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Comment by thesuperbigfrog | Hacker News Reader

The Psion series 5mx provided an impressive amount of portable computing power and ran on two AA batteries plus a coin-shaped memory backup battery.

I used mine to take notes in university classes because I couldn't afford a laptop and it worked great. The keyboard was a bit small, but big enough for touch typing. The built-in office programs made it a productivity beast and the compact flash slot meant I had a whopping 16 MB of storage which held several hundreds of documents and files.

After owning such a useful and charming little machine was sad to see Psion leave the hardware business and turn EPOC into Symbian.

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I had one in highschool, and a 3a before that in high school - at the time no one else (at least in my school) used a laptop/equiv; I managed to be allowed as a dispensation due to dyslexia and illegible handwriting. The keyboard on the 5 was a vast improvement over the 3a, as well as the OS. I did quite a lot of programming directly on it - I remember OPL being one (only?) of the languages built in - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Programming_Language

My mother came to visit me recently, bringing my 5 back - unfortunately it looks like I left the batteries in all those years back and they leaked, so it's likely dead.

You should be able to save it with a little work, lots of articles about battery death in devices

Thanks - good point - though I've not had time to look yet!

I had "just" a Psion 5, but I still think the keyboard was better than many of todays small notebooks. I had even Doom on it (to slow, buts still). I used mostly the spreadsheet app for all kind of things. The biggest miss was difficult to get access to a network for email or so.

I remember using the IR port on the 5mx (I think the 5 had this but I'm not 100% sure) to talk to my phone at the time and use it as a modem while on the move. It was hardly convenient, but it worked. Not fast or cheap either, IIRC limited to 19k200 and paying by the minute at hideous mobile rates.

Man I miss that keyboard.

I too had one in college, but I mostly used it to play Sim City. I did have a laptop, but it was clunky and had terrible battery life, so I was much happier with the Psion.

>I used mine to take notes in university classes because I couldn't afford a laptop and it worked great.

How much did a regular laptop cost back them vs that Psion?

The 5MX launched in 1999 at £480. I bought a medium-spec Dell Inspiron in the same year for around £800 if I remember correctly.

Prices in the US were similar.

I remember the Psion series 5mx price was about half the cost of a laptop. The sales clerk in the electronics store tried to convince me to buy a Palm device instead, but I had seen a Psion series 5mx while in Europe and knew what I wanted.

Probably lots, my first Palm was a TX in 2006, and I remember it was ~£300. I used it with a IBM T60 which was was I recall £1200+

I had an IBM R30 before that in ~2000 and recall it being ~£1500 as well.

Laptops weren't cheap!

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