Use Down Time While Out and About to Catch Up and Send Email

How often during your average week do you find yourself cooling your heels while you are out and away from your office or home? A half-hour wait at the doctor's or dentist's office, fifteen minutes while waiting for others to arrive to a meeting, twenty minutes on the train or bus? It all adds up, and many people find that it adds up to several hours during the work week.

If you are anything like me, in addition to having that interstitial downtime, you always have a queue of email just waiting to be answered.

Now I'm going to tell you how you can use one to help with the other! If you have a Powerbook or iBook and a bluetooth-capable cellphone the chances are good that you can find yourself ready to catch up on email from anywhere, anytime that you have a few minutes to sit and wait!

There are a few things which you will need to do first, before you actually set your laptop up to be able to do email from anywhere. First, you need to make sure that you have bluetooth built into your laptop, or you need to get a USB bluetooth adaptor. Then you need to make sure that you have the very latest update for bluetooth from Apple, which is avallable here for free.

Next, go to Ross Barkman's excellent GPRS info page and make a note of the "username" and "password" for your cell provider and service. Even though they are called "usernames" and "passwords", you aren't getting information from someone else's account - this is the information which your cellphone provider uses to make a connection between your cellphone and their data network.

After making sure that your computer is all set, you should check and see whether your cellphone service provider offers a high speed wireless (GPRS) access option - if so you will want to sign up for it, and be sure to sign up for the "unlimited" option. My carrier, for example, is Cingular, and they offer their high speed "MediaNet" access in an unlimited package for $24.95 per month. Verizon offers their 10x network, which I'm told is blazing fast. Alternatively, if your carrier doesn't offer a GPRS high speed Internet access package, or if you just don't want to take advantage of it, then sign up for whatever data transfer plan your carrier offers. Just be sure to sign up for the unlimited option, or you will have to monitor the time you are uploading and downloading email very closely.

Ok, now that you are all ready and capable, here's how to put it in action, so that you can use that downtime to catch up on email... [Go to Page 2]