Why is this so difficult?

[Martin I Pettinger]

I am stuck

I would like to access my personal e-mail using my PDA with a mobile phone. I have an iPAQ 3850 and two personal e-mail accounts. My main e-mail account is in the UK with BT Internet.

Now maybe I am naive but I thought that I could use one of the new generation of mobile phones to dial into my e-mail account via Infrared. So far I have tried using two of my colleagues phones a Nokia 7110 and an Ericsson T68i.

I suspect that there are a number of problems with what I am trying to do. First problem both phones need to be data enabled - the Nokia 7110 is, the Ericsson owner wasn't sure. Second problem I suspect that you cannot dial your account as you would with a normal land line. I.e. you need a mobile e-mail account with someone - i.e. the Mobile Phone Company.

Anyone know if this is my problem. In both cases when I activated the mobile phones Infrared. The iPAQ didn't seem to connect with the Ericsson but the Nokia did appear to dial the number but failed to connect.

Any thoughts / help - appreciated

Martin

[Malacandra]

Shooting from the hip here, but...

1 - Mobile phone must be DATA capable
2 - Mobile phone must be Infrared Modem capable (in other words, able to transmit that data via the IR port)
3 - Phone service must have DATA service "installed" (some companies this is an extra bit per month)
4 - Ipaq must have the correct connection settings (for IR modem, Phone, etc.)

[Ravenswing]

No, you should be able to dial into a standard BT Internet dial-up account through a mobile phone. If you're trying to use GPRS, forget it unless you've bought your own phone and had the service enabled.

You would need to set up a dial profile with the phone number you usually use to dial in. (This won't work if you are using a service that requires you to dial in from your home phone, of course.) At least for the T68, you need to set it to the Standard Infra-Red Modem option. I think you need a specific driver from Nokia to use a 7110. Set the connect speed to 9600 baud.

You also need to turn on infra-red receive on the phone; most people have it turned off by default since it's a waste of battery power if you aren't using it.

If you get that going, you can do some extra fiddles like dialing ISDN numbers. You can generally get a lot shorter call set-up time that way, but you need to know the correct modem string to force V.110 (I think) modem negotiation.

But believe me, if you shift to GPRS you'll never look back. 8)