The MailStation is a new $99 e-mail machine, small and friendly and intended for computer-averse people like my mother, and millions of others even younger. It's from Cidco of Morgan Hill, Calif., a big maker of telephone gear such as caller-ID boxes. The machine nominally goes for $149 and comes with built-in e-mail service that costs $10 a month. But if you pay for a year of service up front, you get the machine for $99 and the service for another $99 for the year, or $8.25 a month for an unlimited number of e-mail messages.

Cidco wanted me to try out the MailStation, which goes on sale this week directly from the company atwww.cidco.com. I said I wouldn't do it unless they lent my mother a unit to try out as well. If it could get her to use e-mail, I said, I'd be impressed. And I am impressed. After a few weeks, she's got the hang of the device and she loves exchanging e-mail with children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

The MailStation is the latest in a new class of devices I've been advocating for years, called information appliances. Unlike a general-purpose PC, which tries to do everything and winds up being way too complex, these appliances are customized for performing only a handful of digital tasks very easily and well. Examples of info appliances around today are the Palm handheld computers, WebTV set-top boxes and Sony PlayStation game machines. All are computers, but they're not general-purpose computers. Many more are coming. A company called InfoGear, for example, will soon announce a screen phone that can not only do e-mail, but also Web surfing and regular voice phone calls, using a built-in keyboard and agray-scale screen. The phone will be offered by various companies at between $299 and $399, with service likely to be $20 a month.

Cidco's MailStation is a simple tablet smaller than a piece of business paper that weighs just two pounds. There's a decent-size keyboard topped by a small monochrome screen that can be tilted up for easier reading. The screen holds about a dozen lines of text and is very crisp and easy to read, though the text size can be enlarged by just touching a special button on the keyboard.

It plugs into any phone line and has a second phone jack so you can keep your phone hooked up. My Mom uses it smoothly with both a phone and an answering machine on her single phone line. The machine plugs into the wall, but can also be carried around because it runs on two AA batteries that last about a month with typical use.

Setup is very easy. When you order the MailStation, all the technical Internet information, and even the local phone number it uses, are programmed in by the factory. (Youcan easily change these if you take the machine to another location.) My mother did consult my cousin David, the family electronics whiz, to make sure the phone lines were connected properly, but she probably could have done it alone. My 10-year old niece Rachel, a savvy computer user, walked her through some functions.

The MailStation is deliberately limited. It only does e-mail, not Web surfing. And even the e-mail it provides is just basic, text e-mail. It won't deliver attached files, or pictures. It also cuts off messages after about 1,000 words. You can, however, get attachments and long messages, free of charge, via a Web-based e-mail service that uses your same MailStation account. For an extra $3 a month, you can add up to four more users to the machine, each with a separate address.

To check your e-mail, you just press a blue key called "Get E-Mail." The MailStation dials in and retrieves any waiting messages, and sends any e-mail you composed offline. You can also set it to check for e-mailautomatically, once a day or hourly. If there's new mail, a light comes on. It can store between 300 and 400 e-mail messages, though my Mom likes to delete all her e-mail messages immediately after reading them. It's the same neatness impulse that causes her to toss out newspapers nanoseconds after they're read.

The MailStation tries to automate and simplify most functions. The spell checker is invoked by just pressing a button on the keyboard. You can add the authors of incoming e-mail to your address book by just pressing the "Add Author" key. Another key lets you search through stored e-mail, and others let you quickly reply to or forward your messages. If you start typing an address that's in your address book, the machine automatically completes it for you.

There are some downsides. The MailStation is supposed to let you print e-mail messages to any common PC printer, just by hooking up a cable. But I couldn't get it to print. It also keeps a list of e-mail messages you've sent, but not the bodies ofsent messages. And the spell checker can't learn words.

Overall, however, the MailStation does what it promises to do, and my mother is delighted with it. Still, she isn't a total digital convert just yet. "This doesn't excuse you from calling me," she warns me. "I still want to hear your voice."