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Psion Is Back :-), With Windows :-(

Posted by timothy on from the perhaps-familiar-will-run dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Forbes has an article about the come back of Psion in the high end PDA market. Psion's OS, Symbian, that used to power their PDA (as the Revo for example, or the Series 3, or the Series 5), has been mostly used in cell phones lately, like the Nokia 3650. According to Forbes's article, the new Psion laptop/PDA, the Netbook Pro, will not be powered by Symbian OS, but by Microsoft CE.Net." prostoalex points out a ZDNet review of the device, "which is smaller than your usual notebook PC, but larger than a regular PDA. The product Web site contains specifications in PDF format. It's an Intel Xscale PXA255 400MHz, 128MB SDRAM and 32MB Flash, SVGA (800x600) device supporting CompactFlash and Secure Digital (usual for PDAs) as well as PCMCIA (usual for laptops)," and notes that despite the OS, "the specs list the presence of JEM-CE Java Virtual Machine."

10 of 179 comments (clear)

  1. Good. by Rolken · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With something that close to a PC, I'd rather be using Windows anyway. There's no point in creating compatibility issues for myself just to be able to say I screwed Microsoft. With cell phones syncing isn't an issue, so go ahead and have that market.

  2. Not for that much..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the price is over $1500, I'd rather buy a fully functional laptop for that price. /overpriced

  3. It's too big! by fejikso · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Have you seen the size of the device?

    IMHO, those big-sized PDA's have not and will not be successful because they are too big to be as convienient as a palm-sized PDA but too small to be enjoy the benefits of a notebook.

    So, in the end, it doesn't matter which OS it'll use... people won't like it and won't buy it.

  4. Choice of OS - not so surprising by vlad_petric · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Symbian is great & all (extremely stable, low footprint, etc.), but in terms of programmability it just sucks badly. Because it's meant to be used on devices with small memories, even doing "simple" operations on strings can be quite a chore. This advantage is crucial for something like a phone, but it's not unusual for a PDA these days to have 64M+ (very limited gains here). Furthermore, the non-standard programming style makes portability a serious issue.

    Of course, it would have been nicer if their choice was Linux. OTOH my current Linux PDA (Zaurus) can't really be sync-ed with my Linux Desktop (unless i downgrade my ROM or use OpenZaurus, which is a mess in itself), whereas a WinCE one can ...

    --

    The Raven

  5. Who would want this? by fbw · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ...when you have alternatives that beat the device on all fronts?


    The Fujitsu P1000 is lighter, smaller in all dimensions, has a larger screen, higher resulution, twice the memory, significantly more storage space (hard drive instead of 32mb flash), comparable battery life, also a touch screen, and it's even cheaper to boot too. Oh, and it runs Windows 2000 or XP instead of CE.NET, or potentially your alternative OS of choice if you spend enough effort in it.

  6. What's the point? by saihung · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There were many great things about Psion palmtops - their clamshell formfactors with actual usable keyboards, their lightweight power requirements (several days on a charge), and yes, their OS. The netBook/Series 7 really never did much for me - it was basically laptop sized, still ran EPOC/Symbian OS so it could (more or less) only run simple PDA style apps, and was, like this machine, expensive. I don't see why new Psion this is an improvement. I loved my Revo+, but it always seemed like Psion didn't know what they wanted their product to be or who their audience was. They killed their own products through simple lack of development.

  7. Expensive PDAs by damacer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I'd like to hear how useful most people find the more 'advanced' features in high end PDAs.

    For me a PDA is does its job well as a electronic todo-list, calandar and address-book. Any lowend PDA has all of the features. So, is it really worth it pay the extra cash for a highend model?

  8. Wrong chassis (don't care about the OS) by gdav · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Netbook! It is, and always was, TOO BLOODY BIG.

    I wish they would continue developing the Psion Series 5 line, which has the best small keyboard ever made. I'm being very careful with my last surviving 5mx, but nothing lasts forever.

    I was really impressed by Epoc32 at the time (mid 1990s?) but I'd buy an updated Series 5 running anything - Linux, Symbian Quartz, MS Pocket PC - whatever. Just so long as they kept the keyboard. And fixed the stylus retainer!

  9. Why is this so expensive? by hirschma · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm asking, actually curious if anyone has any insight.

    I mean, it has an embedded processor, little memory, a small low-res screen, likely no graphic chip, no hard drive, smaller battery, etc. Every component is cheaper than what you'd find in the cheapest consumer notebook. And they aren't supporting consumers, so that cost is reduced.

    My guess is that the R&D came mostly from a cheap/freely licenseable reference board.

    Is this simply a function of economies of scale, the fact that their target audience is price insensitive or has few other options, or is there something else at play that I'm not seeing?

    Jonathan

  10. I thought Psions were much better than Palms by LeoDV · · Score: 3, Interesting

    A long long time ago, PDA's didn't have built-in cameras, or tiny keyboards, and wireless computing was holding the infrared port of your PDA an inch close to that of your cellphone, not Wi-Fi.

    Can you remember? It was back when the hi-tech Palm to have was the Palm V but Palm IIIs were really the more affordable ones, it was also the height of the war between Palm and Psion. I decided I needed a PDA (I later found out I'm not rich and don't have the need, so I still don't have a PDA), and sampled each of the two big flavas (ooh), i.e. fold-out with keyboard and palm-likes, and found the fold-out kind to be vastly superior to the other, simply because input was made easier by the keyboard.

    Even if you know Graffiti, it's a long way to input things. You have to make a movement with your pen. So you can use the virtual keyboard, which eats up half of your screen, but you can only touch one key then move to the other. But then when I used the fold-out PDAs (my preference wasn't towards a Psion but a clone by Ericsson), holding it with both hands in front of me walking on the street, I could type with both thumbs. All things considered, since a keyboard layout is extremely familiar, and since I had two input sticks (my thumbs) instead of only one on the palm, I quickly achieved a much faster input speed, with a bigger screen... I loved it.

    Of course it depends on what you use it for. My use for PDA's was to jolt down ideas, so my emphasis was on what I could use to type in a lot of words. If you use it for scheduling, the palm-type might be better. Either way, Psion went out of business shortly thereafter and I always regretted their smart little devices. I know there have been others since then that have used the same basic layout (actually if I had to pick a device I'd probably pick a Hiptop), but my point is that I've always been nostalgic about Psion and it's good to see them back, even with Win installed.

    I'm sure we'll see a NetBSD port before the week-end is over anyway, right? ;-)