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Comment by DanielleMolloy | Hacker News Reader

The Psion series got some legendary status for its attention to detail. The Psion 5 had backlight, was running on batteries (25-35h battery life) and it has a slot for Compact Flash Cards. The keyboard is foldable. If you find an adapter for the CF cards they can still be used today for writing similarly to what is described here with the AlphaSmart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_5

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Loved that thing! Batteries lasted forever and the LCD was perfect for the job of being focused. My hands are almost too big to touch type on it so notes often needed editing when transferred to a desktop. Typing on it is kind of like writing with Graffiti on a Palm, it takes some practice and then all of a sudden you're pretty good at it.

If you liked the Psion you might like its successor the Gemini from Planet Computers (https://store.planetcom.co.uk/products/gemini-pda-1). Same awesome keyboard.

Oh, I really fancied the Gemini. A tiny Linux computer the size of a Psion 5 sounded pretty awesome to me as a former Psion lover. I'm not unhappy that I did not buy it in the end though - battery life, and it comes with all the smart phone distractions - the Psion 5 used to be my distraction free writer, not a terminal access device.

If you need to frequently do admin tasks (e.g. config file and script editing) it's still a pretty interesting choice.

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