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Start of the Peek movement: today, everywhere

Monday is the big day. Peek is on sale at Target stores nationwide. About 90% of the 1600 stores will have Peeks tomorrow. Get in there and ask for us by name!

As for all you super secret special deal hunters. Remember the details on the deal (email us if you want a reminder on the super secret details).

Apparently some of you went commando-style into Targets and sweet-talked their staff into selling them to you before official kickoff on Monday! Peek was meant to be democratic and accessible to all, so it’s only fitting that you set Peek free.

Peeksters are already mailing in their pics…

A Peekster from Tennessee

Update (more Peeksters)

Ohio

Florida

Connecticut

Brooklyn

East Coast somewhere

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Posted by amol on Sep 14, 2008 -

22 Comments

I went to Target on Baltimore Pike in Springfield at 8 AM today on Monday 15th and was disappointed. Sam, the electronics dept. manager there, did not know anything about Peek and of course did not have any.
I wonder if Peek is being sold at only limited number of Target stores. Then how can I find one?

Comment by K-Yama — September 15, 2008 @ 7:24 am
I love it so far… KISS is the key… It’s now what the device can do, it is what you can do with the device….

The Peekster from Tennessee

Comment by The Peekster from Tennessee — September 15, 2008 @ 10:07 am
I love it so far… KISS is the key… It’s not what the device can do, it is what you can do with the device….

The Peekster from Tennessee

Comment by The Peekster from Tennessee — September 15, 2008 @ 10:08 am
I bought a Peek at 10:00 this morning at Target. It’s taken over five hours for the Peek people to activate the Peek. I’m not happy with the customer service. I called Peek last week to confirm that my email address would work and they called me back the next day to confirm it will work and that they’d set my email address up in their servers. Well . . . five hours after buying the Peek and calling them to activate service–I am still waiting.

Peter S.

Comment by Peter S — September 15, 2008 @ 11:43 am
Heads up for anyone doing and email apps for the peek…

It uses 7bit encoding and not quoted-printable… also it is HTML based and not text only … I think I have it but wish for NO HTML in email period…
I will post the code that I am working with on my blog for everyone to use when I get it working correctly…

Gavin

Comment by The Peekster from Tennessee — September 15, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Talked with a manager and at 4:20 p.m. I got my service going. So, it took from 10:00 a.m. (EST) until 4:20 p.m. (EST) to get this going.

Thanks to the manager and Peek,

Peter S

Comment by Peter S — September 15, 2008 @ 1:21 pm
Sorry for the shortages guys — Target will be stocking things up in the coming days. Worst case, just order online and you are sure to have in about a week. But do ask those Target folks to “check in the computer”. Sometimes they don’t know what they have in back.

Comment by amol — September 15, 2008 @ 3:50 pm
Went to 3 Targets in the DC area with no luck. No one even knew what I was talking about. Anyone else have any luck?

Comment by Steve — September 15, 2008 @ 7:18 pm
I’m not too sure the Peek can be sold as a “revolution” because I suspect people who would want this are not the sorts to flash around their equipment to look “cool” (as those with smartphones do). Word of mouth will probably travel more slowly.

I usually do not buy new devices on the market, but am willing to take a chance on Peek’s success because SOMETHING has to be done to convince the phone companies that they can’t keep forcing people to pay for data plans on top of mandatory voice plans. The options for mobile e-mail are very limited for those people who only can afford pay-as-you-go voice plans. You should not have to pay $70 a month for 2 years just because you need to check your e-mail from your pocket or purse. That’s insane, especially in tough economic times.

Comment by Ellen — September 16, 2008 @ 7:22 am
Ellen,

Good point and that why I own a Peek…

FYI I have had no trouble period with my peek…

Peek’n like mad from TN

Comment by The Peekster from Tennessee — September 16, 2008 @ 5:41 pm
Got mine today. Very nice and I got it working right away (with Gmail). Very easy to use, no learning curve whatsoever. This is a beautiful little gadget, nothing cheap about it. 3 to 7 minutes lag time on receiving mail (not a deal breaker but hopefully service will be better in the future) Sending mail appears to be much faster.

However the documentation is very thin. All there is is a quick start guide, no manual. There isn’t even a manual here on the site. No details on what to expect when charging the battery (should the Peek be switched on or off during charging?), a few mystery functions (Send/Receive? not sure what that’s for exactly? does it NOT send your email right away without a push?) and mystery keys (assume the lock symbol is to lock the keyboard, but not sure).

The little blue envelope light is very cool… but it doesn’t flash for very long at all when you have new mail, so if you turn your back and miss it, you won’t realize you got new mail if you haven’t heard the beep.

Just one particular criticism: The clamshell plastic casing on this is ridiculous. The hardest I’ve ever had to wrestle with. Was afraid I would damage the goods!

Comment by Donna — September 16, 2008 @ 6:38 pm
Sorry about that plastic casing! We’re going to make it easier to open. Hard to steal though - you have to grant us that one

It will charge whether on or off.

Send happens instantly.

Send/receive will “sync” your device with our Peek servers right away, instead of waiting for the regular client-server chatter to happen. (Outlook for the PC has a similar function.)

Hold the lock key…it locks the keyboard.

Hope that wasn’t too tough

Comment by amol — September 16, 2008 @ 6:47 pm
Well I was wrong… Thanks to Ellen for pointing this out. GMail is broken… they use 7bit encoding on all emails so it messes up Wordpress and B2 posting via email to a blog…

Comment by The Wrong Peekster from Tennessee — September 16, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
Got mine at Target today. The electronics manager was all excited about PEEK. He pointed out a car charger for PEEK which I promptly bought.

I love PEEK. The concept is great - I have already talked a couple of female freinds to get one. One is taking her recently purchased Blackberry back to the store.

A couple if issues/suggestions:

PEEK locked up and turned itself off when I downloaded my Yahoo contacts (I have hundreds). A quick call to service fixed it by the nice lady telling me to simply remove the battery for ten seconds and then replace. The unit rebooted and was fine.

Email speed seems slow. It has varied from about ten minutes around 1 PM CDT to over 40 at 10 PM CDT and the message still hasn’t arrived (I had sent a test from another of my accounts. I’m not an impatient guy, but this seems too long.

The vibrate could use a little heftier shake - I received several messages while PEEK was in my pants pocket and I didn’t feel it.

Bold/larger font option is a must for we whose vision is past it’s prime.

Case is a bit chincy. Going to look for something the right size that will still fit in my pants pocket and protect the unit a little better - hard face to keep the screen from getting cracked (like my old Palm.) Rubber flap over charger socket gets in the way while inserting the charging cable.

I added screen protector film that I had left over from my Palm device. Had to cut it down, but it’ll keep the screen from scratching.

None of these major issues (though I am worried about the slow service and hoping it improves) so I am giving PEEK an 8 out of 10.

Comment by Tim S. — September 16, 2008 @ 8:10 pm
Peekster from TN — Gmail sends funny. It isn’t us, we promise! We send _through_ Gmail for you. Consider adding a Hotmail or AOL account for sending blog posts…? They have a more friendly text-formatting for blog posting.

Tim S — Thanks for your observations. One known issue is that Yahoo is taking almost 10 minutes longer than the other services to deliver. We are talking to them and will have it fixed within a few weeks. You should notice delivery times falling really far down to 3-4 minutes by mid-October. Check back with me if you are not seeing this — amol at getpeek dot com or just post here to our blog.

Many of your suggestions are good — we are going to work on them! But that case….hey! We spent a lot of time and money on that case Timbuk2 made it for us. It’s 100% post consumer recycled plastic and uses no chemical glues or bonding agents in its construction. It really is a special and cool case… But hey, you be the judge. You can send it back to us if you don’t like it. Thanks for Peeking!

Comment by amol — September 17, 2008 @ 8:49 am
Talked to Jerry in tech support today (9/17). Nice guy. I told him about my slow service. Said they are working on it. About 15 minutes later, I started getting my emails in a very timely manner. I am happy - changing my 8 to a solid ten for PEEK!

Comment by Tim S. — September 17, 2008 @ 8:54 am
Send back the case? No way! Even though it isn’t pretty, it IS working! (Don’t mean to diss ya, Timbuk2!)I would pay for a little snazzier one to match my snazzy new toy, though. Hope eventually you come up with some accessories and add-on do-dads for us Peeksters

Comment by Tim S. — September 17, 2008 @ 10:08 am
I have had the Peek for a over week, and I’m quite impressed. Congrats to all at Peek for a job well done!

You might wish to visit my Peek blog, at http://peek.tumblr.com

Comment by Le Journal de la Peek — September 17, 2008 @ 1:41 pm
My target had car chargers as well as different cases if you’re looking for something different

Comment by Matt — September 17, 2008 @ 3:16 pm
Have to apologize for my earlier criticism about the blue envelope light. Silly me, it does blink intermittently after a pause of a few seconds. Smart way to save power.

Can’t say enough about how wonderfully put together this thing is. For example I sent a test picture to myself, 800×530 pixels (it came out looking great, and didn’t take overly long to render, considering its size). Then I was curious about how much memory it was taking up. So I hit the menu wheel, and what do you know- one of the four options, when you are looking at a JPG attachment, is “Peek Setup,” which is where you get to the memory usage info screen. It’s like you read my mind.

Also I would say, after a little more than a day of having the Peek around, I already feel completely comfortable with it like it’s an old friend. It’s not something you feel compelled to show off and play with - you don’t have to PLAY with it, you just use it! yet, it’s such an attractive little thing…

Comment by Donna — September 17, 2008 @ 7:04 pm
This may sound a little wierd - but Peek should be marketed to Christian men, who don’t like the temptation of internet access on their blackberry. My guess is there are a lot of them.

Comment by Gene — September 19, 2008 @ 12:42 am
I have started a blog about the Peek as well

http://peekperformance.wordpress.com/

Comment by Ellen — September 19, 2008 @ 9:38 am