The Motorola PageWriter 2000 was a two-way

pager A pager, also known as a beeper or bleeper, is a Wireless communication, wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays Alphanumericals, alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response p ...

introduced in 1997. Featuring the 68000 based Motorola DragonBall processor, 1 MB of internal storage, a four color

grayscale In digital photography, computer-generated imagery, and colorimetry, a greyscale (more common in Commonwealth English) or grayscale (more common in American English) image is one in which the value of each pixel is a single sample (signal), s ...

screen,

IrDA IrDA is a wireless standard designed for exchanging data using infrared (IR). Infrared ports for this purpose have been implemented in portable electronic devices such as mobile telephones, laptops, cameras, printers, and medical devices. The mai ...

transmitter/receiver, and a full

QWERTY QWERTY ( ) is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six Computer keyboard keys#Types, keys on the top letter row of the keyboard: . The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sh ...

keyboard the PageWriter represented a combination of both PDA and pager in one package. For wireless connectivity the PageWriter used SkyTel's

ReFLEX In biology, a reflex, or reflex action, is an involuntary, unplanned sequence or action and nearly instantaneous response to a stimulus. Reflexes are found with varying levels of complexity in organisms with a nervous system. A reflex occurs ...

paging network to send and receive messages to other pagers or to email addresses. The device shipped with a number of applications including messaging, contacts, calendar, and notepad all written in its proprietary FLEXScript programming language. Additional applications could be purchased and downloaded to the PageWriter from a PC through its charging dock. That dock connected via

RS-232 In telecommunications, RS-232 or Recommended Standard 232 is a standard introduced in 1960 for serial communication transmission of data. It formally defines signals connecting between a ''DTE'' (''data terminal equipment'') such as a compu ...

serial port to the PC and an IR port to the PageWriter.

Email VClient

The most notable of the add-on applications for the PageWriter was the Motorola developed Email VClient. Debuted to the public at Lotusphere '98 in January of that year, this application allowed users for the first time to access their corporate email account remotely from their portable wireless device. Users could read, respond to, and create emails remotely while appearing to be interacting from their desktop. This application created the market for remote control of desktop email from a wireless device later popularized by the RIM

BlackBerry BlackBerry is a discontinued brand of handheld devices and related mobile services, originally developed and maintained by the Canadian company Research In Motion (RIM, later known as BlackBerry Limited) until 2016. The first BlackBerry device ...

References

Pagers Products introduced in 1998 {{Tech-stub