Re: Can we stop calling it a Psion please?
With all due respect but this really has little in common with a Psion at all.
Sizewise it appears to be close, but I get where you're coming from: the software. You had standard applications that really worked and especially the usability of their calendar application has as yet to be equalled. The DB approach was also genius in its simplicity. It was basically a text file with records of 254 characters max, fields separated by tabs (the length was because it allowed a whole record to fit in a string in OPL, which was also the trick to manipulate it in software if you wanted more), and one record defined the headers for each field. It was stupidly useful and very fast to search. To be honest, I was very disappointed when that didn't really moved with the whole mobile phone shenanigans - I would have fought for a phone where you could cook up some simple OPL to make things happen for you (I think Apple is trying this with Swift, but it just doesn't compare).
The only thing that sucked, and badly so, was Psion's software for PC. I have no idea what they wrote in, but it never quite worked and it would abort any nascent approach to multitasking such as DoubleDOS, Desqview et al.
Personally I think the 5 was the last really good device they made.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
