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Mobile emails: Network Weekly takes a break, and recommends it...

Control is everything, so we're told. When it comes to daily life, business life, any part of your life, the verb 'control' is used entirely as a positive thing. It seems that we do like to be in control of -- whatever it is we're discussing. But is control always a good thing?

News this week reaches us that industry analysts report that HSPA -- one of the assortment of 3.5G wireless transmission technologies -- is likely to be used by up to 70 per cent of users by 2012. It's going to be a huge enabler of mobile broadband technology, they reckon, and it's already in quite extensive use around the globe.

That's a lot of users of high-speed mobile data.

Add to that the news this week that poisoned PDFs -- that's PDF files with infections that bypass anti-virus filters -- are on the rise, and you might take the view that email maybe doesn't seem total good news -- even if it is coming at you at HSPA speeds of half a megabit per second or more.

Especially since, as we also learn this week, some 40 per cent of us find it impossible to switch off. Apparently, that's how many check work email daily -- or even more frequently -- while on holiday, with 14 per cent saying said they check once a week. It's a seasonal survey, and it tells us little we didn't already know, provoking an instant of shock -- until we realise that most of us have done it.

Most of us? How does that square with the 40 per cent figure? People in and around the IT industry are likely, I would argue, to be way more susceptible to holiday emails. It's a control thing

But now's the time to loosen that control. You'll be getting one fewer email next week and the week after, as Network Weekly takes its two-week summer break, as is traditional at this time of year.

Maybe you should too.