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Roland Perry · April 6th 15, 06:28 AM posted to uk.transport.london

In message , at 16:19:12
on Sun, 5 Apr 2015, remarked:
In article , (Roland
Perry) wrote:

In message ,
at 10:38:20 on Sun, 5 Apr 2015, Offramp remarked:
The odd thing about Amstrad was that they only made one product, the
eMailer, and it was total and utter garbage!

Huh? Amstrad made scores of audio/tv/ video products, and then the
464/6128 home computers, PCW word processors, 1512/1640 PC clones,
about half a dozen 286/386 AT-clones, the PPC luggable, a clamshell
portable, and several re-launched Sinclair machines. Plus a fax
machine and a couple of printers. That was all in the six years I was
there (until 1989).

I read Alan as they were good and only the eMailer was garbage. I looked at
the spec when it came out and wondered who on earth would want one.

The eMailer was long after my time, and was trying to appeal to people
who:

Wanted to be able to send and receive a few emails, but without the
expense and complication of a PC.

Where it made sense to integrate the functionality with a phone.

Were happy to have the equipment subsidised by higher cost phone calls.

Didn't mind a few adverts as part of the subsidy.

And in later versions: wanted to be able to video calls to relatives.

This all sounds very much like a landline version of a contract
smartphone with Skype and paid-by-ads apps. But that didn't have a
critical mass of users.

I had some ideas (which I didn't follow through) about generating
affinity groups, larger than families, who might be interested in all
getting a phone to swap diaries, notes and other information. The result
would have been a bit like Facebook Groups (but before Facebook was
started).
--
Roland Perry