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Psion Releases A Rugged, Water-Tight PDA

Posted by timothy on from the 8-hours-of-life dept.

Moghedien writes: "This time a sturdy PDA, without a keyboard, but a big hi-res screen and it's designed for work in the field. Still runs the EPOC OS, 8 hour battery life time, probably a 200MHz StrongARM, 64MB RAM and MMC. It measures 215x85x28 mm. It has an IP rate of 67, meaning it's capable of lying under water for hours, and it can put up with a fall of 1.5 meters against concrete. According to Psion, its purpose is to fill the gap between powerful PDAs for the industry and handheld machines for the professional consumer market." There's a blurb describing this device on Psion's site -- but does anyone see pictures? Update: 10/01 13:35 GMT by T : An anonymous reader says: "Here is the page for the NetPad. It has a small picture, but it's better than nothing."

11 of 106 comments (clear)

  1. specs & small photo by jamner · · Score: 5, Informative

    This appears to be Psion Teklogix NetPad(r) Main Page. A small photo is included.
    Here is the spec sheet (96.6Kb.pdf)

  2. Heise article had a picture by mbyte · · Score: 5, Informative

    See the c't article from heise:

    Heise

    Your comment violated the postercomment compression filter. Comment aborted

  3. Netpad by smaughster · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here's a picture of netpad. (http://www.fieldworker.com/HPC_Pics/netpad.jpg for those not interested in goatse.cx) Finally safely browsing from the bathtub.

    --
    I intend to live forever, so far so good.
  4. i'm not so sure about this... by turbine216 · · Score: 3, Informative

    1.5 meters, if you think about it, is not that much of a drop. I've dropped a Palm M100 from a fifteen-foot ladder before, and it kept ticking. That's the beauty of solid-state electronics. No moving parts means nothing to get jarred loose or broken off. Now if these guys can put something together with a TOTALLY scratch-resistant screen, I'll really be impressed.

  5. Link to specs and info by prototype · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here's the page with the pics and a spec sheet:
    http://www.psionteklogix.com/main/netpad.htm

    Personally we already use ruggedized Windows boxes that are like this so I don't see much use for a PDA that can do the same.

    liB

  6. Casio has been there, done that.... by cyborg_munkee · · Score: 4, Informative

    Casio has offered these type of devices for quite some time now.

  7. Note: this is from Psion Teklogix by biglig2 · · Score: 4, Informative

    This division of Psion is seperate from the division behind the series 3 and 5 - it makes industrial PDA's. You see their very sucessful Walkabout device in shops over here in the UK a lot - mostly the models a barcode scanner is used in stock control.

    They do quite well. For all Compaq's adverts of someone walking thru a factory with an iPaq, there are places where the environment is just too nasty - freezers for example.

    I always fancied their netbook, which is a corporate variant on the Psion series 7 (the one that's an EPOC handheld in notebook form-factor, with a full size color screen etc.)

    --
    ~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
    1. Re:Note: this is from Psion Teklogix by biglig2 · · Score: 3, Informative

      BTW, to answer the poster's question:
      here is a small photo and a spec sheet

      --
      ~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
  8. How IP ratings work by dingbat_hp · · Score: 5, Informative
    I'd be interested to see what an IP Rate of 100 (or zero, whichever is better, also assuming a 100 point scale) could handle.


    IP ratings don't work quite like that. Rather than a 0..100 scale, they're actually a string concatenation of three 0+ scales. High numbers are better. First number is dust rating (0..6), second fluids (0..8), third mechanical impact (0..9). IP67 means "no ingress of dust", "short-term water immersion to 1m" and no description of mechanical impact strength.

    There's a few on-line resources around with the full list.

  9. picture of the thing in use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    http://www.psionpage.ch/netpad.jpg

  10. Re:it's all a question of price, isn't it by Troed · · Score: 3, Informative
    Well, it's brothers run Linux ...


    http://www.yipton.demon.co.uk/

    --
    it's in my head