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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)

#211

Post by bombcar »

lynx23 wrote: post #197
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.

On a positive note, HN is one of the very few sites left which is still simple enough to be used with older browsers. I am writing this comment in the text console (no X11) of a Raspberry Pi 3 with a braille display (no monitor connected) as the output device. Using lynx as a pretty reliable browser. It is the exception, I know, I am a freak by nature of my disability, but I am also proud to know this niche still exi…

It’s annoying because so much content SHOULd be perfectly accessible as described, but frameworks and browsers just fight it at every step.

Too bad Apache didn’t have a Gopher server built in by default.

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

#212

Post by mikepavone »

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 have an Astro Slide 5G from them (though bought via ebay) and I'm happy with my purchase, but it's kind of hard to recommend. Their track record on actually shipping pre-orders is kinda lousy (why I resorted to buying one second hand), the keyboard has some quality control issues and the software side feels a bit half-baked. For instance, there's almost always an undismissable "System Update" notification despite no updates being available. They did recently ship a system update which fixed some issues so they haven't abandoned it, but they have a ways to go still.

I really want them to succeed. It's such a cool device

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

#213

Post by dredmorbius »

I would be interested in a product or kit based on e-ink and a small keyboard.

It need not necessarily run EPOC16, though a battery-optimised OS would be quite useful.

I'm using a 13" e-ink tablet for most of my mobile use (reading, no social media, absolute minimal number of account-based tools), and it's quite good. A bit large for a pocketable / PDA device, and the fact that there's no keyboard which could integrate into a folding-but-usable case as I'd had for an earlier Android tablet[1] is disappointing. Apple likewise.[2]

I'm not looking for a phone (though with a headphone jack, the device might serve for vox comms), but a device on which I can read and create text and some images.

E-ink is battery-friendly, highly readable, works well for greyscale graphics (I often, though not always, forget that I'm looking at content which presumes colour), is highly readable under direct sunlight, and can be read in low-light conditions with a modest frontlight.

Purism and Pine may deliver here, though I'm not holding my breath.

Keyboard is essential to writing. Touch input sucks.

________________________________

Notes:

1. The keyboard itself was ultimately a disappointment, as was the tablet. The form-factor and ease of flipping from touch-based to keyboard-based use was quite appealing. More: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lqgtwy_rhsfbdh5cdxb1rq>

2. The two problems are iOS's lack of a Linux-like userland, and yes, I'm aware of ish, and the fact that despite some otherwise delicious keyboards, keys critical to Linux/Unix tools and conventions are missing, most notably . Android/Termux remains superior, despite my many reservations against Android.

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

#215

Post by theodric »

dredmorbius wrote: post #213

I would be interested in a product or kit based on e-ink and a small keyboard. It need not necessarily run EPOC16, though a battery-optimised OS would be quite useful. I'm using a 13" e-ink tablet for most of my mobile use (reading, no social media, absolute minimal number of account-based tools), and it's quite good. A bit large for a pocketable / PDA device, and the fact that there's no keyboard which could integra…

Beepberry https://beepberry.sqfmi.com/

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

#216

Post by dredmorbius »

hedgehog wrote: post #174
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.

So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. Farther back I remember not having the spare cash for the expansion card necessary to have lower case letters and typing in program listings ou…

FWIW, I ran across the splitting-text-into-files problem on Android using one of the highly-recommended note-taking apps.

Discovering Termux and having a large suite of Linux terminal-based tools available resolved that and many, many, many more frustrations.

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

#217

Post by andix »

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.

Because you can type much faster on an onscreen keyboard on any cheap Android tablet.

I did the test on my iPad, i reach around 70% of the typing speed compared to my favorite PC keyboard.

There are some Tablets that include a keyboard in the cover, so in the end you have the same functionality and much better usability.

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

#218

Post by andix »

ubermonkey wrote: post #116

I dabbled in handhelds in that era, and always wanted a Psion but never got around to it. The main issues in that era for me were that they devices were dead ends for data. At the time, the main competitor for something like this was a paper planner, of course, which are ALSO dead ends, so it was a reasonable approach. Newton happened, though, and initially -- and people forget this -- it came with the Newton Desktop…

I played with some of those PDAs as a kid, and honestly I never really got what they were used for. There was no Wi-Fi and internet connection via infrared was not really awesome. Using it while traveling abroad was extremely expensive.

You were able to sync the email from your desktop PC, answer them offline and send them on the next sync.

And you could do spreadsheets. But honestly, who really uses spreadsheets on their smartphone? (Which is a comparable user experience)

So the only thing left is calendar, contacts and notes. A paper planner was probably more useful back then.

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

#219

Post by anyfoo »

oliwarner wrote: post #195
hedgehog wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. Farther back I remember not having the spare cash for the expansion card necessary to have lower case letters and typing in program listings ou…

These limits of old hardware are exactly what makes the software so amazing. Look what was achieved despite those limits. We've basically had the same desktop and productivity software for 30 years. Look at games like Doom or Tyrian, or what was happening on consoles and think about how crappy that hardware was. Modern software is embarrassingly slow by comparison. I've been around long enough to know that's always b…

> Look what was achieved despite those limits. We've basically had the same desktop and productivity software for 30 years. Look at games like Doom or Tyrian, or what was happening on consoles and think about how crappy that hardware was.

I agree with the rest, but games are a comparatively bad example, almost a counterexample. A lot of them are basically the exception of what you're saying. Because the visual fidelity of games has overall steadily improved since the inception of computer games, with some astonishing milestones along the way.

So games are a category of software that did (and continues to do) make efficient use of ever-improving computer hardware. Not all of them, not in every aspect, but the overall progress is obvious.

Office software on the other hand...

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

#220

Post by anyfoo »

KerrAvon wrote: post #201
6510 wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So sort of, but let's not look at the past too wistfully. why? > I also remember when moderately long text had to be split across files (even multiple floppies if you were writing a book). 2MB is 2 million bytes, The average book is something like 0.5 > I remember having to choose what languages my OS installation was going to be able to display. This is a bad thing? > Farther back I remember not having the spare c…

The person you're replying to was talking about the Apple II era, when floppies held less than 200k at best. Availability of 2.44 MB floppy drives was an extremely late development, and IIRC rare to actually find in the wild.

Extremely rare. I never encountered one, and I had a lot of niche stuff in the 90s.

1.44MB was the effective capacity of floppies until they died out. There was stuff like VGACopy that could format them with higher capacity (since floppy controller access was fairly low level), but it was an uncommon thing among tinkerers, the disks themselves were not marketed for more than 1.44MB, and I doubt they were tested above their nominal capacity (and even at that they were not exactly known as super reliably).

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