This is all terribly sad. At one point, Psion was the only manufacturer to create the box (Psion Series 5) and the operating system (EPOC OS), but gave up the ghost when faced with turbulence at the end of the dot.com boom. What they had in the original netbook was the absolute best combination of form factor and operating system with the technology available at that time. By giving the OS away to Symbian and giving up on consumer electronics, Psion basically gave up on early smartphones, leaving it to Treo and others. But what really killed them was Microsoft -not in its dominance this time, but in the suckiness of Windows CE on clamshell PDA's. People saw these more frequently -horrible lookalike, crash alike failures from Casio, HP, NEC, and others, and rarely saw the British jewels created by Psion, that people assumed all clamshell PDA's just sucked.
Palm almost died this death by Windows Mobile (CE), and is just escaping (maybe) with their new OS and Pre phone.
What netbooks should be are what the first netbook by Psion promised to be: instant on, portable, wireless, great keyboard, 8-10hrs battery, and instant off. Windows is again killing the category by proving to everyone that a netbook is just a really small and barely usable Windows laptop. Runs acceptably well with XP and not so great with VISTA, but hey, you get what you pay for -so goes Microsoft thinking.
netbooks should do what the Nokia 810 achieves and what iPhone maddeningly dances around -true portable internet appliance. The clamshell formfactor needs a hero, but not one that boots up Vista like the Fujitsu 820, or costs over $2000 like the Sony UX50 UMPC. Psion shouldn't be suing, but updating its Revo with a color screen, Li battery, Wifi, and maybe a phone, using Linux or EPOC 6.0. It should offer an updated, wireless, Series 5mx. And simply put, if they merely offered their netbook Pro, which they sucked up and failed by using Windows CE, by updating with built in wireless and a working Linux and sold it for $500 to $700, they would sell these hand over fist.
My Psion series 5 was awsome. I used it in Highschool and College for note taking and the 2x AA batteries would last for a full week before giving out. Ultimately gave it up in my junior year for my Thinkpad T30, but was an amazing piece of hardware.
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This is all terribly sad. At one point, Psion was the only manufacturer to create the box (Psion Series 5) and the operating system (EPOC OS), but gave up the ghost when faced with turbulence at the end of the dot.com boom. What they had in the original netbook was the absolute best combination of form factor and operating system with the technology available at that time. By giving the OS away to Symbian and giving up on consumer electronics, Psion basically gave up on early smartphones, leaving it to Treo and others. But what really killed them was Microsoft -not in its dominance this time, but in the suckiness of Windows CE on clamshell PDA's. People saw these more frequently -horrible lookalike, crash alike failures from Casio, HP, NEC, and others, and rarely saw the British jewels created by Psion, that people assumed all clamshell PDA's just sucked.
Palm almost died this death by Windows Mobile (CE), and is just escaping (maybe) with their new OS and Pre phone.
What netbooks should be are what the first netbook by Psion promised to be: instant on, portable, wireless, great keyboard, 8-10hrs battery, and instant off. Windows is again killing the category by proving to everyone that a netbook is just a really small and barely usable Windows laptop. Runs acceptably well with XP and not so great with VISTA, but hey, you get what you pay for -so goes Microsoft thinking.
netbooks should do what the Nokia 810 achieves and what iPhone maddeningly dances around -true portable internet appliance. The clamshell formfactor needs a hero, but not one that boots up Vista like the Fujitsu 820, or costs over $2000 like the Sony UX50 UMPC. Psion shouldn't be suing, but updating its Revo with a color screen, Li battery, Wifi, and maybe a phone, using Linux or EPOC 6.0. It should offer an updated, wireless, Series 5mx. And simply put, if they merely offered their netbook Pro, which they sucked up and failed by using Windows CE, by updating with built in wireless and a working Linux and sold it for $500 to $700, they would sell these hand over fist.
I've been bellyaching about this on my blog entries below:
http://golfism.wordpress.com/2009/03/02/top-12-features-not-yet-found-on-any-one-netbook/
http://golfism.wordpress.com/2009/02/18/the-protonetbook/
http://golfism.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/12-things-i-hate-about-iphone/
My Psion series 5 was awsome. I used it in Highschool and College for note taking and the 2x AA batteries would last for a full week before giving out. Ultimately gave it up in my junior year for my Thinkpad T30, but was an amazing piece of hardware.