PSION KEEPS AT IT SERIES 7 ROUNDS OUT A GREAT LINEUP ■ by Mark Esposito In all my years working with Psion Software developed their 32bit Op- One Type I\II Compact Flash, and one hardware, going back to 1985, first as erating System called EPOC. Psion Type I\II PC Card. a user, and then as a programmer, it rolled this company off by forming a was always my dream to see a ma- new company called Symbian, joint- Expansion: ture handheld OS and lots of hard- ly-owned by Psion PLC, Nokia, Eric- 2 Internal bus slots for RAM\ROM, ware devices to choose from. While sson, Motorola, and Matsushita both accessible by user. not everything has moved as quick- (Panasonic). It is clear to see that ly as I would have liked, there is fi- EPOC is now being fitted to be the OS Display: nally some light at the end of the tun- for many future smart-phones. So Full VGA 640x480 pixels. 7.7” STN nel. there you have it. Psion Computers color back lit LCD touch screen display. Well, at least we’re in the tunnel. still develops handhelds based on With technology, there is no end of EPOC, but they have to pay licensing Keyboard: the tunnel. It just goes on forever, fees to Symbian for the EPOC Oper- Pitch 17mm. Travel 3mm. Unique transforming as it goes. It’s all great ating System. pantograph mechanism. news for the consumers that have very patiently waited for handheld I may have to eat my words... Sound: computers to get their act together. The new Psion Series 7 is going to Loudspeaker and microphone. Digital There are three handheld operating make me eat my words in some ways. sound recording. systems driving the handheld mar- As many of you know by now, I’ve ket. The leader in units sold, the Palm been convinced that no hardware in Power: OS, and then Symbian’s EPOC and the “Jupiter” class form-factor could Li-Ion battery pack, giving 8.5 hours Microsoft’s WinCE battle it out for make it at the consumer or even cor- typical operation. 2.5 hour recharge second place. Companies are invest- porate level. I felt they were too close time. User-changeable Lithium backup ing more money than ever before in size to notebooks, and yet didn’t battery. DC jack and docking station. producing handhelds, and now that offer the functionality of a Windows, Docking station connects power and we have some decent operating sys- Mac, or even a Linux notebook. RS232 port. tems for handheld computers, things I’m going to partially eat my words are really looking up. because the Series 7 is so well de- External Interfaces: signed that it was a true pleasure to Honda connector for RS232, 115Kbps. Let the games begin! use. With its awesome battery life it DC jack for external power. PC Card For months I’ve been preaching that became clear to me where it could slot (type I\II). Compact FLASH (type we would have lots of EPOC based excel. There is a potential corporate I\II). IrDA interface (115Kbps). Docking hardware devices to choose from. It niche for the machine as long as the station interface on bottom. looks like I got this one right. For the price can come down a bit. second issue in a row, we have a new Let’s look at the specs of the ma- Connectivity: EPOC device to review, and two more chine. Psion junkies will love it. PC connectivity via serial port, waiting in the wings. Last issue I re- available with PsiWin. viewed the new Psion Revo, a won- Processor: PSTN connectivity via PC derful machine, now shipping in the StrongARM SA1100 processor running Card. EPOC/SYMBIAN US. This month I’ll look at the new at 133Mhz Psion Series 7, brother of the new Optional Peripherals: Psion netBook. Memory: Docking station. ■ For those of you that need a quick RAM: 16MB using a proprietary DIMM Power supply. update on the confusing issue behind ROM: Masked ROM Battery pack. references made to EPOC, Symbian, 16MB card. and Psion, here goes again: Psion Storage: Case. The price needs to come down to around US$700. Otherwise, how can a non-Windows machine compete with a low- end Sony Vaio for US$1300? 80 PEN COMPUTING MAGAZINE February 2000 www.pencomputing.com The Psion Series 7, along with its sister machine the Psion netBook, takes EPOC into the market space previously occupied only by WinCE Jupiter- class HPCs and B5s single charge which means that those long flights aren’t a problem. There is a brilliant EPOC Java Virtual Machine. (JVM) I’m sure color screen. Being much smaller than a the memory will be an issue for those want- notebook, it is more convenient to carry on Series 7 vs. netBook ing to do serious Java applications, and not trips. There is good synchronization with As I mentioned, the Series 7 from Psion merely web plugins/applets, and for them MSOffice/Out-look and synchronization Computers is the brother of the recently re- the netBook is probably a better choice. with most desktop software through Psi- leased netBook from Psion Enterprise Com- It is important to note though that with Win. The built-in software is vast, provid- puting Ltd (see our review in the October the netBook, the standard EPOC applica- ing the normal office tools. Other software 1999 issue of Pen Computing Magazine). tions are loaded into RAM memory when can be purchased to fill in any gaps. Lots of From what I can tell it seems they share the run, and don’t execute in place, in ROM, as third party of software is available. Finally, same case, screen, and keyboard. they do on the Series 7. As I mentioned, this unlike most Windows CE devices, the Se- However, there are three major differ- is due to the fact that the OS and applica- ries 7 offers burning fast operation even at ences between the two machines. The net- tions load from a Flash card. This means 133MHz. Book has a faster version of the StrongARM that you may not end up with any extra processor running at 190Mhz versus the memory above what the S7 gives you if you Cons Series 7’s 133MHz. The netBook also has choose to load all of the standard apps on It is hard to find much fault with the device more RAM (64MB versus 16MB), and loads the netBook. Still, the netBook offers more itself. If you’re a Lotus Notes user, you won’t the OS from a Compact Flash card rather flexibility for custom corporate applica- find synchronization with Notes 5 yet even than from ROM. These differences stem tions, and a faster processor. though there is support for the earlier ver- from the fact that the netBook is being sions though with InSynch. Since the Se- billed as an enterprise Java machine which Series 7 Pros and Cons ries 5 uses the EPOC operating system, can have some pretty hefty resource re- there isn’t much third party software, but quirements whereas the Series 7 is more of Pros the same still holds true for Windows CE a consumer electronics device. In true Psion tradition, the Series 7 has an machines though. And, at least in my opin- One interesting aspect is that the Series excellent, and in this case near full-size, ion, the price is too high at US$900. 7 can actually do everything the netBook keyboard that most will be able to touch- can do in regards to Java compatibility, al- type on. I know that I can. The Series 7 also Two things I believe will need to happen beit slower than the netBook. Both have the offers about ten hours of battery life on a to make this form factor a success: www.pencomputing.com February 2000 PEN COMPUTING MAGAZINE 81 SERIES 7 First, the price needs to come down to Second, synchronization must be more around US$700. Otherwise, how can a non- inclusive. I use Eudora, and PsiWin does- Windows machine compete with some- n’t synchronize the Series 7 with Eudora. thing like a low-end Sony Vaio for US$1300? That’s not acceptable. It’s not like Eudora Without some clear differentiation of price, doesn’t have a customer base. Currently the question for a business user will always be there is no synchronization with Lotus “Why not pay US$400 more and just run Lo- Notes version 5, which has now been out tus Notes, MS Word, MS Project, AutoMap, for some time, and should be supported. Outlook or Eudora, and everything else I want Psion or Symbian should purchase the third EPOC/Symbian to without synchronization issues?” party application that does Lotus Notes synchronization, make it part of PsiWin, and keep it up to date. If I use Notes at work, and the S7 won’t synchronize with With the Series 7, you the latest version of Notes, the company will never approve the purchase of a S7. On a more positive note, I can see now can fly from Houston that at the right price, there is a place for this form factor. For those that travel, bat- tery life is very important. Travellers are to London and use the constantly having to worry about how much longer their batteries are going to last. With the Series 7, you can fly from machine the whole Houston to London and use the machine the whole way on one charge.