: Not every person in the world can afford $30 for a monthly voice plan and another $30 or $40 for a data plan, on top of an expensive new phone — for two years of a contract. And not everyone wants to max out their credit cards just so they can have a God-Phone.

I have a cell phone. Pay as you go plan. Bare bones. Because I don’t spend every waking minute of my life yakking on my phone to friends and family (I see them in person!), I don’t give a crap about fancy ring tones, Google maps, listening to MP3s on my phone, surfing the web on an itty bitty screen, or sending 500 text messages a day to Twitter. I like my current phone, and I like my current non-monthly payments for cell service. And I hate dealing with phone companies. (In fact, I like my pay-as-you-go plan because I almost never have to deal with my phone company.)

The question is, why would someone like me want to pay $40, $50, $70 a month — locked in for two years — just to send e-mail from the road?

Basically, I need mobile e-mail for my job. But my company is too cheap to get me a Blackberry. They assume I’m going to be glued to my home computer every weekend to be available for last minute messages. So why not check out this little device that’s gotten such good reviews, and have my own fun with it in addition to filling the work gaps? Freedom!

So, if you’re wondering why a Peek, this is just one person’s story.