Psion Series 5mx Review

Overall Rating

Software, keyboard, cheap flash memory, email capability.

Screen should be better
Took me a lot of back & forth to Greenford before they'd give me a good one.

I was disappointed with the Psion Series 5mx at first, having moved from a Sharp ZR5800 where the software was just so much better thought out. If only Psion had learned from what had gone before, even with hardware- my Sharp was 2-3 years old when I made the change but the screen was much better. I also experienced a lot of niggling problems, sticky keys, the key labels wearing off in a couple of weeks, stuff that reminds you how British products miss the target for no good reason. One thing that still annoys is the sketch program's random spike generation when drawing. It's unusable when the backlight is on & all Psion could say is that they know it does it with the backlight but thought it was okay otherwise. What kind of attitude is that? Makes Allegro, a Symbian equivalent of Palm's character recognition software, completely useless. Eventually they swapped my Friday afternoon machine for a good one &, in spite of its faults, I haven't looked back. I have nearly 4,000 contacts, loads of word-compatible documents, excel compatible sheets, great 3rd party software packages (which, being shareware or freeware are not silly prices) but sadly can't get for the PC. It's always with me (PalmTec case is a must) & I use it constantly. Pick up some Ni-MH batteries (Woolies are always doing silly offers on them), they last nearly as long as alkalines (I get days of full-on use out of mine)& you can recharge them! Who cares how much the backlight is on? Flash memory from www.crucial.com, ultra cheap & fantastic service. I'm wondering if there will ever be another machine with a keyboard you can touch type on which will fit in your pocket. Hopefully there will & hopefully before my 5mx dies, though I shall probably pick up one at bargain price before they finally become extinct, just in case. The one thing I would really like to get sorted (anyone out there?) is synchronisation with Outlook on my PC. It used to be okay, apart from lots of duplicate records, but an upgrade to PsiWin was supposed to sort that out. However, I've never really been able to tell as synchronisation now falls over every time. Psion of course were no help at all but I thought I'd got lucky when I was working in the same offices as the company who wrote PsiWin. Sadly, though, they weren't much interested in Psions as all their effort is focussed on ymbian machines with (possibly) a future. Backup is okay & I convert all files on to PC format when I upload them. It's a really good machine that can do 90% of the work of a laptop in a fraction of the space & for a lot less money. The biggest disappointment about the 5mx is how great a machine it should have been, the only reason it didn't see off palm & Pocket PC is that Psion didn't do a few basic things properly, simple stuff like getting the software right at the design stage and fitting a good screen at a time when there were plenty out there. I was that close to buying an iPaq but I'm glad I went with the 5mx, it's a much more powerful workhorse.