[ILUG] handhelds/psion5 and linux

[Mike Knell]

> Psion Series 5 MX 16Mb EP2+PsiWin  £319
Hmm.. I doubt they'll have any in stock quite yet, as it's only just been
announced (http://5alive.psionking.com/mx/5mxindex.htm), but they look
pretty groovy and no doubt they'll be taking pre-orders.
 
> So anybody have first hand experience of the Psion5 and linux, (or other
> easily acquireable handhelds). Which has the best linux useability/price
> ratio?

Well, I use a Palm V, and we're certainly still very much in love, even 
after the initial euphoric rush has died down, and are both looking 
forward to a long and happy relationship.. well, OK, I like it, right?

There's a suite of Unix connectivity applets for the Palm machines which
do just about everything the Windows stuff will do, but they're a bit
less polished, obviously. As an MH freak, I love being able to just file
relevant mail into a folder (pilot, in my case) and have it downloaded
to the Palm machine automagically, and outgoing mail uploaded and
injected into the system. It's kind of bare-bones and very command
line oriented, but that's groovy with me as I'm a command line kind of
guy.

Before this, I used (and still own) a Psion 5, which is an equally
wonderful machine in both similiar and other ways. Network connectivity
wasn't quite so good (there are packages which do the biz under Unix,
but just not so completely) and the mail stuff wasn't so integrated
(it came as a seperate package and took up storage space on the 5 as
it wasn't in RAM, for starters), but it would work equally well 
if used with a PPP link to a PC to do POP and similiar stuff. 

It's probably horses for courses, really. As far as prices are
concerned, the Palm III is now under 200 quid, I believe, and used
Psion 5s can be had for not much less. The Palm IIIx (4MB version of
the Palm III) is about 230+VAT, I understand.

Memory is more generous on the Psions - the '5 is generally 8MB as
opposed to the standard 2MB on the Palms - but this isn't too much
of a disadvantage as the Palms are much more efficient in their use
of RAM (software is generally simpler and therefore tinier)

Right, this is probably where Colm starts disagreeing with me..

Mike

-- 
Computer Science System Administrator, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
       mike.knell at cs.tcd.ie -=- http://www.cs.tcd.ie/Mike.Knell/