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27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

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Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#131

Post by stavros »

ekianjo wrote: post #124
stavros wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that looking at it from a MHz standpoint is a red herring. How many things can you do per watt now, than you could per watt then?

That's pointless since you need to recharge your device all the time. It's not progress if you have a lighter that needs gas every 2 minutes to work.

Except the lighter nowadays is a flamethrower. You can get a lighter that needs gas every month, or a flamethrower that needs gas every two minutes, but complaining that the flamethrower needs much more gas than the lighter is silly.

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#132

Post by stavros »

ekianjo wrote: post #125
stavros wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a ton of devices that would disagree with you. If you run the Psion software on modern hardware, it'll run for two months.

Of course not, because no device can run at super low wattage with such an hypothetical OS.

It's not a hypothetical OS, it's what the Psion runs, and why not?

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#133

Post by Lio »

jbverschoor wrote: post #12
tobiasbischoff wrote: post #5

I will never understand why we do not have this kind of device anymore. A small computer, running linux, proper keyboard, integrated LTE - it would be a messaging and writing dream. Back in the days i developed custom software for the Revo, the SDK was a dream to work with as well.

I still have a Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D here. it's an awesome little machine, with a full keyboard. Keyboard open: https://tldp.org/LDP/Mobile-Guide/html/mobile-guide-p3c2s8-z... Wikipedia (keyboard closed): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharp_Zaurus

I loved mine back in the day. Also later had a Zaurus SL-C860 I had to order from Japan. I think that was the first computer I used as an eBook reader. Having a little Linux palmtop was magic back in the day.

I always lusted after several of the Psion models though, from the Psion 2 onwards. They were just such nicely designed things, even if you just looked at them as bits of industrial art.

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#134

Post by wishfish »

tobiasbischoff wrote: post #5

I will never understand why we do not have this kind of device anymore. A small computer, running linux, proper keyboard, integrated LTE - it would be a messaging and writing dream. Back in the days i developed custom software for the Revo, the SDK was a dream to work with as well.

It's not Linux, but you can roughly get this form factor with mainstream devices without having to take a risk on small companies or crowdfunded projects. There are hinged laptop-style cases for the iPad Mini. iPadOS is generally good with keyboard shortcuts so that would be a decent combo as long as you can put up with the limitations of the OS.

Zagg sells a hinged keyboard that works with 7 inch tablets. I bought one alongside an Amazon Fire 7 inch during a black friday sale. Thought it would be fun to have a mini laptop for around $50. The two worked well in conjunction. Was even almost pocketable. But the Fire was slow. If someone spent all their time in Termux, the Fire might have been fast enough.

It's a pity the 7 inch Windows tablets didn't sell well and have largely vanished from the market. One could install Linux on them, and use them with something like the Zagg keyboard.

I guess there's one more possible option. Boox's eink tablets have support for BT keyboards. Pair the 8 inch model with one of the hinged keyboards. As long as the screen can keep up with the typing (I have no idea) that might work well.

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#136

Post by m4lvin »

pydry wrote: post #77
oliwarner wrote: post #49

Lots of focus on the hardware here but its form factor still exists in niches. What has vanished, is our ability to do general-purpose computing at ~8MHz. Consider the computers you had in the 90s. Windows 3.11 and Office ran on a 286 but I sit here with 12 cores at ~4Ghz just to post this crumby comment. We are spoilt. It really makes me yearn to do more with less.

Ive looked for a 5mx form factor in the form of a phone and not been able to find it.

The pro1x from fxtec with lineageos plus termux is useful :-)

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#137

Post by vdqtp3 »

zokier wrote: post #81
pydry wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ive looked for a 5mx form factor in the form of a phone and not been able to find it.

Planet Computers? https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/

They never released fully functional Linux support

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#139

Post by samstave »

londons_explore wrote: post #62
coldtea wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better ask, how many things you could do per watt now , if software had that era's leanness?

I occasionally fire up Windows 95 in a VM and marvel at how fast it is. Sometimes I use it for actual tasks, although it is hard to find things Windows 95 is useful for nowadays. My copy has office 97 installed, and I use that for some spreadsheety tasks. I really like being able to click anything and know I won't see a loading spinner.

Gosh windows 95 was great - especially the ability to navigate the OS from the keyboard alone - At one point I knew W95 so well I could literally navigate the OS by hand without a screen.

An aquaintance at one point changed all the graphics settings to black - so ever screen, menu, text etc was black and you couldnt see anything. I was able to help her by using just the keyboard to navigate to settings and restore defaults. I did it from memory and key-clicks.

Also, it was a fun OS to fuck with people in the nascient realm of virus' of the time, there was setting the desktop as an image and hiding whatever was actually on the desktop so nobody could click on things... remote access BSODs etc.

I'm on an HP flagship gaming laptop now and it consumes probably 1,000 times more power (watts) and Compute to just display this single text entry form on HackerNews than any W95 machine back in the day...

In ~1997 or so I had to shutdown a branch office in San Diego and when I did so, we had a number of plastic sealed boxes of brand-new W95 on 3.5" floppies... I kept them for over a decade and then sold them on Ebay as collectors items for $75 each... and wrote a tale about how they were computing history.

But I had a PDA in 1993 which was by CASIO - and it had a little spreadsheet app on it, and I made a Gematria translator app in it - so I could type in any words and its formulae would spit out all the Gematria numbers for a name (the Celestine Prophecy was a famous book of the time)

That PDA was similar to this one, but less sophisticated - and I had that thing for ~25 years... but unlike OP I didnt take out the battery and it ruind the device.

Re: 27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020)

#140

Post by coldtea »

dgan wrote: post #122
coldtea wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit is for old geezers, so I doubt any of the above answers is in any way in touch with 2023. And I'm not sure who calls Macbooks "$2000 Facebook machines". That sounds like the ancient DOS era bs that "Macs are toys" (funny, the PC ended getting all the gamers and meat-and-potatoes OS needs, i.e. email+web, older people). In the west, where they can afford it, a huge chunk of programmers, graphic designers, data…

> or the share of those professions on Linux Lol This argument keeps getting reused over and over. The main reason Linux is not used is lazy sysadmins who only care to support Windows and MacOS for other employees. This argument has as much convincing power as "elections" held in separatists regions of Ukraine. I do have macbook offered by my job, yes it's definitely better than windows, and yes i would take a linux…

Not really. MacOS is also heavily used in companies where you can have your pick of OS.

>This argument has as much convincing power as "elections" held in separatists regions of Ukraine.

So, a lot, given the demographics.

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