Re: What is a good Psion replacement?

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torbengb@xxxxxxxxx <torbengb@xxxxxxxxx> espoused:
Hi all,
I've been using my Psion S5 since 1997, and in the meantime I upgraded
to an S5mx. I love it more than any other techie thing I own, but I
have slowly come to realize that it can't go on being my favorite
thing. All this year, I have been looking in vain for a modern
replacement that works as well.

In my daily life, I have a work laptop that I rarely lug around, a work
cell phone and bluetooth headset, a personal cell phone, a digital
camera, and my Psion. It's just too much stuff, and much of it overlaps
in features.

Must-have's for my next PDA would be
- doing calendar and contacts well,
- also does GSM 900/1800,
- has bluetooth so I can speak in a headset,
- has WLAN so I don't need a data cable,
- has a touch screen,
- has a Psion-quality keyboard. (good enough to type *pages* rather
than just *words*)
- battery life measured in days or weeks, not hours.
A camera, and even a color screen, is merely "nice to have".

I tried the Nokia and Vodafone flagships, but they both lack a useful
keyboard. The Nokia lacked a touch screen, and the Windows Mobile OS of
the Vodafone was painfully slow, though otherwise impressive.

I can't seem to find anything that fits my needs. Can it really be that
nobody has yet produced a "Psion Series 2006"? Am I just too picky?

I don't know that you can have all of that combination at once, but
here's how I do it (I'm an ex 5mx user...);

I have a Nokia N770 tablet, which has a fantasic colour touch-screen -
it's huge, good battery life, bluetooth and wifi. It can connect to a
standard GSM phone via bluetooth for GPRS connectivity when out of range
of wifi hotspots. There's a bluetooth keyboard add-on package to
support a proper keyboard which you can (apparently) type forever on.

My phone is (presently) a Nokia 6630, which is symbian, and does
contacts and calendar and syncs with outlook. It also has a browser, but
the screen isn't all that big. There's a camera on it.

The N770 has a proper browser (full-screen opera), flash player, real
player, mp3 & divx player. It's also a full-blown linux computer
running on an arm core (as per 5mx), but as it's linux, there's a large
and increasing amount of good quality free software for it, including
word processors, spreadsheets, pdf viewers, and so on.

On the down side, it could use more memory!

It's very inexpensive, too.

anyway, hope that gives you something to consider.

--
| Mark Kent -- mark at ellandroad dot demon dot co dot uk |
Kiss a non-smoker; taste the difference.
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