Best PDA ever!

Sorry about the raving fanboi post, but anyone thinking of a PDA for scribbling ideas & code or reading pdf/ebooks on the bus here needs to look at this!
So -of course- i had to tell everyone :)

Ive just bought a Psion 5mx a week or so ago on ebay.(not to be confused with the lesser psion 5) I have always wanted one, but they have never been that affordable (they still can be as much as £200 for a recon) I got mine with box and manuals for 60 quid+shipping so im a happy man. Now i can REALLY psuedo code/brainstorm my blitz projects on the move, without worrying about power sources!

I have in the past owned a IPAQ, a palm tungsten, a palm m130, a hp jornada and a toshiba libretto (- so im not a noob to mobile computing)
However, I shouldnt have wasted my money!!!

Bearing in mind this thing over 10 years old, I cannot believe what i was missing out on! This little box blows my other, more recent PDAs away! (at least for what i want one for)

Its got:
-2 AA batteries with mabe 8-10 ontime and 30 hours on active standby! with an emergency 'coin' type backup battery which acts like a tiny UPS :)
-A very stable multitasking OS called epoc/symbian which is right at home on the little 36mhz StrongARM risc processor, with a good windows like GUI
-can be programmed / run user programs
-has a very decent office suite for writing ideas and pseudo code down, including word, ssheet, sketch, dbase etc.
-can use the net via IR and a mobile phone or by shared internet con on my wired pc via IR @115Kbps or cable,
-has an oldskool lcd bw VGA screen thats totally visable in the sunlight! and a backlight for otherwise
-Lots of 3rd party software including games apps and tools
-CF card up to 1 gig (havent got a bigger one to try).
-has loads of cool little apps that are just as good as any modern handhelds, just without the color eyecandy.
-can run some java apps
-it can dual boot LINUX! with X running in 4 bit vga (a proper techno mission to do, but.. it works!) :P
-audio/recording controls on the outside and can be used when closed
-you can use opera on it (with or without linux)
-can play mp3s
-No windows ce / xp mobile edition, the only sign of M$ is on the sync CD
-most of all, and this is the winner, it has a REAL nice keyboard (almost laptop quality) that just pops out from nowhere and alows for touch typing. (Roll that 'grafiti' up and smoke it!) And it can run grafiti too if you need it.

The only complaint so far i could possibly have is: WHY oh WHY isnt there a pcmcia slot for a WLAN adaptor.... OH WHY!
Not that it really matters, picking up email via a 'free local joe' with my IR mobile phone seems fine and basic emergency browsing is tolerable (think modems).
Just think, if you're in a tent up a mountain somewere, there sure as hell wont be a hotspot (but there may be cellular coverage and a shop in a nearby village selling AAs :)

Knowing what i know now, i would have happily paid the 400+ quid for it when it was relased, and mabe even now simply for the portability and workability vs battery life (2AAs = infinite supply!).

For those that have never heard of it, it looks like this:


AND ITS A LOT SMALLER THAN IT LOOKS! When its folded up, think of two Palm M130s lengthways side by side minus mabe an inch or two (and, it magically gets ...bigger when opened!).

Looks fairly decent!

I'm holding out for the next thing to come out of the OpenMoko project. Neo1973 isn't quite what I want, but there seems to be some good stuff coming about for the next piece of hardware. (Including wifi, judging by some encouraging blog posts).
It is fully open source and uses GTK. The default appearance is a tad weird (lots of shiny orange!), but it's well enough designed and pretty in its own way (lots of cool semi-transparent stuff). Odd though it is, I think the distinct look can be just as pretty as iPhone's - perhaps more, if we consider that Neo1973 is already almost out there with phase 1 and that it is completely open to configuration...

Err, sorry, I digress. Nice battery life on yours!
I could never really go back to a grayscale screen (which that seems to have?), but I can certainly see that benefit.

Yup,
I wish more pda's would use AAs, i think its a big con that you buy a device like this and then have to bin it, simply because you cant get a new battery (or would be cheaper not to). I would still be using my win95 based libretto (now disposed) for loads of stuff if only it had a battery (that was cheap to replace).

Last time i bought a DigCamera i insisted it run on AAs because i just threw away my perfectly good 4MP cannon one cos the battery died and would cost a new camera for another :/

Nice. I have a HP 95LX (got it for $5 at a thrift shop), which is similar but much older and less powerful. I loaded GWBASIC on it, and it works well.

I also wish more companies would allow you to use AAs in PDAs - it's so convenient. I also like the way you don't need a backlight - it not only saves power but works nice in bright sunlight.

Wow!, that is a classic vintage (I just looked it up :) It was apparently the first ever MS-Dos PDA. You aught to hang on to it, it may be worth something one day.
Groundbreaking 'First to do...' computers are getting quite collectable, especially with all the bits, manuals and SW. (and theres fewer and fewer of those every year;)

Hehe I remember GWBasic it came with MSDOS 3.x. I did a game for my GCSE project at school in it, with lots of horrid gotos and very few gosubs :)

Yes it is 640x240 16 shade BW which is unfortunate in a lot of ways, but but better in others; apart from battery life, i can lie in the direct sunlight with it and still see 100% clearly when im writing my doomed novel or bashing out program ideas :)
If i want to show photographs or watch vids, i can use my mobile phone which is like this device's right arm anyway thanks to the IR modem. However, for actual mobile computing this thing IS the muts-nuts color or not.