PEEK.

27 November 2008

In my ever searching quest to strike the balance between productivity and personal freedom, I’ve been recently obsessed with mobile devices and trying to find the right fit for me. The big plus about these new devices like the iPhone and Storm is that it’s just ONE DEVICE. No need to put multiple objects to fill your cargo pockets. Just grab and go. But as manufacturers cram more and more functionality into these little devices, you become more and more enslaved to them. And dependent on them. So I offer another possibility: The PEEK.
The slick device only does one thing. EMAIL. That’s it. Nothing else. And it makes no pretense about it. It just does one thing well. So you couple this with a simple ass phone like the Samsung Alias (which lives on the rock solid Verizon network, not the constipated AT&T network) and you pretty much have everything you need: Phone, email, SMS and a flip keyboard. Sure there’s no web surfing, no Enigmo, no Street View and no Google Earth. But let’s be real…those are all TIME KILLERS. Not productivity builders.
So I’m thinking I’ll carry the Samsung all the time. And the PEEK only as needed. I’d leave it at home at nights and weekends and hence, gain back my freedom from “chimping”. So my devices would look like this:

PEEK on weekdays when I’m away from my desk and I generally go to meetings with a bag that I can just throw this in.

On weekends and evenings when I want to “turn off”…I only have this sliver of tech.

My only concern is the same concern a crack addict has to giving up the pipe. Can I really completely detach? I never said it was pretty. But it is simple. And kudos to PEEK for doing something so simple that it might just be the answer.