Pocket Surfer 2: Free mobile Internet, unbelievably fast

By Nate Lanxon on 13 July 2007, 12:22pm

4Pages

1
2
3
4

We got our hands on this gadget and in all honesty, it's got ridiculous amounts of potential. All the pages we tried loading -- CNET.co.uk, CNN, Engadget, BBC, to name but a few -- loaded in mere seconds. DataWind has a sturdy stash of patents under its belt (14, actually) for technology that allows it to compress pages to a thirtieth of their original size, meaning lightning-fast downloads, even over GPRS.

For the true geeks among you, it does this by using its own servers as a proxy. Pages are requested through the proxy, compressed into minuscule sizes, then belted across the airwaves to your handset. The handset uses Internet Explorer as its base, so fully encrypted Web pages, such as your online banking stuff, are supported.

Online Web apps work fine, apparently. We're told Google's online document, spreadsheet and email apps work perfectly, although we didn't have enough time to try them out. IM is built in -- specific details on this are heading our way -- and the package comes with 25GB of online storage that gives you access to your personal documents on the move. This feature is required because there's no built-in storage for files -- it's a dedicated Internet gizmo, not a PDA. It does come with some remote PC control software, meaning your home or office PC is accessible through the Web. We didn't see this in action, sadly.