Review: Psion Netbook Pro

I've long been a fan of Psion's line of PDAs for years: I owned two of the series 5mx for a long time, and fragile beasts though they were (one died after falling from a height of greater than 1/18", the other just made a sad 'sproing' noise one day as the hinge on the clamshell broke), they were incredible machines to own, something that folded up and fitted in a pocket, but still had a perfectly usable keyboard and word processor. Since 2005 I've owned their Series 7, which is much more rugged, and has a far larger, color screen. Of late, though, while the 7 is still going strong, I've found it increasingly difficult to transfer files to it. This is not so much the fault of the PDA as the fault of Windows Vista. At one time, it happily (if sometimes erratically) moved files back and forth, though special cabling was required as apparently serial ports are so 1990s. But of late, attempting to transfer anything resulted in the dreaded blue screen of death. Again, I suspect this is no fault of the PDA, just the unfortunate results of using a device first made ten years ago. I figured it was time to upgrade.

So, the Psion Netbook Pro. Far easier to find on eBay, I paid about $75 for mine last week (or about a quarter of what I paid for the 7 four years ago). At first glance, the two machines look identical. Same mould for the casing, though in a light grey rather than the darker grey-blue of old, and the leatherette cover replaced by a slightly cheaper looking but easier to hold rubbery affair. Screen still a good 11" wide, though now in a higher resolution, and actually capable of displaying JPEGs without them looking like part of a Warhol exhibit.

There have been changes, though. Portwise, you're now spoiled. The RS232 connector still there, though it can now link to a USB port. Compact flash and PCMCIA slots as per the previous model, but joined now by a SD card slot at the front. Also new is the headphone socket and actual USB port. The pros also fully Bluetooth compatible, although I'm going to have to take Psion's word on this, having neither had time or opportunity to test it.

What I have tested is the connection cable. The bad news is, if you're using Windows Vista, forget it. The OS is sulkily disinclined to acknowledge the machine. If Vista allowed you to use the Activesync software, I'm betting there wouldn't be a problem, but of course that's too old fashioned, and it's insistent you use the all-new Windows Mobile Device Center. Which of course can't find the drivers for the connection.

The good news is that it doesn't really matter if you have a wifi hub. On the advice of other users, I picked up a Cisco 350 Aironet Wifi card, abundantly available on eBay (mine cost all of $10), plug it into the PCMCIA slot, and you're set. No drivers, no installation, you're instantly on the network and connected to the Internet. File transfer becomes a matter of copy and paste, and runs incredibly quickly.

Gone is the old Symbian EPOC OS, replaced with Windows CE - much to the disgust of some Psion diehards, but personally I'm indifferent. It's not quite as nice as the old EPOC system, but at this point I'll swap a few user friendly features for a lot more compatibility any day.

To sum up: If you're looking for a low-end, lightweight laptop, this is unbeatable for about $80. It weighs in at about 2lbs, it has a battery life of at least 8 hours, and for basic word processing and eBook reading, it's unbeatable. Compare the price to say, an Amazon Kindle at $300, or a Dell laptop of any spec.