Paul Stephens - IT Journalist and Editor

This article was published in PC Plus issue 152 (Jun 99), and is reproduced here for information purposes only.

This is the original copy which was sent to the magazine, not the subbed version which appeared on the page.

paul@paulspages.co.uk
www.paulspages.co.uk

Mailpush one-page review

Mailpush is an email notification service which pushes dial-up technology to its limits - and, some might think, beyond. Here's what I though of it.

[BEGINS]

One of the drawbacks of dial-up Internet connections is that you don't know when you have incoming email messages waiting on your ISP's mail server. You can set your email client to dial in regularly and check, but the cost of the phone calls adds up, and even then you may miss a vital missive by a couple of minutes. MailPush UK claims to have a solution to this problem, in the form of a service which notifies your PC whenever your mail server has new messages, so that you can dial up and fetch them.

First, you have to give MailPush details of your mail server, plus - rather worryingly - your username and password. To receive notification of new messages, your PC and modem must be online and running a small MailPush client application. The MailPush system checks your mail account every ten minutes, and whenever it finds new messages for you, rings your phone number and - without actually getting a reply - exchanges control signals with your modem, causing the MailPush client to display an icon on your Task Bar. Because the call to you isn't answered, it doesn't cost MailPush anything to make, so the company can afford to offer you unlimited notifications for a flat rate of £4.69 a month.

Amazingly, it works - we handed over our precious password and, sure enough, ten minutes later the phone rang, our modem lights flashed, the phone rang again, more flashing took place, and a little envelope icon started spinning away, accompanied by a staggeringly cheesy "you have mail' audio message. You can't see any details about the new messages, but messages with 'chat' in their subject line cause a different Task Bar icon to appear, the idea being that friends can email you to dial up now and chat with them. You can fine-tune the system by specifying which period of the day MailPush is allowed to ring you in, and tell it to notify you only of messages from certain senders or about certain subjects, or conversely not to notify you of them.

MailPush won't work for everyone. It only supports POP3 servers, which currently rules out AOL and CompuServe, although support for them is promised later this year. It also excludes Web-based free email servers (although Hotmail is supported) and those rare ISPs which demand that you use their dial-up connections to receive mail. MailPush is currently offering a month's free trial from its website (www.mailpushuk.com), so you can find out if it works for you.

Both the registration website and system have an 'under construction' feel to them, and there are glitches. The MailPush client makes a 'secret' call to its server when you start your PC (turning your modem speaker off so you won't notice), which may clash with voice calls and other auto-scheduled connections such as FreeServe's Outlook Express startup routine. It also failed to turn our modem's speaker back on afterwards. It isn't able to notify you while you're actually online, so you can log off only to be rung and told to log on again - and conversely, if you do download mail during an online session, it may ring you up afterwards to tell you that the mail you've already got is waiting.

MailPush's basic dial-your-modem service is one of a range of email-notifying options. You can, if you wish, have it ring you up and read out each message's sender and subject line (in a suitably Dalek-like voice), with the option to send the entire message (minus any attachments) to a fax number. Alternatively you can tell it to send all messages direct to a fax, or to send header details to a pager, or, later this year, a mobile phone with SMS (Short Message Service) capability. Since these options involve MailPush actually paying some phone charges, they don't come at flat rates - see facts panel for details.

Mailpush's redirection services could be valuable to a regular traveller. However its basic notification system serves more to highlight the shortcomings of dial-up connections than to overcome them. Handing over your ISP password is something we'd advise against on principle, as is allowing other people to send emails in your name (see screen shot). In our view this, plus the inconvenience of your phone repeatedly ringing, outweighs the benefit of knowing that there's mail of unidentified origin and priority waiting for you. Meanwhile what BT thinks about having its network used for charge-avoiding communications remains to be seen. Overall, it would probably be less trouble to spend the £4.69 on letting your email client make 93 automated dial-ups each month.

[ENDS]