First off a "Peek" is a email only handheld device that operates on a cellular data network (T-Mobile). It costs $9.99 ($59.99 for the fancy version), and it offers a no contract way to have unlimited email on the go for not much change ($20-15/month).
http://www.getpeek.com has all the pictures and information that you could want or desire.
First day:
Me and my girlfriend got one, and they arrived much sooner than expected. We unpacked them and we were both pleasntly supprised by the build quality and general fit and finish of the hardware. We both setup a gmail and a eiu.edu account, and aside from one account that required a couple of tries, it went pretty well. They have a feature that allows you to download the contacts from some of the major supported webmail providers (aol, yahoo, gmail, hotmail ect). That saved me a bunch of time. They charge via micro usb, and they include a very compact folding travel charger. This kind of device is meant for somebody who is on the go all the time.
Here's the bad part. The day we got them, they were experiencing an outage that allowed me to send, but not receive email. My girlfriend's worked a little bit better, but nothing close to what it should have been. This outage continued until about noon the second day that we had them.
Second day:
Outage is over, and the email is flowing. Peek sent a proactive email (count me as impressed) explaining the outage and that it should be fixed, along with a forum link. I of course register and participate. They jumped the gun a little bit as the problems weren't completely solved, but they were taken care in fairly short order, so I am happy. As promised, email usually takes a few minutes (up to five) to be delivered, but that's the con of the cheap device.
We took a drive up to champaign, and I started playing around with it in earnest. They come pre-loaded with contacts that allow you to get email, news, weather, and maps by just sending a message with what you are looking for in the subject. Neat right? I of course read the news, and check the weather. It gives me several days as well as images of the radar and various other things which is very handy (the images did take about 15-20 seconds apiece to download). I then used it in a mock effort to do a google local search for a resturant, and then get a map of it's location. The whole process start to finish did take about 10 minutes, BUT, for a $9.99 email only device, I was wowed by the results. Had we actually wanted to go to the resturant, we would have been able to find our way there easily.
After champaign, I get home to find out that the emails that I receive on the go are still in my inbox and unread (according to google). This annoys me slightly because I like a clean inbox, but I take care of them and then turn on the setting to archive email accessed via POP3. This should solve the problem from now on so I turn the Peek off and go to bed.
Third day:
I wake up, check my email, and decide to take my peek to work to email on breaks and lunch. Whoops, I am getting duplicates of all the emails that I checked/deleted when I woke up. That's no good. I spend the first about hour of the day deleting the duplicates (and one non duplicate on accident) and proceed as usual. It works pretty damn well the rest of the day, and as promised, 8 hours of light use doesn't even touch the battery. I get home to discover all the emailing I did during the day is still in my inbox waiting to be cleaned up. Grrrr. This is really going to bother me so I get back on the peek forums and put up the question.
Fourth day:
Both peek employees as well as other users respond to my question. No immediate answers, but a few suggestions. I try them, but the problem continues. A peek employee posts his email and asks me to email him. I do and am now awaiting his response.
Overall:
I think that if I can get it working, it will be a damn good service. My girlfriend surprisingly loves it and I think that's the point. It's not meant for super geeks like myself that want to be able to specify the ports and encryption scheme of our imap servers for all 42 email accounts. It's for the kind of person that wants simple, reliable (I can't attest to this so far) email that is always with them and keeps them up to date all the time. This is the remedy for the person who only checks their email once every two weeks and gets discouraged because they have 400 messages.
The cost month to month is $20, if you buy it three months at a time it gets it down to like $16.xx and if you buy a year in advance it gets you all the way down to $14.99. I will probably continue with the $20 plan, but my girlfriend very well may go in for a year. I need more, desire more, want more, and therefore will probably get more at some point (probably another smartphone, I am looking at you pre/pixi) but for the time being, this is a very cheap way for a cellphone less person like me (probably the only one in the country) to have communication on the go.