PERSONAL TECH By Michelle Johnson | May 2, 2005
Navigating the Web on the average cellphone can be an exercise in frustration. You're either reduced to clicking through stripped-down screens of mostly text, or forced to squint at pages scrunched onto a tiny display.
The PocketSurfer Web viewer, which works with a cellphone, is aiming to change all that. However, it has some quirks.
About the size of a checkbook, the PocketSurfer looks a bit like a tiny laptop or PDA. But the resemblance stops there, because this is a single-function device, meant strictly for accessing the Web.
Essentially, it turns almost any cellphone into a wireless modem via a Bluetooth connection, so it will work anywhere there's cellphone service. (If your phone isn't Blue-tooth enabled you can purchase a separate adapter.)
I recently tested a PocketSurfer with a Bluetooth-enabled Motorola V600 cellphone and found that while it offers definite advantages, setting it up and using it require jumping a few hurdles.