1. References

2. External links

The Amstrad E-mailer (often stylized as E-m@iler or written as Emailer or Em@iler) is a landline phone device, launched in March 2000. It is essentially a desktop telephone with an LCD screen and limited Internet dialup and email messaging capabilities. Later models (the E-m@iler Plus, released 2002, and E3 Superphone with videophone capabilities, released 2004) were notable for including the ability to play ZX Spectrum videogames, leveraging Amstrad's previous experience manufacturing Spectrum models.

The Mailboard that slide out from under the handset was similar to the original ZX Spectrum keyboard, so it was similar to playing them on the Spectrum.

The Amstrad E3 Superphone did come with a Gamepad that looked like a PSOne controller but in the color black,so it was easier to play the games the customer rented.

The 'pay as you use' business model that the Amstrad E-mailer was based on, was controversial, and favoured Amstrad heavily. Internet and email access were made via a premium-line phone number, so frequent automatic checking of email was expensive.

When the Amstrad E-mailer E1 was released in March 2000 it was 12p per email collection,by 2004 the price increased to 17p,and then in 2006 the cost increased again to 20p and stayed at that price until the service was closed in 2011.

The Amstrad E-Mailer could be set to dial for email once a day by using Polling option in Setup button 4 (Settings) but would use Automatic Collection(The E-mailer would automatically call up Amserve to collect email as soon as it was notified that there is email waiting.)if the customer answered Yes to Caller Display and Email Notification,its would turn it on,if answered No to one of them then it would use polling and that was set to collect email once a day.

Customers didn't know the Emailer did that so depending on how much email the customer would get it would dial for email more then once a day. If it couldn't dial out it would deactivate and stop its features including telephone, handsfree-speakerphone, VoiceMail answering Machine and Address Book from functioning until the customer let it dial for email again.

Before the customer could start to use the E-Mailer,they had to go thought Registration,the customer would see the words "Press [EMAIL] button to get connected", If they pressed the EMAIL button it would take them to Registration.The purpose of Registration is to set up an account between the customer and the Email Service Provider, which was Amserve,you needed a Email Address from Amstrad for the E-mailer to function, If they didn't complete Registration they couldn't use the E-Mailer until they finished it, it would activate the E-mailer once it was completed, It took about 10 minutes.The E-mailer didn't function or work until the customer registered it before they could use it for the first time.

Sending SMS texts were 50p a text, downloading Polyphonic ringtones were £1.50 a minute,Making a video call was paid per minite and cost a normal call. Games were introduced when the Amstrad E-mailer Plus came out in 2002 but also charged for but the customer could only rent them. ZX Spectrum Games on the Amstrad E3 were 50p for 4 days or £1 for 4 weeks, once the time ran out the games would delete themselves.^[1][2] This received criticism, and was unpopular with some people,but there were some that liked the emailer and did use it up untill the server was closed down.

The emailer also included advertising on its screen but when it downloaded the adverts it was on a free 0808 number so the customer was not charged^[3] The unpopularity of the E-mailer led to losses at Amstrad's Amserve company.^[4][5] But Amstrad did break even on the Amstrad E-Mailer, Lord Sugar said in an interview in 2011:

There was a cost each time a person sent an email and that was where our revenues were coming from. But they are still out there – I think there are 150,000 people still using them and I think someone told me Amstrad now has broken even and we have actually recovered all the costs."^[6]

All Amstrad E-mailer models have now been discontinued. On 30 April 2010 the Amserve E-mailer service was transferred to BSkyB, who announced that the Amserve e-mail service would close from 30 June 2011. From this date all support for the E-mailer services ended, although FAQs are available on Amstrad's website but the manuals that were in pdf format for the E-mailer are no longer available. The E-mailer phone will only function as a conventional phone with no online and e-mail after receiving a configuration change to stop it from deactivating.

The configuration change was only available for 2 weeks from 30th June 2011 to 14th July 2011 after that if the E-mailer didn't download it the customer would not be able to use the E-mailer anymore because it would deactivate itself and stop functioning,Once that happens the customer can't download the Configuration Change again because it only stops the E-mailer from deactivating itself so it doesn't work on a deactivated E-mailer because it can't activate it.

The Amstrad Emailer relied heavily on the Amserve Service to function,Once deactivated nothing functions,All features on the device stops functioning,Features that stop are - Telephone, Handsfree-Speakerphone, VoiceMail answering Machine, Address Book, Calculator, Games, all that functions is the Clock, and there is no date under the clock, its being replaced with the words "Hold down [EMAIL] to restore service".

Any Amstrad E-mailer with these words under the clock is non functional, All Features on the E-mailer are deactivated and can never be activated.^[7].^[8]

In 2003 the Amstrad E3 Superphone was hacked to run Linux, The E3 runs a slimdown version of MontaVista Linux in the background as its running its main software.The E3 Superphone only ran a Linux shell on it and on GUI.

On Jonathan's earth.li E3 Hacking site writes in 2003 "Hardware wise it's a TI OMAP 5910 at 150MHz, with 128KB of NOR flash containing the bootloader, 32MB of NAND flash and 32MB of SDRAM. There's a passive 12bit colour LCD at 480x320, OHCI USB host, a hardware 56k Conexant modem and a built in camera. Oh, and it has a full keypad and a keyboard that pulls out from the base. It's quite a nice toy for under £30. :) (I bought mine back when they were £59.99 and they were originally selling for £99.99) What does it run?

It runs Linux out of the box. A 2.4.18 based kernel that mounts a cramfs partition from the NAND. There's a 3.5mm jack on the back that's the serial port and although you can see kernel messages out of it by default there's no shell. Amstrad have responded to my request for the GPL source used in the product; the kernel (2.4.18-mv30-E3) can be downloaded here (23M tar.bz2). It's based on MontaVista Linux - there's a preview kit available. The internal codename seems to be Delta - there are references to Gamma which is the codename for the older E2/Emailer Plus. However the code they've provided for the kernel isn't actually what the device is running. This is a violation of the GPL, which doesn't seem to bother them and hasn't interested anybody who holds copyright over the code."^[9][10]

References

External links

• Amstrad's E-m@iler product page.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080605165940/http://www.amserve.com/ Amserve email web interface]

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