Nate Lanxon
Nate Lanxon is CNET UK's Senior Editor of News and Features, and covers every aspect of technology for Crave. He also enjoys popular-science books, obscure Japanese animation and plays 'technical metal' on the drums, whatever that is.
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Monday 23 March 2009, 4:21pm
Fondly remembering the Psion 3mx
It's been a decade since that morning in 1999 -- the morning I took delivery of one of my all-time favourite gadgets.
With its 28MHz NEC V30MX processor, its 2MB of ROM, 2MB of usable internal storage, 480x160-pixel greyscale screen, twin disk drives for adding memory and applications, and juice from a pair of AA batteries, Psion's 3mx was my favourite handheld until the iPhone came along.
The 3mx had a full Qwerty keyboard, a word processor, a spreadsheet application and the ability to record up to two minutes of audio using a built-in microphone. This somewhat limited me to listening solely to Green Day's 1 minute 34-long Coming Clean -- a song that, to this day, reminds me of my trusty 3mx.
Expandable and connectable
You could increase the memory with flash or RAM disks -- flash disks were battery-free, but the volatile RAM SSDs used their own button battery to retain data. Somehow I was sent a free copy of Scrabble on SSD after registering my purchase with Psion, and it's the sole reason I know more two-letter words off the top of my head than anyone I've met since.
The 3mx incorporated a 115,200bps infrared port for talking to the outside world, and while I had to constantly forgive it for transmitting gibberish when attempting to print a document over the connection, it was always meant to be a secondary connection method. The serial port (which ran at the same speed as infrared), could connect to a PC and Mac for document transfer, and to a modem.
I never had the modem, and I feel like I missed out. But nonetheless the 3mx goes down as a personal tech favourite, even if I did eventually sell it to buy a 20-inch Zildjian china crash cymbal.
Did you have a 3mx, or any other Psion from the pre-2000 era? Let me know below and we can have a lovely little moment together.
(Image: Andy Armstrong, CC-licensed)
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Comments on this post
I likewise loved this device. The hinge design seemed a masterpeice of innovation - until the cable that connected the two parts of the clamshell died of fatigue, rendering the device useless after only a couple of years. My Psion Organiser II LZ 64, on the other hand, is still going strong (now as an alarm clock only) after 20 years. Bizarrely, it keeps better time than any other timepiece I've ever owned!
Posted by Mike Dillamore on Mon 23 March, 2009 5:00 PM
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i had the 5, and i loved that thing, was the best bit of tecnology i've ever had. the keybords where amazing for something so small, and things now could take some cues from it's design.
Posted by Paul on Tue 24 March, 2009 9:20 AM
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I had a 1mb Siena - the baby brother of the 3mx (it ran on AAAs for months!). Even smaller keyboard, even smaller screen, same problems with the infrared port. Loved playing around with it and installing Defender, Tetris clones etc. I wrote almost a whole essay on it on the train from Aberystwyth to Oxford once... It was the best PDA I owned until getting an iPod Touch - sadly missed since the day I returned to my car and found glass all over the place and the glove box cleaned out.
Posted by Adam on Tue 24 March, 2009 10:13 AM
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I started out with the Psion Series 3a in my A-Level days. At our college, each computer room only had one printer, and I'd bought the Series 3 parallel cable. So I'd wait for the printer computer, then when it was my turn I'd unplug it and plug in my Psion, everyone else wondering what the hell I was doing. I can't believe that I paid £130 for a 1MB SSD RAM extension! Later on, for my university years I upgraded to the 3c which had the IR and the green back-light. For a good deal of my degree my 3c actually replaced paper notes. I was skilled enough on the 3c keyboard to touch type. Also, our physics lab had a IR enabled printer, so I was able to jump the queue when I needed to print out my work. With doing lots of lab work on my 3c, I ended up teaching myself the OPL programming language and I wrote a statistical analysis program for my lab work. Both series 3's of mine finally succumbed to the dreaded broken hinge problem that dogged all the lines. For a while I tried a series 5mx, for the final year of my degree, but that didn't last very long either, and in the end I gave up and switched to Palms. In addition to using them for all that, I also had some killer peripherals. I had a "Ranger" floppy disk drive which absolutely dwarfed the Psion. I also had a USR 14.4kbps modem, which I used for dial up access to my university, and with that and my Psion 3c, I had my first taste of the internet at home. It was long ago enough too for me to have access to a few local bulletin boards as well. Although I still miss the Psions, they had the perfect form factor and were super useful. Apart from the limited communication options, they were ahead of their time, and they're sadly missed. It's nice to know that they kind live on in all Symbian phones.
Posted by David.R.Gilson on Tue 24 March, 2009 11:12 AM
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I had a Psion Revo. It could connect to the internet through infrared via my Siemens S25!
Posted by Ian Rendall on Tue 24 March, 2009 11:46 AM
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I had Psion II, 3a, 3c, 5 and 5mx. Psion was the UK Sony while it ruled the world of PDAs. Shame they lost it and sold out. While I recognise that something of Psion lives on in Symbian, my view would have to be that the psion-ness of what was transferred was lost forever. Symbian phones are slow and over complex in my view, whereas the Psion machines were fast and far more intuitive. Imagine a Psion 5 with colour and a built in cell phone, or even just a Psion 5 with bluetooth (so you could use your phone as a modem)! Psion were true British innovators and when they sold out, so our lead in the PDA market was lost. Still, key Psion personnel ended up at TomTom and Apple (ipod div) so at least the talent was allowed to flourish elsewhere!
Posted by J Ash on Fri 27 March, 2009 8:26 AM
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I owned a revo but the better palm ecosystem and support on linux made me regret not buying a palm. Psion had great hardware but not enough outside support.
Posted by Olivier on Fri 27 March, 2009 9:45 AM
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I just bought a psion5 last month off ebay £18.50 inc. p&p! I'm a skint musician and poet and I live on a boat.. I got a 32MB CF for a fiver and a 512MB off my mate who's a photographer.. So now i'm typing up my next book of poems on it and using CF reader (i got two for less than a tenner) to get files on to my PC in the studio on land.. I got all the software off the web.. So far I have succeeded in using IrDa to send SMS off it using phone man pro and my Nokia6310i.. And today I not only got onto web on dialup with the 6310i and with payg GPRS on my 6230i but I also managed to edit an html page on it and update it on the remote server using nFTP over the GPRS! I run it on rechargable AAs (Tesco £15 with charger) from 12V solar power on my boat! Psion5 rocks! I love the touch screen! and yet it cost me about 1/3 of a modern box to do these jobs.. even including all the "bits"! :D
Posted by jon on Mon 4 May, 2009 11:31 PM
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I started with the 3a in '97, moved onto a Revo in 2000 after the 3a screen broke, then bought a used 5 off ebay which I use today. In the meantime I've gone through an LG Phenom and a Zaurus 5500. But I think back to the 3a as the best all around that I had. Wish it were functional again and I still had it (he said wistfully).
Posted by Mike Charlton on Thu 28 May, 2009 9:18 PM
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I worked in a book shop and eyed up the 3a a long time before saving up to buy one. It was an opening into the world of free software and the idea that a tool can do much more than its dev team intended When itI broke the spine of that - I think I cracked the screen - I got the 3c with the cool glowing green screen and the soft grippy finish. when that broke under warrenty psion gave me a 3 mx. At first I didn't like it because its outer surface was not the same mat grippy goodness but I loved the speed - nothing it could run ran slowly. The recording manipulation feature was very powerful for an 'electronic diary', you could play recording backwards and all sorts. In the end I got "5" envy. I met someone that would swap a 3mx for a 5. He wanted it for has little brother, he worked in the psion "factory" and could get the 5s I didn't realize that the 3mx was in some ways better - though I forget how. The touch screen on the 5 was great though the applications i'd learnt to tinker with didn't port over. One thing that I liked about the psions that won't become a feature on an iphone/ipod touch is the database feature. i made catalogs of all sorts of things - my book collection, things I read etc, The key board was good enough to type essays - I kept a diary traveling around the middle east.It was a great little tool to learn on. Of course the cable dies. In 2001 I got a 5mx picked up and brought to me in Korea where I was working - great to have a psion again! It died, then I got a friends old 5, it lasted for a while. Now I have a 5 and a 5mx, both dead, and toying with the idea of resurrection using the character in the UK that replaces the cable. Having an ipod touch, its unlikely I'll ever use them - but it would be nice to have just one as a working techno antique before its nolonger to even possible to repair them.
Posted by S Mortimer on Thu 5 November, 2009 5:54 AM
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