Lenovo Constant Connect: No dirth of new ways to you get your email fix
Sidin Vadukut -
Monday, February 16, 2009 3:24 PM
So you have a shiny new BlackBerry. Which means you have email access all the time. And just in case your handset runs out of battery or your network drops you can always fall back on that Thinkpad with the wifi card. So what more could you ask for?
Even more email reliability you say? Auto synching between BlackBerry and laptop? But that already happens! Oh you mean even when the laptop is switched off? That is impossible!
Or is it?
Business travelers will be able to use their BlackBerry smartphones to automatically forward e-mail to their ThinkPad notebook PCs with a $150 device developed by Lenovo Group Ltd. and Research in Motion Ltd. (RIM), the two companies said Monday.
Called Lenovo Constant Connect, the service has a hardware and a software component that was developed over two years by Lenovo engineers in Beijing, Japan and North Carolina, Rich Cheston, a distinguished engineer and executive director in Lenovo's software and peripherals business unit, said in an interview Friday.
The hardware part is a small ExpressCard device with 512GB of flash RAM and a Bluetooth antenna that pairs up with the user's BlackBerry via Bluetooth to download any new e-mail. That e-mail is stored on the ExpressCard device and replicated to the ThinkPad e-mail client after the user turns the laptop back on.
I can't think of a single occassion when I would be this desperate to sync my email across both laptop and BlackBerry. But Lenovo can think of plenty:
That way, a traveler rushing between flights or in a taxi can get the
latest e-mail without having to stop, turn on the PC and log-in
over a Wi-Fi hotspot, Cheston said.
More details on ComputerWorld and Gizmodo.
I don't know about you but this is the sort of unexplainable gadget that gives legitimate gadget lovers like you and me a bad name. People see announcements like this and then laugh at us when we support genuinely good ideas. Things like cellphone-based GPS navigation, PS2 compatible universal remote controls, and wifi-enabled internet radio devices *** media center extenders that all make such perfectly good sense.
And by we I mean me. And by people I mean my wife.
Sigh.