Mobile PA review

Numerous services are springing up to offer you a chance to get access to your emails away from your office PC, is this a one a winner?

23 November 2005 11:07 GMT / By Stuart Miles

With the ability to be able to work anywhere in the world becoming more of a necessity than a bonus for the average office worker, numerous services are springing up to offer you a chance to get access to your emails away from your office PC.

MobilePA is one such offering and promises to manage your email and news, making it quicker and easier to access emails from a wider range of devices.

Based on a series of webpages dedicated to a series of different devices, MobilePA allows you to use your existing mobile phone or wireless PDA without having to invest in new devices and the service can be accessed via voice interface on any phone, a web browser on any computer, or WAP, HTML or xHTML browser with an appropriate data contract with a mobile operator.

The service is broken down into two distinct areas - news and emails. The email service allows you to access any email account rather than one that a specific company has provided (i.e., hotmail) while the News allows you to get feeds from certain publications like The Independent newspaper and The Register. The amount of publications are pretty lacklustre, but do show the potential available for the service if more players come on board.

Once your preferences have been saved via the online member’s area you can access your emails by going to a specific address and then logging in anywhere in the world.

From here you can read your emails in a similar way to using hotmail or any other web-based email system, however the benefit here is that you are accessing your private email rather than having to rely on that hotmail.com address.

In fact you can configure access to up to three email accounts through MobilePA.

The alternative to reading them is to either dial in and hear your messages spoken back to you via a computer a case of “Hi Stuart, you have 4 priority email messages: 2 messages from Bob Roberts: a reply from Fran…” and so on, or have alerts sent to a mobile phone via a text message.

The voice option is rather basic, but it does allow you to hear what is happening with your email account without the need for a flash phone or a computer anywhere in sight.

Verdict

If your company or internet host doesn't offer remote access via the web and you are starting to feel the pressure of having to be in the office to see who is sending you emails, then this is a good service to invest in.

The additional phone support will also appeal to road warriors keen to be in touch with the office without having to lug around a laptop with them wherever they go.

However at £10 a month you have to really be sure that you can't just go without email for the couple of hours you may be out of the office.

Score

Review Recap

Made by: MobilePA
Price as reviewed: £10 per month
The good: Access your email from virtually any device, voice support to hear your emails over the phone, supports up to three email accounts
The bad: You’ll have to pay for the privilege
Quick verdict: If your company doesn’t offer remote email access and the pressure is starting to get to you, this is a good service to invest in
Score