But the black box is a 9-volt rechargeable battery. This battery provides the burst of power necessary to run the modem's 2-watt radio transmitter. Unfortunately, there's no encryption whatsoever in the system, which means that anything transmitted can be intercepted by an industrial spy with a scanner, a frequency analyzer, and a decent computer. As long as you're in a coverage area, WyndMail works great. Seconds after somebody sends you a message, pop, there it is in your inbox.
Outgoing email goes out instantly.
But both WyndMail and RadioMail have their problems. The biggest is that you can't use your own mail program - you have to use theirs. And no matter how hard the folks at Wynd work to improve their mail client, programs like Qualcomm's Eudora, Netscape Communicator, and Microsoft Exchange are always going to be better. That's not the case with the nation's cellular phone network, which has coverage on every interstate and most highways that I traveled. But both companies have now seen the light, and are setting up software that lets you check mail from any ISP using the Internet's Post Office Protocol.