[Leica] Psion - was "The worst insult..."

[Frank.Dernie at btinternet.com (Frank Dernie)]

Hi Didier,
i have a Treo now and do much prefer the Palm to the portable Windows  
OS. I did use my Psion as my portable computer, now I have to carry a  
heavy one :-( I had the Psion 5 and 7 (or was that 9? - the book  
sized one), I found the 5 screen too reflective and the 7 battery has  
died. The thing I miss most is searching the address book. I have a  
terrible memory for names but not numbers, on the psion typing in the  
area code or part of an address, for example, would find the item, on  
the treo only names are searched.
I have to say that the one Mac OSX feature I miss most on my PC is  
the search function Spotlight.
Frank

On 23 Nov, 2006, at 08:13, Didier Ludwig wrote:

> It's not the price that kept me off choosing a Psion in the  
> mid-90ies. They were just too big and overfeatured for a PDA. Most  
> people deed not need to make rocket engineer calculations on their  
> PDA. The top-line Palms costed almost as much, but were smaller and  
> slimmer, and I always preferred the Palm's input system with touch- 
> sensitive screen and writing stick to the Psion's small keyboard.  
> Btw I still use a Palm (-phone, meanwhile).
>
> Psion has managed theirself out of the business with the leica-lab  
> syndrome (to stay on topic), and by overseeing the trend that PDAs  
> and cellphones are melting together. Instead of starting their own  
> cellphone line (like Palm did with the Treo's), they went into a  
> questionable strategic alliance with cellphone producers who let  
> them fall after they sucked out their knowhow.
>
> But the Psion OS is still very popular for certain applications.  
> What I know is that the train conductors in the swiss railways have  
> Psion-driven portable computers with inbuilt printer and attached  
> scanner-stick. They can print tickets on the fly, scan tickets on  
> screens of cellphones (it's possible to order and pay a ticket by  
> cellphone, getting it by MMS as a strip-coded attachment) and, of  
> course, check the whole railway timetable. And what I call the  
> "witches armed with a giant Psion" are the charming ladies who put  
> parking tickets under your windshield wiper. They have a similar  
> device like the conductors. And their tiny inbuilt printers work  
> very well, I can tell...
>
> Didier
>
>
>
>
>
>> the Psion Series 3 was by far the best PDA ever in my opinion,
>> instinctive software, beautifully made and functional. Killed by
>> cheaper less effective competition. Many people buy on price alone
>> and will never know what good value effective items are, even when
>> they are expensive. I have still never used a PDA as logical:-(
>> A parallel theme to Leica in many ways actually.
>> Frank
>
>
>
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