The basic story seems simple enough. Psion founded Symbian. Then Psion shared it with Nokia, Motorola, Panasonic, Ericsson... hang on, this is getting complicated, isn't it?

And check out our own analysis of the story. Missed anything important?

Many manufacturers of mobile computers have a look into Linux. There are different reasons, to do so: first of all reduction of developement and license costs, then flexibility, standards, portability and more. See TuxMobil for a survey of Linux on laptops, notebooks, PDAs, TabletPCs, handhelds, mobile cell phones, watches, ..

Sigh. Another Windows box. Who cares? Same bad OS, same bad apps. Changing the OS to Linux ... same thing. The great thing about Psion and EPOC were the excellent apps: there is *still* nothing out there that beats Agenda. And now it appears that there never will be.

Edited by author 02-11-2004 08:28 PM
CE is not the answer check out my netBook vs. netBook Pro comparison at http://www.johnstolk.com/Psion/

Anybody looking for "The Answer" has to be a bit more specific about "The Question" I suspect!

For people who want Windows, Windows CE is a clear answer to several questions. I mean, have you compared the speed with which you can find a name or phone number in Pocket Outlook, with the tedious effort it takes under Office on an XP based PC?

And don't forget Palm. It has a tiny memory footprint compared with either Windows or CE or Linux, and places very few demands on the processor, too. The Treo 600, stupidly, doesn't have Bluetooth, otherwise I'd vote it easily into my "top smartphone" slot. (Can't be doing without hands-free when driving, sorry, Treo!).

I've got a Dana portable. It's not a PC; it has almost no graphics capabilities suitable for web browsing compared with Windows/Linux - but that can be fixed, no?

I suspect there's lots of "rwars" type debate going to occur. But there's more than just rwars to this question, too...

If Psion is to develop Linux portable/handheld PC, how can the new line differentiate from the Taiwan and Mainland China models ?
What is so unique that they can offer and not outsmarted soon by others ?