I would never argue that Palms were technologically superior to Psion, although they were possibly more robust, and as Michael points out, Palms did evolve more than Psions, eventually getting colour screens and along with more modern connectivity options. And PsiWin was truly awful for syncronisation; I actually gave up syncing, and used my Psions as my only address book and calendar...
Mind you, I never considered a Palm as bling ;-) However, I firmly believe that Palm provided what many users wanted; a simple, robust, easy-to-use device with reliable syncing. To those users who did go down the Palm route, Palm was superior to Psion. And while many users clearly preferred the overall power of Psions, they were to small in number to really matter.
I personally am amazed at what Psion did manage to cram into their devices (the 5/5mx in particular), but technical prowess is clearly not enough. And when Psion did try to simplify things, with the Siena and the Revo/Mako, they botched things horribly; the Siena had poor sales and the Revo, for all its positives, had inexcusably bad battery management. However, if the mooted Revo-smartphone had ever materialised, I would probably have bought one, but it was not to be...
Cheers, Ian
Hello all and thanks for yr advice (Itamar and Jean Guillonneau).on the above.
Netbook with Epoc emulator could be a good idea to slowly drift away from Epoc, as there seems to be little chance to ever get a "big" enough device with this OS (Nokia E90 looks nice but smallish and not many evolutions since its launching). Plus a plain and robust GSM phone, possibly with modem so as to send mails and documents written on the PC.
Greetings from Grenoble
Stephane Sage
To Cyril,
> So for ME, size, versatility, longevity... are the main arbiters of superiority. The Palms are a bit too small, the netbooks, a bit too big; the Palms are insufficiently versatile, and the (newer) netbooks provide more than I need; and neither Palms nor netbooks have enough battery life.
Well said, I could not agree more. I am really not sure who those multi-version manufacturers of all-sizes-but-the-right-size are listening to.
Moshe Nahir
Winnipeg, Canada
Greetings!
I wondered if anyone else on the list would mention this story:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/17/mwc_nokia/
I am sure I am being overly optimistic, but I read it as hinting at the use of Symbian in a new netbook or Series 5 sized device.
I've tried two of the new netbooks over the last year (Eee 701 and the Acer Aspire One) and both come close without quite matching up to my hopes and expectations. The Eee 701 is wonderfully-sized and silent, with impressive speakers, a bright screen, and good wireless connectivity; but the keyboard is just not as good as the netbook (comparable perhaps to the 5) and the screen is too small so that scrolling sideways on most websites becomes irritating. Furthermore 4GB of storage is rather limiting (especially if, like me, one likes to try dual-booting two or more operating systems).
The AAO has a much better keyboard, which stands comparison with the Psion netbook/series 7, and a bright, better-sized screen, which eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling. I bought the harddrive version after finding 4GB too little on the Eee. But I found this version had a permanently-on fan that whines distractingly, its speakers produce a very thin and tinny sound, and the glossy screen acts like a mirror. (I really don't want to spend all day staring at myself or the outline of the window behind me.) On the plus side, one can make it run Mac OS X though it won't sleep.
Both machines' linux OSes start up very quickly. But even a 5 second startup (they actually take about 15 seconds, but I understand Moblin is meant to have achieved 5 second startups) is no match for the Psion's instant-on, when one wants to capture a thought or enter an appointment. Their battery lives in no way approach either of the ten-year old EPOC machines', and they tend to drain horribly when left on standby (the Atom-based AAO seems much better than the 701's celeron for this). And of course the S5's use of AA batteries is far superior to lithium powerpacks (for me anyway); it makes it makes it possible to use when away from electrical outlets (for up to 20 days!) and eliminates the need for a power cable.
Consequently I've just brought one of my 7Books back into service by resoldering the power plug socket (must be one of the weak points of the design as it is the second or third time I've done this) and transferring my files onto a bigger 1GB cf card; and now I am carrying two machines around again. The psion (5 or 7book depending on where I'm going) works as a pda & for sending text messages with my antique Nokia 6210; the AAO allows for connecting to wifi with more comfortable and up to date web and e-mail and the use of other mainstream computing applications (mostly wordprocessing a thesis in my case).
What would I like from an updated symbian-powered netbook? The agenda program from my Psion; data and contacts; word and sheet; macro5; instant-on and -off; a colour screen with at least 800 pixels width, and preferably 1024; decent speakers and a headphone and mic socket; UTF8/unicode all modern computers should be able to cope with foreign languages and I would use the 7book/S5 for far more if it could handle utf8 rather than the antique ANSI.
I've never managed to afford a symbian smartphone so I've no idea how well EPOC has fared in Nokia's hands. Is it still capable of producing a capable palmtop computer a la S5 or netbook? Does it still have built-in decent word, sheet and database capabilities like ER5? And have its syncing capabilities improved to allow it to collaborate well with mainstream programs on Windows, Mac, and Linux machines? Can it cope with usb devices?
One last question: has anyone on the list tried running the EPOC emulator on a netbook? How does it fare? I'm guessing that it would be useful for accessing one's files, but that the lack of instant-on and -off would hobble it somewhat for agenda-use. I also wonder how well it would run on WINE on linux.
Thanks to those who run this list and all those who continue to send in interesting advice, comment and views.
All the best,
Ian