Dear Mom: No Need to Buy That PC
Letterpost.com lets you e-mail the PC-less, turning e-mail into snail-mail.
by Cameron Heffernan, PC World
May 14, 1999, 4:18 p.m. PT
I'll admit, I'm a naughty son. I haven't written a letter to Mom in, well, years. But I can explain myself: Mom doesn't have Internet access. She doesn't even have a computer. So I've always found it much easier to phone her rather than type something into the computer (or, God forbid, write it longhand), print it out, put it in an envelope, address it, and take it to the mailbox.
I guess like a lot of us I've been spoiled by the convenience of e-mail. Come to think of it, there are other people I'd like to correspond with--and would, if I could only send them e-mail. Well, Letterpost.com may be the cure for that excuse. This new Web service lets you send e-mail messages to people who aren't online.
How? Letterpost.com turns e-mail correspondence into a word-processed, printed letter, and then mails it through the postal service to your correspondent. All that's missing is the personalized signature, the stamp-licking, and the trip to the mailbox. It's not cheap at a buck a pop, but then again, the letter does get sent. Although my message to Mom through Letterpost.com took a week to arrive, the process of sending it was extremely easy.
Smooth Mailing
To use Letterpost.com, you need to open an account and purchase a book of ten $1 stamps from the company. Each $1 stamp enables you to send a letter anywhere in the world. After opening the account, you receive a stamp number, which you use each time you want to mail a letter.
To send a letter, you fill in the address and salutation fields provided by Letterpost.com, type in the body of the letter (or paste it from elsewhere), "sign" your name, and click "Post It." That's it. The e-mail is received by Letterpost.com and forwarded to the processing center nearest your letter's destination (Dublin for European addresses, San Francisco for the rest of the world). There, it is printed out, stuffed in an envelope and mailed the old-fashioned way. The service also lets you insert postcard-type photographs in your letter by choosing the "send a greeting card" option.
Worried about confidentiality? If you're mailing out manifestoes or proposing a corporate merger, you might want to think twice. But Letterpost.com promises it will not read the content of your letters or sell any of your information to other companies.
E-Mail to Snail Mail
It might seem a trifle uncertain to just press a button and then expect a timely arrival. In truth, the results are about as unpredictable as when you feed an envelope into the gaping blue mouth of a mailbox. And that's what the folks at Letterpost.com do once they receive your e-mail. So I can't actually blame Letterpost.com if my message to Mom in New York traveled a little slowly.
But it did arrive. And shooting off a letter through Letterpost.com was simple. If you're sending letters overseas, you'll be happier yet, as the price premium is lower than if you're sending letters within the United States (letters to most international destinations cost 60 cents). In any case, Letterpost.com just might keep you out of trouble with Mom.
Copyright © 2000 PC World Communications. All Rights Reserved. Use of this service is subject to the PC World.com Terms of Service Agreement.
PC World.com complies with the ASME Guidelines with IDG Extensions for new media.
Try the magazine: Get 2 Risk-Free Issues!
This is a computer-edited content for no-frames display browsers or clawlers.
To see the fully formated content, get a frames-capable browser and surf to http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,10967,00.html