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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)

#141

Post by coldtea »

jorvi wrote: post #100
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…

Change “the West” into “mostly America”. There is still a decent chunk of Apple users in Europe, but it is a far cry from the extreme obsession America seems to have with Apple devices.

Well, US has a market share for macOS of around 20% and Europe of around 7-8% from what I can find.

I'd also wager the main culprit is the 20-30% price hike of Macs in Europe (in absolute numbers - it's even worse considering the lower wages in most of European countries compared to the US), rather than any particular dislike.

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

#142

Post by MobiusHorizons »

wishfish wrote: post #134
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 o…

I have used a boox tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard (actually an iPad keyboard with hinges) there is nontrivial latency while typing, but I found it was quite manageable. It just forces you to keep more of the command or line of text in your head. I found myself writing on it a lot. Even did a little programming.

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

#143

Post by secondcoming »

samstave wrote: post #139
londons_explore wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 de…

Back when phones had physical keypad buttons and T9 text, I could send a message without taking the phone out of my pocket. It looked suspicious though

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

#144

Post by ajb »

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/

I had a gemini, but the hinge fell apart Shame, I quite liked it.

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

#146

Post by rebolek »

zozbot234 wrote: post #129
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.

> What has vanished, is our ability to do general-purpose computing at ~8MHz. ahem https://xkcd.com/768/

I know there's XKCD for everything but I wonder if there should be.

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

#147

Post by thesuperbigfrog »

tivert wrote: post #117
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?

> 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? Obviously a lot more. The OP said the thing could run in two AAs for a month . Nowadays, almost nothing can last a month on one charge/set of batteries. The only thing I can think of that might pass is a Kindle, due to the trick where it's literally shut down almost all the time.

Ultra low power processors exist:

"GreenArrays is shipping its 144-core asynchronous chip that needs little energy (7 pJ/inst). Idle cores use no power (100 nW). Active ones (4 mW) run fast (666 Mips), then wait for communication (idle).

Tight coding to minimize instructions executed will minimize power. The programmer can also reduce instruction fetches, transistor switching and duty cycle.

Chuck Moore

GreenArrays, Inc."

Source: https://youtu.be/0PclgBd6_Zs

They just are not widely used because ARM and similar processors offer much more computational power and people are happy charging their devices every day or so.

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

#148

Post by classichasclass »

sauruk wrote: post #113
westcort wrote: post #109

Certain classic computers powered by “AA” batteries are amazing to use today. I have an Alphasmart Dana set up for my children to play chess, do word procession, and learn to program in C. It is much better than dealing with the potential hazards of a modern device.

Theres a c compiler?? Can you share a link?

The Dana runs PalmOS 4 (the closest thing that ever existed to a Palm laptop), so any Palm-compatible C compiler will do.

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

#150

Post by rebolek »

stavros wrote: post #131
ekianjo wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The problem is there are only flamethrowers now and no lighters.
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