Geofox One

The Geofox One heralds several developments in the ever-changing PDA market. It's the first, and probably not the last, in a new generation of Psion clones. Geofox has licensed the EPOC32 operating systems and some user interface applets from the much vaunted Series 5 (reviewed issue 39, p141). The size places it somewhere between the pocket PC and a WinCE Palmtop, adding features and functionality beyond the restrictions of the pocket-sized PDA.

The unit supplied for review was a pre-production model, so the rubberised charcoal-grey exterior may go as cosmetics are finalised. The exterior shell is subtly contoured, hiding an AA battery bay at either side of the firm screen hinge. There's also an infrared port, speaker, serial cable port and, uniquely, a built-in PC Card slot.

The internal organs consist of a generous 16Mb of EDO RAM, 8Mb of ROM and a capable ARM RISC 7100 CPU running at 18MHz. It's powered by two AA cells offering a claimed 25 hours of battery life, including recourse to the backlight and PC Card. However, leaving the PC Card in its hot-swap port and the serial connectivity on can reduce cell life to a few hours.

Once you've opened the clamshell the first striking feature is the large screen. At 153 « 76mm it's substantially larger than that of the Series 5. With a resolution of 620 x 320 and a dot pitch of 0.24mm, the sharp display works well in all lighting conditions, thanks to an excellent level of contrast. There's also an electroluminescent backlight option which, though definitely useful, requires an external mains for full brightness.

Moving down fromthe large screen you'llencounter something elsenever before seen in aPDA: a notebook-styletouchpad. Trademarkedas the GlidePoint, it'sintended as a definingcentrepiece technology.It takes a little gettingused to, but in pointercontrol it's precise andeventually intuitive,with a double-tap tosimulate a mousedouble-click. It'sa feature thatyou'll eitherlove or hate.

Thekeyboardis fullyfeatured,to say theleast, withthe standardQWERTY set along with acalculator-style pad, 16 system selectionkeys and some cursor controls. Therubber keyboard immediately brings backmemories of the classic ZX-Spectrum, only smaller. Because of the Lilliputian keys and narrow spacing, typing at speed tends to results in gibberish. Touch-typing is out of the question and, thanks to the spongy response, any keyboard work requires a lot of concentration. This could change with the production version, but as it stands it's awful.

On the software front, you get a generous suite of applications that are as usable as they're powerful. As you'd expect, there's a comprehensive agenda manager which can easily be synchronised with Schedule+ 7. Geofox claims that there'll be an Office 97-compliant upgrade available free on the Web by the time you read this. Like the Series 5, you also get Word, a powerful word processor with a spelling checker and an ASCII import/export capability, and Sheet, a Windows-style spreadsheet capable of presentation-style graphics. These are designed to be synchronised with Office 95 apps. A free upgrade should make the Geofox fully Office 97-compliant.

Connection to the PC handles in the same way as with the Psion Series 5, using EPOC Connect, essentially a rebadged version of PsiWin2. This enables you to synchronise, backup and transfer files between the Geofox and your Windows desktop with automatic file conversion. The connection cable and software comes supplied with the Geofox.