Psion Series 5mx review

When the Series 5 burst on to the handheld PC scene two years ago it was a computing and design revelation. As well as walking straight into PC Pro's A List - and staying there ever since - the Series 5 deservedly won the Grand Prix award from the Design Business Association. Not only was it a powerful computer itself, the Series 5 also included a full suite of software and the best keyboard in a handheld unit by far.

With the 5mx, Psion is hoping to take its flagship product one step further, marketing it as the ultimate mobile Internet package. For once this is more than just marketing jargon: the 5mx now includes Psion's email program built into the ROM and it even supports Java.

However, the most important change for the majority of users is the 5mx's processor, which runs at twice the speed of that of its predecessor. In combination with a tightened EPOC code, this provides a dramatic improvement in performance: on every single occasion, our sample documents opened more than twice as fast as on the Series 5, and a find and replace command in Word showed similar improvements.

Internal memory has been boosted to 10Mb of ROM for storing the operating system and all the pre-installed programs,æand you also get 16Mb of RAM. Turn your 5mx into a mobile Internet package, however, and you'll soon find this extra space disappearing. Should you choose to install the Message Suite, be prepared to lose over 900Kb of RAM; adding support for Java swallows nearly 3Mb. To access the Internet you'll still need a mobile phone, modem and plenty of patience, since even with the boosted processor the 5mx loads images slowly.

Psion is emphasising that support for Java is much more than the facility to run applets on Web pages. The company sees this move as opening the Psion/EPOC platform to a new world of Java programmers, with the 'write once, run anywhere' motto also applying to in-house developers. Whether the market develops in this way remains to be seen, but it certainly makes for interesting possibilities.

For the moment, the change that corporate users will be most grateful for is improved integration with PC applications. One major bug fix from the Series 5 is integration with Microsoft Outlook. The 5mx includes a dedicated Contacts program, including a physical button at the bottom of the screen that mimics the layout of Outlook, so missing contact information should be a thing of the past. The Outlook feel extends to the email program, which is now pre-installed in the 5mx's ROM. There's also support for all the other major PIMs and Lotus Notes, with email synchronisation for the latter being introduced at the end of this year. Another useful feature of the email program is the ability to create, send and receive SMS and fax messages.

Most other applications have only benefited from minor tweaks. For example, Word now supports outlines for complex documents, Agenda has a busy view and Sheet has a sort facility. Despite the new Contacts program, Data remains unchanged. The only other significant change - unless you count the addition of a Recent Files tab in the system toolbar - is the introduction of the note-taking Jotter program.

The most obvious and impressive transformations have actually occurred on the outside of the machine. Even the biggest Series 5 fans knew in their heart of hearts that the product wasn't perfect. Most notably, the Series 5's rubberised coating was famous for flaking off when scratched, or even looked at severely. With the 5mx, Psion has now switched to the trendy silver look. On closer examination this is rigid plastic rather than metal, but more importantly it takes a deliberate effort to create a scratch mark, so the 5mx should still look quite stylish after a year's use.