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Psion Revo and Palm Vx launched
krp writes "Psion has lauched it's new Revo, a kind of cuter 5mx, but with better Internet/comms software and a free ISP specialising in content for handhelds called psion.net (see an article at Yahoo). Also Palm have released the Palm Vx, a Palm V with 8 meg memory and bundled with AvantGo. See a V series comparison and an article at Yahoo. Prices of older Palm models have dropped accordingly. " The Palm VII has also had a higher rollout, with the push on for more sales.
Psion have been around for a long time. Orignially they produced 8-bit micro software - most of Sinclair's own software was written by Psion, and it was of the very highest quality. They produced both serious and game software, which was rare at the time. They went on to produce the office suite for the ill-fated QL.
Since then they have been producing handhelds of increasing complexity. The first model looked like a pregnant pocket calculator, with a single line text display and an alphanumeric keypad. It was succesful, and I recall insurance salemen used them for calculating premiums.
Psion (together with ARM) are all that really remains of the British small computer industry, and industry that was at its peak around 16 years ago. Everyone else has either died, been absorbed by a multi-national, or is simply shipping PC clones built from out-sourced components.
The current crop of machines are excellent, and there is a Linux port being worked on. And more importantly, they don't run anything written by Microshaft!
When I get enough money, I will probably buy a Psion. This assumes someone can give me a job where I am used to my full potential.
I wonder if the Palm "Vx" is going to be popular in countries with chemical weapons programs?
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
This push for web content on PCS phones, PDA's, winshield holograms... etc is starting to make me sick. When html was developed it was intended as a simple markup language, not an entire document development, management, and display environment. Most websites were designed with simple markup for text browsers or small resolutions like 640*480. As Hardware has progressed, we have seen a shift towrads extremely complex documents that require an average display of 800*600 or larger. To get that kind of content down to a PDA sized display is a daunting if not impossible task unless you want to lose severe amounts of content. With the investment many companies have made into document conversion and content development not to mention database integration (or disentigration if you prefer) and whatnot it seems sad that we should all want to shove that information into a format so incongrous than what it was designed for. Sending short email from a PDA/PCS is a great feature, but do I want to use it to read and sort my daily 50-150 messages? I think not. Do I want to squeeze down my research on E*trade so that it is unreadable and indecipherable? No again. Simple information like a single stock quote or I-95 south in downtown richmond is blocked, or heavy snow this afternoon is usefull but that is about as far as it goes. Why reinvent the wheel. There is an OLD well developed, directory structured protocol perfect for information like this. It's called gopher. Anyone remember it? Any gopher horror stories?
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