Future competitor? - I'm not worried!
 

These guys are trying some sort of open source design project?? I hope it's not someone's senior design project ;) I could be wrong, but I think there must still be some Psion IP still around somewhere. It's been a long while since I've been doing hard-core engineering, but these guys seem like they don't have a clue about power conservation issues, etc., just pie in the sky what would you want kind of stuff.

http://www.mobilityguru.com/2006/10/...ern_psion_5mx/

I have actually used a 5MX for several years (and a 3a for many years before that) and my first reaction was this: it's not the hardware that makes a Psion.

I did an experiment once: I had an old HP Omnibook 425 lying around, which had a defective "popsicle mouse", so I installed the Psion 3a emulator on it. It transformed a barely usable (even when the mouse was still working) Windows subnotebook into a fantastically productive computer! Too bad I had already moved from Psion to Newton by then, or I probably would still be using that Omnibook.

The Psion SIBO and EPOC operating systems were what made their computers (I still can't bring myself to denominating them to PDAs) great, because they really squeezed the last drop out of the hardware.

Couldn't agree more. One could even argue that the lack of progress on the hardware side was part of Psion's demise (colour screens, USB, wireless etc.) even though their form factor, keyboard and software was miles above the rest.

Just been through the diaporama for memory's sake (I also have worn out a Series5 and two 5mx over the years... darned ribbon cable :-).

I agree that the general tone of the comments (and especially the "questions" about screen definition, batteries, hard disk etc.) are pretty clueless and amateurish, not to mention dreaming of having the beast run XP, of all things... However, the art job is pretty good IMHO and I could imagine this as a (somehow conservative) vision of what Psion could/should be doing at this time if they had stayed on the market. Just add Wifi and BT, of course :-)

There really are only two things I'd like to add to my 5mx to make it fully useable again: the first is a better screen; not better resolution, or even colour, but simply one that is more readable. The 5mx has one of the worst LCD screens I've ever come across.

The second addition would be a little battery-powered box that plugged into the serial port and provided ethernet and WiFi, something like the WiFi sled a company makes for the Treo 600 and 650. A USB port would have been nice as well.

Ahh... the dreams we have...

(Sidenote: you can rest assured that, if Psion were still around and make stuff, what they would come up with would look nothing like anything anyone else could imagine. They were famous for being utterly inpredictable)

... which proved to be a backfiring attitude, of course :-)

Well, I liked their quirky stuff. I'm saving up for a Series 7, but not -- obviously! -- that sad and totally misnamed "Pro" version.

They are quite hard to find on eBay though; it seems hardly anyone who owns one wants to sell it. I wonder why... :rolleyes:

I especially like the mention of using two AA batteries for everything they wanted to put in it, before moving on to one of those new-fangled LiIon batteries.

They seem to conveniently have forgotten that the 5mx sported a 33Mhz ARM processor, had 16MB RAM tops, came with a monochrome screen with an almost visible refresh rate and a Newton-style electroluminiscent "backlight", and had only serial and IRDA for connectivity.

Yes, it ran for weeks on two AA batteries (quite a lot less if you managed to squize rechargeables in[*]), but considering the previous that was not so miraculous after all.
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[*]: rechargeable batteries are ever so slightly bulkier than the "regular" kind. That's how I found out that the battery compartiment of the 5mx is really tight.