Motorola's WordTrek Plus brings new sophistication to paging

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Late last year I reviewed two products that enabled us to send paging messages without the help of operators. One of their main advantages was being able to send private messages such as "Happy Birthday, Honey" without having to feel embarrassed. One could also send messages in any language, not just Indonesian and English.

The two products I discussed back then were Notify! Intro from EMI and WordSender from Motorola. Just recently, courtesy of PT Sky Telindo Indonesia, I was able to play around with another device from this personal communication giant called WordTrek Plus. I was told that this new product was intended to replace the less-than-a-year-old WordSender. Here's another example of how short product life-cycles are in the computer and communication industries.

Basic features

Do you still remember WordSender? It looks like a regular telephone device, with a handset and a full alphanumeric keypad. You can store up to 20 names, complete with their respective phone numbers and pager numbers. To phone any one of them, you just press the Dial button, then the first letter of the intended recipient's name.

The device has a pattern matching capability, so if you press the letter Z it will automatically give you the first name that starts with Z -- which is likely to be Zatni. If it happens to be the name you want, you can hit ENTER and the device will dial the person's number. If it's not the one you need, you just go on typing out the name. Rarely will you have to type in the entire name.

To send a paging message is not much different. First, you press the Page button, press the first letter of the person's name, and hit ENTER. WordSender will ask you to type in your message, which normally has a maximum of 240 characters. Then you press the ENTER key again. WordSender will start dialing the pager service company's system number and upload the message to their computer. Within seconds, the other person's pager will start beeping.

In some respects, WordTrek Plus has fewer features than the WordSender that it replaces, although as a paging device it has many more advanced features. First, unlike WordSender, there's no handset, and therefore WordTrek Plus cannot be used to speed dial anybody. You'll have to buy a separate, sophisticated telephone device if you're a busy executive that needs to call a number of people regularly. WordTrek Plus comes with a phone stand, so you can store it underneath your regular telephone device. Unlike WordSender, which draws power from an AC adapter, WordTrek Plus uses four AA-size batteries.

It's portable

Because it uses small-sized batteries and has no handset, WordTrek Plus is very portable. If you work in more than one place but always need to page the same people, you can easily carry it around with you. You can take it home, for example, if you want to work from home during the weekend, and you can take it back to the office on Monday. It's very light, there's no tangling cable, and all you have to do is plug and unplug the standard RJ11 of the telephone connection cable. WordTrek Plus lets you keep a directory of 50 people, WordSender only 20.

But it does more than just keep a list of pager numbers. First, there's the QuickSend feature. If you regularly send the same message to the same person, then you can set up the device so that he will receive this message each time you press a single key. You don't have to re-enter anything. So, for example, if you are in the habit of paging your teenage daughter to ask her to call home to let you know her whereabouts and when she'll be home, you can set up QuickSend to send the message: "Call Mom as soon as you can" to her pager. Or you can send the typical message "I'm working late tonight. Please do not wait for me" to your wife by pressing a single key. The QuickSend button is on the top row of the keypad.

Next, you can prepare 10 standard messages that you can send to anyone's pager later on. These reusable messages can be "Please call me ASAP at XXX-XXXX" and a signature to identify yourself (for instance, ZA), or "Staff meeting in five minutes, everybody!". To use this feature, you first select the name of the intended recipient, then select the note that you want to send, and hit ENTER.

Then there's the RemindPage facility. You can send reminding messages to anybody -- including yourself -- at a specific time and date. You can send it once, every day, every week, or every month. So, if you have a regular staff meeting on the 27th of the month, you can set the device so that, exactly at 8:00 AM on that date every month, it will automatically remind everybody about the meeting. Or, in the extreme case, you can even use the pager to wake your son up at 5:30 every morning. You can save up to five RemindPage messages. By the way, the first time you set up this device, you can set it to send "Happy Anniversary, Honey" to your wife's pager. Just make sure that you enter the right date, or else the effect will be just the opposite from what you expect.

Page to groups

As the boss, you may want to send uniform messages to various groups of staff in your company. Let's say you want to page everybody in the sales department to remind them that their report is due in three days. You can set up Group Paging Directories so that the same message will be sent to multiple pagers. WordTrek Plus allows you to set up eight groups (Sales, Accounting, Human Resources, Public Relations, etc.), and each of them can contain 12 names. When you send a message to the group, all twelve people will receive it.

The disadvantage of this feature is that the device will have to make 12 calls, and this may not be cost-efficient. SkyTel offers a feature that gives you a group paging ID number -- for an additional fee, of course -- and the device will have to dial the system only once. The individual pager still has its own number, but when you page to this group number they will all receive your message. Depending on how often you have to page them, this option may prove to be more cost-efficient.

WordTrek Plus can also be connected to a printer, so that you can have a printed record of each paging message that you send, including the time, the name of the person you paged -- including his or her system number and pager ID number, the message, and "Page Sent" or "Page Error". You can even copy the contents of one WordTrek Plus to another, including the list of directories and names, using a regular phone cable. If your company has more than one device, you may have to set up only one and then just copy its contents to the others.

Improved

As an alphanumeric paging device, WordTrek Plus definitely has more useful features than WordSender. However, there are some things that Motorola can do to make this device better. First, the cable ports are located on the wrong side. They should be placed at the back instead of underneath the set. As it is, it's rather difficult to plug the cable and run it through the available conduit. You have to really twist the cable, which may sever the cable strands.

The second thing that Motorola could do is add a button that will turn on a light inside the LCD panel so that we can still use it in areas where there's not enough light to read it. Another thing is perhaps a speaker that you can turn on and off so that at least you have a clue whether it's working or not. Surely these would be a piece of cake for a company like Motorola.

The rest of the device, however, is truly enjoyable to use. I like the new color, for one. The older WordSender came in beige, and therefore it was difficult to keep the keypad clean and shiny after months of use. With the new dark blue color, we don't have to worry about smudges on WordTrek Plus. The characters on the LCD panel are sharp and easy to read. With all the new features, if you have a WordSender, just hand it down to your subordinate.

Pagers, particularly when messages can be transmitted at pre- specified time, are increasingly used in events that involve a lot of people who have to take action in an exact order. The conductor of an orchestra, for instance, will just have to wait for the pager in his pocket to start vibrating. That will be the clue for him to get his ensemble to start playing the Intro. Pagers actually enable us to do a lot of things with their many functions, the most basic of which is to get in touch with somebody.