Is There Room for an IM only Device ?

tealover writes "MSNBC Has an article about a new device from Motorola that they're marketing that just does IM. It' called IMFree. Kind of a combination of a cordless phone and pager; There is a base station that plugs into a USB port in your computer, so it's only portable in relation to the base station. Sounds and looks like the kids would like this."

Comments

Re:SMS ?

[petecarlson]

At 40cents/message, that's big bucks for a service that costs next to nothing.

In Europe, where SMS is huge, It doesn't cost 40cents/message. It is only in the US where they can get away with charging that much. When I lived in Germany it cost around 1 cent a message and I sent 5-10 messages a day. Now that I live in the US and it costs quite a bit more, I send around 5-10 messages a month.

I have one.

[Gldm]

I have AIM on my Nokia 3390 (I think it's a 3390) through T-mobile. I think you get 50 incoming messages free with most of the plans, an upgrade to 500 is $3/month, which I have. Considering that's about 16 messages/day average, I'm unlikely to go over it. I actually rarely use it cause when I'm home I'm usually at the computer with trillian running anyway.

Typing on it's a little annoying at first, but I can manage it ok now. It's nice to have when I need to get ahold of someone and I know they're probably on AIM, or when I'm just sitting somewhere bored.

The only problem I have with it is I can't seem to get it to pull my entire buddy list down off AIM, even when I tell it to. So I often have to manually add people to keep it in sync with the list on my computer. Once they're added it's fine though, so it's a minor annoyance.

Cybiko does this

[t0qer]

Cybiko does this. Am I supposed
to dance around and clap at motorola's innovative entry into the teen PDA
market?

P.S. I'm just P.O'd slash doesn't do more coverage on this device, I
have 3, they're a hell of a lot better than luggin a laptop through the house
for IRC or IM'ing. Really cool toy.

Re:What would be really cool...

[Lumpy]

is something that provided a very cheap screen/kb/mouse combination which wirelessly connected to a new session on a linux box.

So something from the early 90's would work then?

NCD explora 451 + Oronco Prisim2 wireless card + a cheap AP + your linux server.

I have 6 of them running this way and at $15.00 each for the NCD terminals, $35.00 each for the wireless cards, monitors,keyboards, mice were free.. I got off really cheap.

There are 2 problems with this. Web and text stuff only, and mercilessly kill anyone that set's gnome to use a screensaver or tries to listen to a mp3 on their NCD terminal.... Just as an example to the others...

the hard part of this setup is the whiners that can't live without a 1600X1200 at 32 bit color resolutions. (800X600 is best for a 10 baseT network, which 802.11b is equilivant to) they also need to be publically killed as an example to the others. (A good sysadmin keeps his users cowering in fear)

although, I have recently started ditching the wireless cards at that location and ran Cat5e.. gives them 100 base, a switch, and is overall cheaper... even with an electrician pulling the wire at $120.00 an hour.