Thanks to all who responded to my earlier post.
I have checked out all of the suggestions.
All of the alternatives suggested were either:
1) Too costly
2) To complicated for me . . . . if more than one piece of equipment was involved or some software had to be downloaded or added . . . then it is too complicated for me. Sorry to be such a disappointment to the techies here.
3) Require use of wireless which would involve double costs considering (a) phone charges and (2) ISP charges.
Let me tell you of one device which, although it doesn't fit the bill, may give some of you some fresh thoughts about what might work.
This device is called a Pocketmail Composer, costs $99 for the unit, and is described at:
http://www.pocketmail.com/us/products/composer/
This device only works when you dial into the service of the selling company. If I were traveling in USA and Canada, this would fit the bill since they provide 800 numbers. But, for travel to other countries, only a toll number back to USA is provided which, of course, would eat me alive with phone charges.
So what I want in a unit something like this . . . . . but with the capability to hook into a landline and dial into local ISPs to gain Internet access to check my e-mail on yahoo, hotmail, juno, etc.
As you all know, you can get a fairly loaded desktop with monitor and even a printer thown in now for around $300, so I gag at anything approaching this cost for a simple machine to access e-mail only.
I appreciate all previous attempts, and hope that somebody is holding the secret.
