Captain Ron's

Sailing and Cruising Pages

Pocketmail

We used to like Pocketmail ... I could say we used to love it as an inexpensive email system; after all, we used Pocketmail on three trips to the Bahamas.

When we liked Pocketmail, it was a simple little thing that was made by Sharp Electronics and had third party software so you could upload and download your address book to your PC. The software wasn't the best or easiest to use stuff, but it worked and with a little tinkering you could actually keep Pocketmail's addresses in sync with Outlook or Outlook Express and any other email system that let you import text files.

Of course, things change. That's the nature of the beast. The original Pocketmail made by Sharp would not work with cell phones ... big f__ing deal ... who cares?? So they changed vendors and Sharp no longer makes Pocketmail. BUT the new one(which cost us another $100) is supposed to work with cell phones. It does ... more or less ... the problem is that cell phones are so small these days, that it's hard to fit the Pocketmail acoustic coupler to the cell phone handset (if they still call it that) ... none-the-less, we were able to make it work at least sometimes with our Motorola V400 Cingular system phone. But that's only one reason I don't like the system anymore.

They changed the upload/download software too. Now it's somewhat easier to use but it only works with it's own file structure. My Outlook address book also changed along the way and it too only works with a limited number of file structures ... no more simple old text file intercourse for these two ... in fact, I now find it too difficult to keep them in sync.

BUT that's not all folks ... a few years ago in the Bahamas, you could use AT&T Prepaid Phone Cards to make calls to the US. We could buy these cards at Sam's Club for about 2 cents a minute in the 1000 minute or bigger cards. This rate translated to about 30 cents a minute once Batelco got their cut. Then Batelco, the Bahamas government monopoly phone company stopped taking them. Also back then, you could buy Blackstone International phone cards from Bahamian vendors like the front desk at the Moorings docks in Marsh Harbor ... Their cost worked out to be about 20 cents a minute also a good deal since Batelco cards cost about 60 cents a minute back then.

The last year things changed again. Batelco now only accepts Batelco phone cards that run about 55 cents a minute. I say about because they charge up front. That is, when you dial a call, they deduct 55 cents from your card. If you connect and talk for a minute and one second, it racks up another 55 cents. If you talk then for another 30 seconds, you don't get credit for the remaining 30 seconds. A minute and a half call to the states costs $1.10.

Now here you go to use your 55 cents a minute phone card with your Pocketmail system. You dial, it rings, you push the button, and 20 seconds later your call gets dropped ... rack up 55 cents for Batelco. You redial, the Pocketmail does it's thing as you watch your meter running. 4 minutes later you think your downloads must be about finished ... you have your finger on the cradle ready to hang up the instant Pocketmail finishes ... 4:57 ... 4:58 ... 4:59 ... 5.00 ... 5.01 ... etc about 5: 05 your Pocketmail beeps ... error ... now you redial and try again. Same deal ... maybe after three tries you finally complete the call ... it never, never, never ends anywhere close the end of a minute. It always, without fail takes long enough to roll over into the next minute so that it charges you another 55 cents. Now some of this is not Pocketmail's fault, I grant you, but it's all coming out of my pocket.

Then we went to Mayaguana ... Batelco rates from Mayaguana are $1 per minute and guess what ... if the sky has a single cloud in it ... your call won't go through or the line goes dead halfway through the call ... Mostly in Mayaguana, if your call takes more than a couple of minutes, you won't complete it.

We thought that was bad until we went to Providenciales in the Turks and Caicos Islands. There the phone company is Cable & Wireless. their rates are $2 per minute ... but on the other hand, the calls always went through and Pocketmail completed quite quickly compared to the Bahamas... rarely over a minute or two at the most... same billing method though ... pay first then talk.

That's not all either... Pocketmail is text only ... ok I can accept that and work with it. But we like to keep folks at home updated on our comings and goings. Sometimes these missives get as long as this critique ... longish. AND the mailing list kept growing. Pocketmail has a limit of how many addressees can get an email ... 25 I think. Anyway, we wound up making copies of these long emails and sending them out like three times. THEN, some respondents never could get the idea of deleting my original message from their reply. Their email system options were obviously set to include a copy of the original within the body of the reply. That means that if they failed to delete the stuff I sent from their reply, I got it all back. I also got it all back if I had a bad email address or if some other glitch happened and I was sent a Pocketmail error message ... oh great ... talk about wasting download time. This isn't Pocketmail's fault either but it does add to the cost of using it.

Anyway, the upshot is ... we don't use Pocketmail anymore. It works ok in the US where the toll free numbers work from payphones or marina phones where there's no charge or where your cell phone works at reasonable rates. But for cruising the islands, forget it ... lots of folks still using it though ... we always see cruisers hanging out by the working payphones, holding up their Pocketmail and listening to the boops and beeps.

We still have our Pocketmail device ... it's replaced Carole's little black book as a personal information manager but that's all it is... we've dropped the service.

What do we do for email instead? We have a Satellite phone that interfaces email through Ocens Mail to our PC. Not counting the cost of the phone (about $500), it costs us around 40 cents a minute to make a call over satellite from the Bahamas (or anywhere else) to the US ... plus, email rarely took longer than 30 seconds and Globalstar bills you in 15 second increments. BIG PLUS, we could make voice and data calls right from the boat ... no more hunting for a pay phone that works. On the down side, the Globalstar phone is not weather resistant. That makes it a fair weather deal only. It also has to have a clear view of the sky although we found it to work under our bimini top, so go figure. We also pay Chris Parker for his daily email weather forecasts... very worth while but that's another subject.

Oh yeah, Batelco has figured out another way to screw themselves ... and I'm happy for them. They lease T-1 lines for internet connectivity purposes to service providers. Well, now internet phone companies have sprung up allowing you to make calls anywhere for very low cost. We saw cruisers last year paying for internet connections at the local internet cafe and using the connection to call home ... just plug in the old headset and yak away. I assume the kids know when mom and dad will be trying to call ... while you're at it take your webcam and do a video conference ... it costs the same.