back to article Intel pays crafty homage to netbook pioneer Psion

Never say Intel executives aren't cheeky so-and-sos. On a slide all-too-briefly shown during his 'What is Cool' presentation, Intel Executive VP Dadi Perlmutter showed a selection of netbooks including the... er.... Psion Teklogix Netbook. This machine was launched in the late 1990s. Production of the machine ended in 2003, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Stupidity rather than conspiracy

    Somehow I suspect some junior person in Intel was told to put a slide show together featuring photos of 'netbooks'.

    They probably just typed the word into Google images or Flickr and lots of photos of the Psion kept turning up. So, not knowing any better and just assuming it was the same as any other netBook™, they included it.

    Basically, it's karma balancing out all those Microsoft 'Inaudibles'.

  2. Jeremy Chappell
    Grenade

    Mind you...

    It is rather cool (well as long as it's not running WinCE) but probably not as cool as the MC400 (now that really was cool).

  3. Sean Timarco Baggaley
    Stop

    It's not the netBook.

    The model shown in the image is the netBook Pro, which was released in late 2003 (Wikipedia says OCT-2003) and runs some version of WinCE. The chassis was almost identical, but this new version also had USB support, a 16-bit touch-screen display with a higher resolution, and better CPU and RAM specs too. Granted, WinCE wasn't everyone's flavour of the month back then, but for its target market, it was a good, pragmatic, choice.

    The original netBook was based on EPOC32—the direct ancestor of today's Symbian OS. I used to own one of these, as well as its 'consumer' variant, the "Series 7". This original model of the netBook was released in 1999.

    (My netBook spent its final years as a bedside alarm clock, with the advantage of also being an instant-on mini notebook so I could jot down any ideas I had during the night without having to faff around with lights, pens and bits of paper. And very useful it was too. My Macbook Pro performs this duty now.)

  4. G R Goslin
    Thumb Down

    Cool?

    A pity that they didn't show the REAL netBook. Now that was REALLY cool.. The netBook Pro is a mere travesty of an improvement of the older EPOC machine. I have both of these machines, and while with the original netBook you can do almost everything, with the netBook Pro you can do almost nothing. The design changes in the Pro version are crude in the extreme, and the quiescent current drain can empty the batteries in a couple of weeks. I still use the netBook for many things, but have yet to find a use for the Pro. I suppose I could use it for a door stop, though

  5. Trygve Henriksen

    Yes, the MC400 IS cool...

    I still use one now and then as it can read the Word processing files from my S3c, and editing large documents is better on the larger screen.

    The 'almost forever' battery life doesn't hurt, either.

    My netBook?

    Has a permanent place on my nightstand.

    (Not used as an alarm clock. It's the games I have on it... )

  6. Chris Evans

    Intel - Psion connection

    There is an Intel connection to the Psion netBook in that the CPU is/was a StrongARM designed by DEC but in its last years it was fabricated by Intel.

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