Any suggestions or corrections welcome, please mail me, ralph@inputplus.co.uk.
Amstrad provide PDFs for the Emailer, Emailer Plus, and E3 on their support page.
$ sha1sum *.pdf 33c5c6b64639e0aaaf6bd3fb0c0d6ac9400895d3 emailer_userguide.pdf f1d46fa025fd836eaab515dff8a01802307a5b19 emailerplus_userguide.pdf ac90fb8a0e144395e73d31e610f856ff286e88ef e3_userguide_web_v1.pdf
Although the hardware is capable of working on non-UK phone networks, the software inside the Emailers contains the phone numbers to dial for various functions. These phone numbers only work when dialled in the UK. Amstrad make clear in a number of places that the Emailers are required to be in the UK to work.
In theory, if the software is changed then an Emailer can be made to work abroad. Indeed, Amstrad have planned distribution in North America, see Amstrad or Emailers in the news for more details.
Amstrad receive significant revenue from advertisers who are delighted to be able to light up a screen placed in the centre of your home. If Amstrad provided a way to turn it off then advertisers wouldn't be so keen to pay.
Stopping them by altering the GNU GPL'd software on the E3 should be possible, but no one has done this to date.
Some report that using Call 18866 as a prefix works because most premium-rate numbers don't work through this service.
The range of Amstrad Emailers started with the plain `Emailer'. Next came the `Emailer Plus', followed by the current `E3'. To save writing `Emailer Plus' all the time, this site uses `Emailer' to mean any of the models and `E1', `E2', and `E3' to refer a specific model.
It seems Amstrad may have had a similar system, perhaps because the marketing names weren't known during development. The E2's PCB and PBL refer to `Gamma', the third letter of the Greek alphabet. The E3's PBL refers to `Delta', the fourth letter. Whether the E1 was `Alpha', and `Beta' was skipped because of its `unready' connotations, or whether the E1 is Beta and Alpha was a development-only model, we don't know.
David Given reports regarding the E2:
The boot process goes like this:
1. Splash screen (pretty picture of the emailer).
2. Title screen (with 'Personal Communication Centre' across the
middle).
3. Main menu.
If on the transition between 1 and 2, you press STOP+HANDSFREE, the
machine will reset itself back into a virgin state.
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