27 years later and the Psion 3a is still wonderful (2020) • Hacker News Board

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

#231

Post by oliwarner » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 10:07 AM UTC

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…

That surprises me.

I'm a webdev and I've long considered HN to be a bit of an atrocity in terms of markup and a11y. Nested tables, no sr text to explain the thread structure, JS-only links scattered around. It works but only by the mercy of many text-based browsers being started in the 90s, so they're used to this pre-semantics rubbish.

I can't tell if it's hubris but if I were king for a day, I'd like to think I'd leave HN in a better state. At the very least, I'd clean up the cruft.

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

#232

Post by rr808 » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 12:02 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #50

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.

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?

Probably the memory is more relevant. 1 or 2 MB!

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

#233

Post by pomatic » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 12:22 PM UTC

I worked at Psion during the Psion 3 era (and then later at Symbian). Hands down the best company I have ever worked for, and such an exciting time. Seeing the software one wrote in the hands of strangers in the street and on the shelves in Dixons was thrilling.

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

#234

Post by wkat4242 » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 1:12 PM UTC

I always thought the Psion 3's keyboard was much better to type on than the Psion 5. Even though the 5's looked cooler, the keys had less feel and were heavier to press, and often would get stuck when pushing them not in the center.

I could type much faster on the 3's keyboard. The software was just way better on the 5 and the touchscreen was very useful.

The 3 had a much much better screen contrast though. I missed the backlight on my 3c but I think the 3mx did have this.

I still have a 5MX, modded it somehere around 2009 with bluetooth.

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

#235

Post by wkat4242 » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 1:13 PM UTC

opan wrote: post #110

zokier wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I highly recommend against anything from these guys. The software situation was dreadful, they pumped out new nearly-identical hardware too quick without fixing gemini issues. Seems like a cash grab. My Gemini PDA sits in my closet, I consider it near-useless with its electrically buggy keyboard and old android/ubuntu images. The PinePhone with its keyboard addon should fix most if not all issues the Gemini PDA had,…

Same here. I had a gemini but beside the poor software there was also the wobbliness of the display hinge that was super annoying. It was because they made it of springy metal.

Also, the keyboard looks the exact same as the Psion 5's but the mechanism is much worse.

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

#236

Post by ezconnect » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 1:55 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #231

lynx23 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That surprises me. I'm a webdev and I've long considered HN to be a bit of an atrocity in terms of markup and a11y. Nested tables, no sr text to explain the thread structure, JS-only links scattered around. It works but only by the mercy of many text-based browsers being started in the 90s, so they're used to this pre-semantics rubbish. I can't tell if it's hubris but if I were king for a day, I'd like to think I'd l…

Wow, I never knew HN layout was using tables. That was surprising, all this years and I never checked.

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

#237

Post by bacchusracine » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:02 PM UTC

vdqtp3 wrote: post #137

zokier wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They never released fully functional Linux support

>They never released fully functional Linux support

Which is something that killed my interest dead for their hardware despite being exactly the kind of person who should fit their profile for a customer. But if they're willing to lie about Linux support, what else will they lie about? SO I continue to look...

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

#238

Post by bbkane » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:29 PM UTC

oliwarner wrote: post #231

lynx23 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That surprises me. I'm a webdev and I've long considered HN to be a bit of an atrocity in terms of markup and a11y. Nested tables, no sr text to explain the thread structure, JS-only links scattered around. It works but only by the mercy of many text-based browsers being started in the 90s, so they're used to this pre-semantics rubbish. I can't tell if it's hubris but if I were king for a day, I'd like to think I'd l…

HN loads large amounts of comments really quickly on my phone's browser and there's no jank or lag when navigating it, and no popups. I love it, especially compared to the pain of using Reddit's mobile site for similar comment-browsing tasks

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

#239

Post by xp84 » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 2:52 PM UTC

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.

This just gave me a thought.

Perhaps if the EU eventually does something to sufficiently cripple Apple there, maybe Europe can be a hospitable location for a competitor besides Google to get a toehold someday either in smartphones or whatever the successor is. The duopoly sucks.

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

#240

Post by coldtea » Sat, Jun 03, 2023, 3:04 PM UTC

quickthrower2 wrote: post #99

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?

Most computers are inefficient per watt due to waiting on IO from the human.

There's always something running in the background (usually dozens of system services) so that's not a problem - plus they scale their consumption depending on power.

Plus the waiting on IO is when they're NOT doing something. When they do (playing video, listing files and rendering thunbnails, processing video in an editing app, rendering the next frame in game, playing a synth part in a music app, applying an effect on a photo, recalculating an Excel after a change, and so on) is when you want them to be fast.