To Cyril:
>>I partly agree with Alan Chambers. Psion did an excellent job of producing good compact software that did the essential wordprocessing, spreadsheeting, notetaking and diary tasks well on a little screen, and with a long battery life. Its choice of a landscape format screen and a useable keyboard, in a robust clamshell format was also superior to the square Palm scribble screen, only really suited to short tasks, which, amazingly, became the fad, and drove the Psion machines and their several similar-format competitors out of the market.<<
It all depends on how you define superior. The fact is, most Psions were probably too big, too heavy, too expensive and too complicated for the average user, which is borne out by the fact that in the end, more users preferred the simplicity of Palm to the technical superiority of Psion; presumably, to those users who chose Palm over Psion, Palm was superior. At the end of the day, it is all about giving users what they want. If you don't do that, you will end up going out of business or will have to change your target market; Psion chose the latter option. I think it is a great pity, but as Itamar said, sometimes you just have to move on.
Cheers, Ian
Cyrill Catt wrote:
> But, clearly, I’m in an extreme minority
I think I'm even more extreme, Cyrill. As I've written before I'm basically a PC user (desktop & laptop). My netBook sits mostly on my desk. While I have tons of apps (mostly freeware) loaded, I basically use only Agenda, BikLog5, and Micro5. I do use it to take notes at a retired officer monthly board meeting and, currently, at an Italian class I'm taking in preparation for a bike trip in southern Sicily.
My 5mx is used exclusively when cycletouring for keeping a daily journal, a log of photos I take, the bikelog, and the abp bank program.
I also use it here at home, keeping a list of books I'm looking for at the local library.
Other than that, no e-mail, no internet, no nothing.
I have no interest in the so-called smart phones with all the stuff they do, in which I'm not interested. To clarify a bit, I have a simple cell phone a pre-paid thing no camera, etc. I pay $100 each year (more if you use that up before year's end). I'm charged 25 cents per minute whether I call or someone calls me. Almost every year I end up with about $70 left so you can see I hardly use the phone. I bought it when my wife was alive to let her know I was OK on the bike.
Now after all this rambling, you've probably gotten the idea I'm a really old, old-fashioned guy. You're wrong. :-)
Yes, I'm old, 84. Yes, I prefer reading a real book in my easy chair (listening to music on my iPod through my stere) to reading a book on one of the new electronic readers. But I do do online banking, e-mailing, income taxes using TurboTax, financial records using Quicken, etc.
Enough, you say. Enough, I say. The end.
Happy Cycling,
Keith
Sunnyvale, CA
Thought For The Day: If you've been together long enough to be on your second bottle of Tabasco sauce, you can bet your marriage will last.
Dear all,
With regards to Itamar's comments on the fact, that our netBook and its Opera browser is outdated, because the netBook does not support modern sites anymore I also have noticed something.
I have a netBook with the newest OS, but Opera 5.14 separately installed. Certain sites are extremely slow. They load -I only see a blank screenand I see in the status line below the pictures, stuck at (say) 3:8. Opera "thinks" 30 seconds, the pictures load and go to 11:17, 30 seconds wait, et cetera.
The weird part is that this happens with sites that do not seem to have many complicated things, for example www.standaard.be or www.telecomvergelijker.nl .
I also have the idea, that Opera becomes slower and slower. I already deleted the cache, but this does not help.
If I close Opera, it takes 30 seconds to jump back to the System screen.
Has anybody else noticed this ? Is a part of Opera damaged ?
Yours truly,
Thomas van der Zijden