Amstrad Emailer E3

Advantages: Low inital cost, well made, easy to use, nice big clear screen,
Disadvantages: High telephone costs, limited internet functionality,

I bought a used Amstrad Emailer E3 from E-Bay. It was very cost efficient (at first) and the piece of it you get is quite nice looking, prompting several comments from guests who see it. First things first. The E-mailer is primarily a telephone. The phone aspect of the device is fine, it has a wide range of features including Caller ID (if you have it on your line - phone co may charge for this), address book, speaker-phone and a nice big screen ...
...the number of the incoming call. Sound quality is good on both speaker-calls and normal calls. One minor issue I noticed was that for some reason there is sometimes about a half a second delay between when you pick up the handset and when the person on the other end can hear you - this means repeating the word 'hello' a second time if you answer too quickly. The address book feature for some reason requires an email address be entered into their ... Read review

Advantages: Stylish and versatile
Disadvantages: Ongoing rip off charges, premium line rates, average £200+ pa

...the daily call to the Amstrad server cost about 18p each time, sometime sthe emailer will call up several times a day say 3 times a day at 20p x 365 will cost you £219 per year. Nice bonus for Amstrad. Want to call them for advice just go ahead and then you pay premium line rates. Get the picture? Nice versatile phone but when PC's and Laptop prices falling every month, you could buy a quality PC based on the Emailer costs every 18 months. If ... Read review

Advantages: very good idea
Disadvantages: call charges, very slow online

I used to own one of these emailers before I bought a PC. It seems like a good idea, it has almost everything that you need on it. The problem is the call charges and adverts, I ended up with average MONTHLY phone bills of £250+ just using the thing for the internet. Why bother when you can find a second-hand pc for about £100 and get access for about £15ish If you have money to burn and don't like the idea of having a PC or Mac then by all means ...
...but the main reason the people end up either binning them or selling to another poor soul is the shear cost. Ok so it seems like a bargain for something that will let you surf the web, email, video calls SMS text messages, phone calls etc. Personally i would say avoid at all costs!!!! ... Read review