back to article RIP Psion PLC: You're with Motorola now

Motorola Solutions - the profitable bit of Motorola that wasn't gobbled by Google - has completed its acquisition of Psion PLC, and can now start integrating the company. The purchase was announced in June, but it's taken a while to complete despite the £129m offer being unanimously recommended by the Psion board. Motorola …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Plus lets not forget Psion's early contributions to the Sinclair machines.

    They also had a trademark on the name Netbook.

    1. ThomH

      I'm pretty sure they invented the PDA so that Hungry Horace could better schedule his skiing trips.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Both their work on the Spectrum (VU3d - 3d Modelling on the Z80? :)) and QL (The Psion Suite) were amazing.

      But the Horace games can never be beaten as playable classics!

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      netBook™ & netPad™

      And netPad™, the perfect competitor name to the iPad. I wonder why no one used that term, as they did with netbooks?

  2. Bob Vistakin
    Linux

    Could have been a contender

    Sent from my LZ64

  3. DJV Silver badge

    Reminiscence time...

    My Psion 5MX is still sitting in a drawer, damn good machine in its time. Keyboard has never been beaten, sigh...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Reminiscence time...

      I was temped to downvote you. Unless it is faulty, it should be in use like mine!

      I did find some time ago on the Internet an article that compared a Apple airbook laptop thing with a Psion Series 7. IIRC, the only bad thing it said about the Psion was lack of wireless, but I presume if one had a compatible mobile that wouldn't have been a problem?

  4. We're all in it together
    Thumb Up

    End of an era

    What a great device the LZ64 was. I bought mine in the late 80's from Dixons for the princely sum of £199. It came with the Oxford English dictionary if my memory serves me right. Still dig it out from the drawer ever now and then.

  5. This post has been deleted by its author

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    very fond memories of the Psion 1, I've still got it somewhere

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Personally, I found the Psion "I" useless. Things kicked off with the Psion II, though - that was simply awesome. I still have 2, but one is starting to have display problems, and without spare zebra strips I don't think I can repair it (zebra strips connect the display edge to the PCB).

      Actually, I think I'll flog them. I have a gazillion data packs (amongst which 2x 256k Flash), the swipe reader, the barcode reader and even an interface for a Mitutoya digital calliper which I built almost 25 years ago (must check if I can still find a program that uses it - I remember I had to include some assembler into an OPL program to read it :) ).

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        The Psion 1 is useless in the same way the ZX80 was useless

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Psion was kinda dead anyway

    I got a 3c and later got the 5mx and boy was it awesome. Not only the keyboard and touchscreen but also the stuff you could do with it. I even ran Norton Commander on my 5mx. Still, from there on it went downhill pretty fast where consumer products were concerned.

    With a little more innovation I can't help wonder if things couldn't have been different.

    1. JOKM
      Holmes

      Re: Psion was kinda dead anyway

      My Psion 3A still works despite being dragged on a hiking trip 15 years ago and getting dunked in goats piss in the process, none of my apple machines managed to live that long and the worse they had to suffer was obsoleteness.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Irony

    Of all the companies to end up owning Psion, it had to be Motorola, the company there at the very beginning of Psion's decline. Thor and Odin must be turning in their graves.

    To this day, I will not buy a Motorola phone, though admittedly it's not as though they're good enough for me to be missing out on anything...

  9. Nev
    FAIL

    Why...

    ... has there never been a worthy successor to the '5?

    Even after all this time there is nothing that compares to it in terms of design, usability, battery life and software integration.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    5mx still going strong

    I still use my 5mx, backed up by the emulator running on WINE on Linux. Incomparable battery life, unbeaten by any smartphone today, Agenda and Data applications simply just work, and a fabulous keyboard. No decent replacement yet, in my book.

    I am tempted to try an Open Pandora, but my ideal would be something that runs the 5mx applications with the 5mx keyboard, and with some updated technologies: and e-Ink screen, for example, USB mass storage host & client, and (possibly) low-power Bluetooth. I definitely don't want an IP stack, or anything that allows outside crackers to crack into the machine - hence the (possibly) around Bluetooth. Having decent encryption of user-entered data would be good too.

    I hoped that the phonebook functionality would be divorced from the phone telephony side of things, so that I could look up a contact in the database, the hit a key that would communicated via Bluetooth with a (dumbish) phone to dial the offered number, but that was not to be.

    Ah well, I'm just a bearded and sandal wearing techie with dreams.

  11. stu 4
    Boffin

    an excuse to post my PDA collection pictures again

    http://powerlord.smugmug.com/Gadgets/PDA-cabinet

    spot the series 5. Could have sworn I had a revo and a series 1, but just checked and not... need to remedy that!

    can anyone guess every one correctly ?

    1. Furbian
      Thumb Up

      Re: an excuse to post my PDA collection pictures again

      I was going to have a go at naming then, and then I saw an Atari PDA (!?) and gave up!

      Nice collection, thanks for sharing the photos.

      Now let's Google 'Atari PDA'.

      1. Arrrggghh-otron

        Re: an excuse to post my PDA collection pictures again

        That would be the Atari Portfolio - I have one keeping my apple newton company...

        Great little DOS based portable.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: an excuse to post my PDA collection pictures again

      I think saw a Compaq iPaq PocketPC (tm) of some flavour but I don't think I saw an HP95LX (early days, DOS and Lotus 123 in ROM, where I started with handhelds) or a slightly later HP Jornada 720 (nice hardware, decent touchscreen for the time, OK keyboard, shame about Windows CE). Or did I miss them?

    3. Pinky

      Re: an excuse to post my PDA collection pictures again

      So you bought the other Amstrad PenPad! Did you ever actually use it for anything? Still have mine in a drawer after replacing it with a 5mx (which is not used as much it should be, but in use every now and then).

  12. Velv
    Facepalm

    "and the company that, argues our own Andrew Orlowski, could have been the UK's answer to Sony."

    Bit like Jeremy Clarkson and cars then? He buys it, it suddenly becomes uncool

  13. Vince
    Go

    We had a customer bring in a couple of the lovely 5mx models recently. Had a small issue I could easily fix thanks to its CF slot.

    Said owner uses this daily for recording a load of architectural stuff (about as much as I understood of what he does).

    They're still going strong for many people..

  14. t1mc

    I used my netbook on a train 18 months ago when I got upgraded to 1st class free and actually got asked where I'd got it from by a couple of business people. I was just testing if out would work on the wifi. They loved the instant on and keyboard. Late Psioneers!

  15. Portent

    Pioneering

    Back in the late 90s I sent my first mobile email from a train using a Revo, hooked up to my Nokia 8210 phone over infrared. Good times.

  16. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Coat

    Lucky guys, all of you... *mutter*

    Never had a chance of owning (or using) any of those early devices, but it is understandable that those just *works* unlike today's hi-tech gimmickry gadgets which tend to give issues whether these be battery life, wifi (yes, I'm pointing at iOS6 specifically) or just plain usefulness.

    Had the 48k ZX Spectrum though, does it count? :D

    Seems that old-tech still have the upper hand regarding reliability and usefulness over today's fancy bling.

    On my way to play Manic Miner and Horace in the Park.

  17. hugh wanger
    Megaphone

    Netbook keyboard, please license it!

    Pls pls Motorola let other people devices with that Netbook form factor, including that fantastic keyboard.

    Even today, no other device of that size has had a keyboard so luxurious.

    PLEASE :)

  18. The FunkeyGibbon
    Unhappy

    Very typically English

    It's very typically English to have something superb and then not have it fulfil it's potential. What would a Jonny Ive designed Psion been like?

    1. Blane Bramble
      Thumb Down

      Re: Very typically English

      Expensive and rubbish?

    2. Magnus Ramage

      Re: Very typically English

      My eyes skated from one line to another there, and I thought you were suggesting a Jonny English designed Psion!

  19. Ol'Peculier
    Happy

    Psion 3A

    I had one of those.

    Plus side - taking it to America and amazing the people I showed it to how our British tech was doing

    Minus side - it wiping a cash card because I left it underneath it's speaker.

    Happy(ish) days

  20. Nameless Faceless Computer User

    oooohh - so this is why Motorola laid off thousands with Google planning to lay off thousands more engineers. They needed the money to buy another company. Yup, sounds good to me. Throw the talent to the curb because they're done with them.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Different Motorola

      Like most people, you seem to not be aware that Motorola Solutions has NOTHING to do with cell phones at all.

      The whole consumer side of the business was split off and became Motorola Mobility and was promptly bought by Google.

      Motorola Solutions has a portfolio including public safety radio systems and RFID and POS solutions for industry and retail, this latter part being where Psion fits the picture.

  21. stu 4
    Boffin

    Sony UX50

    If you have a look you'll see a Sony UX50 in there.

    Now _that_ was a PDA ahead of it's time too.

    Came out nearly 10 years ago in 2003.. now remember this is just the same year the first colour phone came out.

    bluetooth

    GPS

    hardware accelerated video playback

    camera

    480x240 colour touchscreen

    expandable memory

    keyboard

    the weird thing is - it didn't sell well because it cost over 400 quid.

    and yet now, we thing nothing of paying 600 quid for an iphone.

    it's a strange strange world.

    1. <shakes head>

      Re: Sony UX50

      inflation at 3% per year compound

    2. Fred Flintstone Gold badge

      Re: Sony UX50

      In my opinion, the best PDA I ever had was a Sony Clie NX70.. Small, usable, multiple, in those days already capable of video and audio recording and the most awesome feature I VERY much miss in modern smartphones: the ability to act as a universal remote control.

      In those days, my son was ill quite often so I spent many evenings in A&E wards in hospitals - with the Clié, I could at least change the channels of the TV in there :)

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