For mobile managers, connecting to data sources is just as important as host connectivity. These days, email access is often a matter of urgency on the road. Palm and Windows CE devices can do this
with the help of some third-party add-ons and plug-in modems, but phone maker Ericsson has taken another route by starting with the phone, and working backwards. It has rebadged the Psion Series 5, loaded some communications-specific software into ROM, included a neat clip-on IrDA modem and wrapped the whole lot up in a Filofax-sized pouch.
The MC218 has some great features such as the slide-out keyboard and built-in, button-controlled voice recording, as well as an easy-to-use combination of keyboard and touchscreen. The screen is 640 by 240, and surprisingly clear in most lighting, particularly with the green backlight in action.
The keyboard is almost big enough to type on, and sits at a comfortable angle when open. A CompactFlash slot sits under the left end of the keyboard, alongside the microphone, and just in front of the battery bay on the back, which takes two AA batteries. An IrDA window, RS232 serial mini-socket and a stylus are also included.
The DI27 accessory modem is designed to dip onto the bottom of Ericsson phones, and enable one-touch connection to the Net — which it does without all the usual configuration worries and hassles. The 36MHz ARM CPU works in tandem with 16M of RAM, and the EPOC OS comes with a huge array of useful and highly desktop-compatible applications built in. Along with the usual P1M applets, graphing, spreadsheets, imaging, word processing and jotting are all available and you can exchange files directly with most office programs.
The voice recorder links all files together, so If you delete one, they all go west, which is rather silly.
Setting up and using the MC218 is generally very easy, even when configuring the Net access module. The serial link to the desktop allows direct interaction with Windows Explorer, enabling drag-and-drop of existing files as well as the standard synchronisation approach.
This is a well-integrated package that avoids many of the pitfalls of other mobile communications solutions. What a shame the screen isn’t colour.

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