New (Old) Toy
Jul. 7th, 2004 02:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lostcarparkI've recently acquired a Psion Series 3a for free, and I thought I'd see how it works out as a writing tool.
My initial impression is actually better than I expected. Up to now, I've been doing most of my writing on a laptop, but the battery life problem limits the amount of useful work I can do on this. Despite being a relatively small beastie, 2.5kg of laptop is still a fair bit of weight when I'm on the bike or running for a train. Despite the suspend and resume functions of XP, it still takes a minute or two to start up, so there's not much point in opening it unless I'm going have a reasonable amount of time to make use of it. Finally, it gets uncomfortably hot when sitting on my lap.
So how does the Psion compare? Well, battery life is a magor advantage. It's supposed to get 38 hours from a pair of AA cells. Even if the actual figure turns out to be lower, it's still far better than an hour from a charge of the laptop battery. It terms of weight, it's just slightly over a tenth of the laptop's weight, and weighs less than my rain gear. There is no boot/resume delay, I press "on" and my document is in front of me. Instantly. This means that I can turn it on for a minute or two, write a few sentences, then do something else. Having a relatievely low-tech NEC V30 processor, it doesn't get so much as warm.
The most obvious draw-back is the keyboard, which it has to be said is a little on the titchy side. I thought this might be a big problem (or perhaps a little one), but I have to say I find it easier to work with than I expected. The size of the keyboard is less of a problem than the odd positions of some of the keys, since mathematical functions seem to have been moved, presumably to be in more convenient locations for the calculator, leaving things like quotes and question marks in unusual locations. While I can't quite touch-type on the keyboard, I can comfortably type with three fingers on each hand. I also find it quite comfortable to use standing up, holding the device with my fingers and typing with my thumbs, something I wouldn't even contemplate on the laptop.
Another advantage of the Psion is that the simple monochrome LCD screen is perfectly clear in direct sunlight, when the laptop becomes almost illegible. Sometimes the only seat I can get on the train is unavoidably sunny.
The word processing application is basic, but it has a word-count, which is about the only feature I can't live without. It's not too hot for long documents, so I'll probably break it into once chapter per file, and combine them on the PC after.
I've only been using it for a week, but so far the experience is very positive, and I'm now contemplating where I might go from here. While the keyboard is much less of a problem than I expected, I can't help but be tempted to upgrade to the Psion 5mx, which has a "proper" keyboard, as well as a lot of more powerful features. I'm also toying with making use of the PDA facilities - something I've avoided for many years.
The sad part is that there is nothing modern that compares to the Psions. Psion themselves got into bed with an American company who were already committed to WinCE, so have gone very much down that route. They also formed Symbian with Nokia, then sold their share back to Nokia, so Symbian takes a lot of the good ideas of the Psions on to various smartphone devices. Unfortunately the market for PDAs has been lured away by Palm, which have the advantage of being really portable, but a lot less useful for people like me who like to type.
My initial impression is actually better than I expected. Up to now, I've been doing most of my writing on a laptop, but the battery life problem limits the amount of useful work I can do on this. Despite being a relatively small beastie, 2.5kg of laptop is still a fair bit of weight when I'm on the bike or running for a train. Despite the suspend and resume functions of XP, it still takes a minute or two to start up, so there's not much point in opening it unless I'm going have a reasonable amount of time to make use of it. Finally, it gets uncomfortably hot when sitting on my lap.
So how does the Psion compare? Well, battery life is a magor advantage. It's supposed to get 38 hours from a pair of AA cells. Even if the actual figure turns out to be lower, it's still far better than an hour from a charge of the laptop battery. It terms of weight, it's just slightly over a tenth of the laptop's weight, and weighs less than my rain gear. There is no boot/resume delay, I press "on" and my document is in front of me. Instantly. This means that I can turn it on for a minute or two, write a few sentences, then do something else. Having a relatievely low-tech NEC V30 processor, it doesn't get so much as warm.
The most obvious draw-back is the keyboard, which it has to be said is a little on the titchy side. I thought this might be a big problem (or perhaps a little one), but I have to say I find it easier to work with than I expected. The size of the keyboard is less of a problem than the odd positions of some of the keys, since mathematical functions seem to have been moved, presumably to be in more convenient locations for the calculator, leaving things like quotes and question marks in unusual locations. While I can't quite touch-type on the keyboard, I can comfortably type with three fingers on each hand. I also find it quite comfortable to use standing up, holding the device with my fingers and typing with my thumbs, something I wouldn't even contemplate on the laptop.
Another advantage of the Psion is that the simple monochrome LCD screen is perfectly clear in direct sunlight, when the laptop becomes almost illegible. Sometimes the only seat I can get on the train is unavoidably sunny.
The word processing application is basic, but it has a word-count, which is about the only feature I can't live without. It's not too hot for long documents, so I'll probably break it into once chapter per file, and combine them on the PC after.
I've only been using it for a week, but so far the experience is very positive, and I'm now contemplating where I might go from here. While the keyboard is much less of a problem than I expected, I can't help but be tempted to upgrade to the Psion 5mx, which has a "proper" keyboard, as well as a lot of more powerful features. I'm also toying with making use of the PDA facilities - something I've avoided for many years.
The sad part is that there is nothing modern that compares to the Psions. Psion themselves got into bed with an American company who were already committed to WinCE, so have gone very much down that route. They also formed Symbian with Nokia, then sold their share back to Nokia, so Symbian takes a lot of the good ideas of the Psions on to various smartphone devices. Unfortunately the market for PDAs has been lured away by Palm, which have the advantage of being really portable, but a lot less useful for people like me who like to type.
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no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 08:30 am (UTC)You've seen the folding keyboards for palms, surely? Won't get around the battery life and the sun-on-screen thing, though.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 08:51 am (UTC)Can you pin down what you didn't like about the series 5?
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 09:15 am (UTC)I found the keyboard too small for real typing and too big to thumb type on. The case peeled horribly. I'm not sure if I'm misremembering but I think the battery life was poorer.
Much preferred the Palm I upgraded to, although couldn't really write using that, it was more an organiser/toy. New Treo 600 with keyboard is a workable solution though.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 08:34 am (UTC)Teklogix are Canadian... The netbook runing CE.NET is actually quite tempting.
They also formed Symbian with Nokia, then sold their share back to Nokia, so Symbian takes a lot of the good ideas of the Psions on to various smartphone devices.
The Symbian story is a lot more complicated than that, and involves several more handset maufacturers, Nokia deciding it wanted to be top dog, and a final denoument that wasn't what Psion wanted at all...
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 08:48 am (UTC)The NetBook and Series 7 look nice, but don't really offer anything that would really benefit me, while eating into the main benefits of the Series 3 and 5. Colour screen and web browsers while nice, can be a major distraction for a writer.
no subject
Date: 2004-07-07 09:41 am (UTC)Hot off the news wires: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20040707/bs_nm/tech_nokia_symbian_dc