Rating: 
Summary: This is a great computer
Review: I have had the Psion 5mx for about two months and have found it to be a very usefull machine. It is a wonderfull design and is full featured with very usable software.The case has a nice grey metalic finish, It really feels good in your hands. On the front side of the case you will find buttons which enable one touch voice recording, which is great for meetings. The volume is not that loud due to the small size of the speaker but it serves the purpose. On one end is a flash memory card slot. The machine comes with 16 mg, but this slot allows for upto 128 extra, which is more memory then most people could ever use. Great for storing EBook, Encyclopedias, etc. Also the stylus is stored here, It is three sided, stanless steal, with a plastic coating. It has a sturdy feel. On the other end is a cover for the Lithium backup battery and a soft/hard rest button. On the back of the case is the AA battery compartment, the speaker, and serial port connection. When opened the keyboard slides out to revel a black keyboard and a good sized screen. The keyboard really makes the difference, it has a good resonse. You know when you hit a key. It is hard to "touchtype" but "hunt and peck" works fine. Anyone who has bought a PALM, and then one of those foldable keyboards has bought the wrong machine. The screen is good, not great. After all it is 16 greyscale, not color. But there is an excellent backlit for dark conditions. However this does drain batteries. (I use rechargable and get about 7 hours of normal use) Sometimes there can be glare because of the reflective nature of the screen, but tilting the unit will alleviate this. On great feature is an enlarger/reducer icon. This is like changing the % of a document you want to see. Great for spreadsheets and EBooks. There is also a cut/copy/paste icon which is very handy. All of the major software applications have an icon on the bottom of the screen for quick access. Word and Excel are easily converted to/from your PC. The Psion versions have excellent features. All of the standard formating options are available, bold, underline, outline etc. The sheet has many mathmatical, financial and logical functions. There is also a nice graph feature, PIE, BAR, Line etc. in the sheet software. I have seen Excel on PALM devices but it is not the same. The screen is to small and if you want to WORK with a file you really need a keyboard! Adgenda and contact are standard. There is a regular and scientific calculator. There is a spellchecker/thesaurasis There is a Jotter program, which allows quick entry of notes into what looks like 3 x 5 cards. Great for meeting notes. There is an excellent clock program as well an outstanding freeware program for world views of time. Also included is an "Etch a Sketch" program that allows free from writing/drawing and has many different brush featuresIncluded is a decent clipboard collection which can be copied into any document. This program is very usefull for quick notes, or drawing maps, flow charts, etc.... There are other features such as internet connections, database, infra red printing and even programming on this that I have not even looked at. On the internet you amy easily download alot of freeware/shareware games, software, etc. I really like the EBooks on a Psion, the screen makes a BIG difference when reading. One last thing to remember, because of the keyboard and screen size, the Psion can seem a bit bulky when compared to a PALM device. However I carry it my back pocket or in a suit coat. If could easily fit inside a purse. If you travel alot you do not need to worry about docking stations, all you need is a couple of AA's. All in all a very good computer.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Functionality
Review: I have used Palm Pilots for over 5 years. I really wanted something with a keyboard (without lugging around extra pieces). The 5x is excellent. It has all the functionality of a Palm + more! I am converted. This is a great PDA. The only draw back is that the screen is sometimes difficult to see (to dark). Overall, it is one of a kind. I would recommend it to anyone that uses their PDA for a calendar, email, notes, address book and multifunction with Word/Excell applications.
Rating: 
Summary: Psion 5mx is a piece of junk
Review: I purchased th psion 5 mx in July 2000 and have never wasted $500 more effectively. I was unable to back it up on my computer and ot broke and lost all of my data. The customer service for Psion was HORRIBLE- I was passed on from person to person until I was told that there was no way they could replace my flawed computer, they would only repair it. After 2 weeks, I received my "repaired" computer, only to have it break again 3 weeks later. Once again, I've lost all my data. Fortunately, I have been able to back it up. Unfortunately, I don't have a psion on which to back it up and nobody at the Psion company has been of any help. I strongly recommend that anybody considering purchasing this product looks closely at other companies such as Palm and Hewlett Packard where the customer service is significantly better. I do not recommend this product to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: Psion vs. the pocket pc
Review: I spent a lot of time researching which gizmo to buy. I'm an M.D. and wasn't sure I needed one at all - I was happy carrying around my binder, calander, scheduler, etc. There are mainly 3 operating systems - the OS (Palm and Handspring), Windows CE (Compaq Ipaq and Jornada), and EPOC (Psion). I chose the Psion because it supposedly had superior medical shareware. Also I wanted a device with a keyboard and one that could do wordprocessing and spreadsheets. The medical software wasn't that good so I give you my overall impression of the hardware. The Psion is a nice piece of equipment. It weighs about 12 oz with its 2 double A batteries (one month life usually). I think it's a bit to heavy to carry everywhere - it may fit well in a lab coat but forget your pocket. The resolution is higher than the Palm however, the screen itself is difficult to see, mainly because of glare in almost all conditions. The keyboard is nice, but it's too small to touch type unless you have really small hands. My hands are normal size (male) and I couldn't touch type with it. I suppose with practice though it would be possible. I would usually find myself balancing it in one hand and using the stylet in the other and then putting the stylet down to type with one finger - not very slick. I kept wishing I hand a Handspring or Palm. My wife has a Handsping and I've played with that quite a bit. I plan to send my Psion back. It's a good tool and would probably be useful to some, but for me it didn't work out. I think I will try the Compaq Ipaq next - which has a great screen and very good resolution.
Rating: 
Summary: very useful and flexible
Review: I'm a long time Palm user. After two days with the 5mx, I'm a convert. The bad news about the 5mx: It is larger than a Palm III, Palm V, Visor, etc. The screen contrast isn't great. The good news: 1. It has a keyboard. I find input of text much faster and easier than the Palm even though I am fairly experienced with Graffiti. 2. It has 16MB of RAM and is expandable with off the shelf CompactFlash cards. One of the first things I did was purchase a 48MB CompactFlash card. 3. You can program in perl, java, or python on the 5mx. 4. There is a lot of freeware/shareware available. Not as much as for the Palm, but still I find that software is available to duplicate almost all the functions that I used on the Palm. 5. The 5mx can multitask. 6. The built-in Email client can use POP/IMAP/SMTP to fetch and deliver mail to an ISPs mail server. 7. The screen is big enough that web browsing on the 5mx is actually fairly practical. 8. The 5mx runs nethack ;-)
Rating:
Summary: Great Add-Ons
Review: I've had my 5mx for a year now and I love it. The native applications are great, the OS is very stable, the batteries last, and the keyboard is the best I've seen. etc, etc. However, I thought it would be more interesting to highlight some of the non-standard things you can do: o For truly mobile email, I use an Ericsson sh888 which connects via an infra-red link. Works in Europe and Far East. For the US you would need a different phone (triband?). o Routplanner gives you mobile maps and route planning. Add on a GPS (I use an old Garmin GPSII+) and the map follows your position - this is a superb package which really works well in the car. I attach the GPS to the dashboard with velcro and the 5mx connects with a cable. Now that the GPS signal is no longer degraded, the accuracy is good enough for street level navigation. o You can swap compact flash cards with a suitable digital camera - and send them as attachments to an email. I use a Kodak DC240. Great for postcards. o The Opera web-browser is just out and will get you onto your hotmail account and other sites that require SSL security. I personnally only use the web on the move when I need to retrieve specific pages, because portable phones are still too slow for true browsing. You could of course get the infrared modem which gives you 50k when connected to a landline.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: If you already own a desktop system and are looking for a portable computer this is a SERIOUS alternative to a laptop computer. Small exceptionally neat package, instant on, multitasking, complete office functionality (word, sheet, web brower, + MUCH more freeware from the net). The keyboard is small but I honestly find I can achieve two handed touch typing on it. Battery life is completely satisfactory (about a month). I've seen my friend's Palm - it's small but it is no contest to the 5mx. I am a computer systems engineering student and this is no personal organizer - This is a real computer system: The 5mx comes with a Java virtual machine! You can compile and run Java applications and applets on the 5mx! Because of so many massive fans of Psion, and backward compatibility with the inclusion of it's own programing language in every Psion there is so much free software out there. Also, amazing amounts of shareware (eg Gameboy emulator!). I have an encyclopedia and 120000 entry dictionary on mine :-). This is a serious bit of kit. I love mine.
Rating:
Summary: don't waste your time with this
Review: If you are thinking of getting a PDA, get a PocketPC, Palm or
Handheld PC.
The Psion is really no good..poor screen quality and bad overall
construction quality and it is difficult to synchronize with the
desktop.
Rating:
Summary: Bailling out from Psion
Review: In June 1999, I decided to buy a small computer. The small Casio organizer managed 80% of my information needs, and the remaining 20% comprised of databank, and spreadsheet was to be covered by the new machine. I had heard about Palm hand-held, but at that time it was not so common to see Palm hand-held advertised aside keyboards. As for me, a keyboard was a must. I began reading about Psion series 5 which seemed to be the (incarnation) materialization of what I figured out to be a handheld computer. Those readings showed me some evidences. For example, that Psion had a poor service. That the series 5 had some quality problems, namely with peeling. That Psion was backed up by a crowd of skilled and enthusiastic program developers. In fact just to mention one, Pascal Nicolas, wrote more than 150 useful freewares, including the ubiquitous Macro 5. With the launching of the Psion 5mx, which sports 16 MB of RAM, I thought the quality problems were things of the past and had finally been overcome. So I bought one. The Email synchronization never worked properly. After installation, messages came in double. After the suggested upgrade, I could not get any message into Psion. Reading news groups, I learned that lots of other users had the same problem. I contacted Psion support to solve the problem; however, whatever I did never worked. One month after the purchase, I noticed that in the most used keys the inscriptions began to fade and some time later, I had to punch twice or three times the key to get accented letters. One month before the warranty ended, it stopped working. At 21:30, I entered some data. One hour later, when I turned it on, without any drop nor any misuse, only horizontal lines were shown on the screen. No readable character. Whatever I did to have it back to life: soft reset, hard reset, new batteries, was in vain. My Psion was there. Dead. I came to know that the same problem(horizontal lines on the screen) appeared in many Psion series 5mx machines in Malaysia. They said that it cost about $250.00 to fix it and there was no warranty that the problem would not reaper. I was traveling on vacation when all that happened and when I finally got home, with less than a month for the warranty to expire, with all the bureaucracy to send it from Brazil to the US, where I had bought it, I decided to bail out from the Psion platform. Now, I own a Visor Platinum. It is heavier than the 5 oz which (that) I consider the upper limit to carry in my pocket shirt, but now I do not have to carry the Casio Organizer plus the Psion. Only the Visor. Now, with the experience in both worlds, I learned the importance of the shape of a handheld in our daily life. In my point of view, the basic rule for a handheld computer is: it must be with you wherever you are. To fulfill this rule, it must be small and light with long battery life. A handheld computer may be fully featured, have excellent programs, but if it is not with you at the moment you need it, it does not help. If the alarm goes off, it must be near you, not in the next room, or where you probably would not hear its sound. Psion, with its bigger screen and bolder RAM, has better programs than Palm because programmers have more freedom to program considering both space in RAM and space in screen. The 12.5 oz of Psion renders it inadequate to carry in your pocket shirt. The 7.5 inches length makes it impossible to hold with the left hand and type in with the right hand. If you do so, you will end up dropping it on the floor. Psion requires a horizontal platform for you to type. You can not have a platform in those boring moments while you are waiting in line or waiting for your flight at the airport, or waiting while somebody else is shopping. Those moments are perfect for maintenance of scheduled appointments, transfer of subjects from the Memo area to the proper one. What used to be boring moments turn into leisure time. With Psion, this is practically impossible due to size and weight limitations. To close this review I would say that if you do not think that the handheld must be with you all the time, you do not mind the extra weight and size, dependability is not so important to you, specially when the end of the warranty period approaches, the Psion 5 mx is the machine to go for. If you think as I do, either Visor or Palm is the way to go (plus a keyboard for extensive entries).
Rating:
Summary: Great OS and software, quirky little British Design
Review: Overall, it's a fast little machine and fits okay in a pants pocket. It's the only way to go if you word-crunch and/or examine spreadsheets on the road. It's not hobbled by the ridiculous marketing ploy known as Windows CE; its OS (EPOC) is optimized for its hardware. That said, the construction feels kind of delicate in the hand, like a tense fragile kitten. I doubt it would survive much of a fall. It's totally different from the solid construction you find in most Japanese and American devices. Those tea-sipping Brits are a different sort of people I suppose. The software is good with one exception: JPEG support is slow. Large JPEGS, the sort your digital camera contains (yes, the CF card slot is fully compatible!), take minutes to render. There is at least one shareware software package (MBMView) on the market which discards most of the colour data when rendering JPEGS and this is at least twenty times faster. I highly recommend this if you intend to be using you PSION to help you discard camera images in the field.
| 
