Send Text Messages from (Almost) Anywhere on Earth

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The recently announced DeLorme Earthmate PN-60w with SPOT Satellite Communicator. As the 2010 Outdoor Retailer Winter Show approaches, we have ...

Full article at http://www.trailspace.com/articles/2010/01/07/send-text-messages-from-almost-anywhere-on-earth.html

Bill, for some reason, all I can see is the headline and not the article. Any idea what is going on?

I'm not having any trouble loading the page from my end.

Bill: a pal of mine asks if these aren't similar to two-way satellite pagers that have supposedly been around for a decade.

Also, what do you think of the significant cost issue of having to buy a GPSR and a Spot and pay the Spot subscriber fee? You could rent a damn fine satphone for that kinda money, I suspect.

Works for me, Tom D. Please let us know if it's still not working at your end.

Tom M, I haven't seen the combo price mentioned yet. Did you? I was wondering how the math would work out, but figured they hadn't set the price(s) yet.

The combination price is a bit of a reduction from the separate items. The subscription fee, it works out to about $17/month, according to Chip, much less than renting either a Globalstar or an Iridium phone for the same time period. The PN-60 is a much more capable unit than the predecessors (20, 30, and 40), and is in the same price range as other companies' GPSRs with similar capabilities - it is far from a low-end unit. But it will not give you voice capability, only text, and one-way at that. Remember that satphones run $2-5/minute, depending on several things, although the digital transmissions are a lot cheaper.

Tom M, the Communicator is just one-way, as I understand it. One thing I suggested when I did a review of the original SPOT was some kind of confirmation that the signal was received by the satellite, but I have seen no indication that this was implemented. The Communicator, as I understand it, is only a transmitter to the satellites. I will see if I can get an answer to this, but Chip is rather busy at the CES right now.

Still not working. I even turned off my pop up blocker and my firewall. Sometimes my security software goes a bit haywire, so that is probably it.

We'll look into it asap, Tom.

Sometimes I wish ALL texting was one way!

Nifty idea though.

Methinks someone's mother came up with this idea.

Thanks Dave, whatever you did, it works now for me.

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