Fasthosts Goodlink Mobile Email review

Fasthosts' Goodlink Mobile Email brings Blackberry-like facilities to your existing Microsoft-based smartphone, such as Orange's SPV C500, which we used for testing.

Before you can get Goodlink, there are a few prerequisites. First, you need to have an email or web-hosting account with Fasthosts. Then you have to upgrade the email account that you want to use remotely to an Exchange account. This costs £7.04 a month but includes a free copy of Outlook 2003 and gives you web-based access to your emails and contacts.

Finally, you have to subscribe to Goodlink Mobile Email, which costs £5.86 a month. This brings the service to a total cost of £13 per month plus your existing email or web hosting charges. Still, it compares favourably with what Vodafone and T-Mobile charge for Blackberry, and you get to use your existing email account.

Next, you have to install the Goodlink software on your mobile. Fasthosts provides all the download instructions, and you simply navigate to the given web address on your mobile to download Goodlink. This failed the first time we tried it, as the application wasn't signed properly for our Orange handset (handsets from other mobile operators won't have this problem). However, Fasthosts fixed the problem in a matter of hours, so it should work with all Orange smartphones. Check the website for compatibility with your phone before you buy, though.

Once you've entered your unique user number, your phone automatically connects to your Exchange mailbox using GPRS or 3G. Goodlink then takes over your mobile and replaces the standard Contacts and Phone dialler application with its own.

You can use T9 predictive text to search for contacts, but Goodlink won't search contacts stored on your handset; it searches only those entered into your Exchange account. If you haven't entered any, the easiest way is to start Outlook 2003 and copy the entire contents from your desktop to your Exchange account. Your phone will synchronise the data automatically and store a local copy so that you don't waste GPRS bandwidth while you're on the move.

The phone dialler application works in the same way as Microsoft's, but Goodlink's is American and formats all numbers in the American way, with dashes between dialling codes. This can be a little confusing when you're dialling a new number.

The service pushes emails to your handset automatically and you get an audible notification when you receive an email. Delivery times and email access were fast, and responding to an email was just as quick.

However, your phone relies on a GPRS or 3G connection, which is dropped if there's no traffic. Our phone took a while to reconnect when this happened, so not all emails arrived instantly. What's more, using GPRS all the time reduced the battery life to the point where our phone wouldn't last all weekend without a charge, so you'll have to carry your charger around with you. Finally, there's no quick way to turn the service off. To remove Goodlink you have to reset your phone, which wipes all data stored on it.

The service isn't perfect and Goodlink could do with being tailored for the UK, but it's an excellent way of getting email on the move without having to buy any new hardware.