Psion Series 5

Most of the Series 3c's apps are on the 5, although Jotter has gone and Patience has been replaced by Bombs, which is Windows Minesweeper by any other name. The new Sketch app takes full advantage of the pen-based interface, too. The apps that have carried over have been changed subtly and some features have vanished, including the month view in Agenda, Outline in Word and Program and RTF exporting from Word. Support for faxing, email and Web browsing are all promised as later additions, to be made available as free downloads from the Psion Web site.

The core of the OS has changed considerably and feels similar to modern incarnations of Windows. File names can be any length with mixed cases, and extensions aren't required to associate files with applications. Files are stored in folders and moved between folders and disks by cutting and pasting. You can still multitask between different applications, and tapping the title box of any application will open a list of all running applications and open documents. There's even a Control Panel from which you can alter all your preferences. A simplified form of OLE is included, too; you can insert objects in most apps, choosing from Sketch, Sheet, or Data records as your source. Included objects can be edited in the original application, although they aren't automatically updated as the source document changes.

There are also changes to the apps: Word now has wysiwyg fonts; Sheet now creates charts, including the pseudo-3D style for bars. Data is little changed from the Series 3c, although the ability to include graphic objects transforms the potential of the application as a cataloguing tool. As a generic database utility, this possibly has the most to offer versus otherwise relatively similar Windows CE pocket computers.

Sketch can be used for freehand sketching with the stylus, or with the library of Clipboard images. These include some road layout images, which can be used to create small maps for giving directions. Agenda is missing the very useful month view that was on the 3c, however. One interesting new feature is that the external light flashes when an alarm goes off; this allows the use of silent alarms in meetings, for example. The to-do list can include objects from Sketch, so you can associate aeroplane icons with a flight, telephone icons with a phone call and so on. The Record application has probably changed the most, being now competitive with electronic voice memo recorders, allowing you to record multiple notes on a single file and with high-quality compression.

Sadly, because of the new processor, Series 3 apps won't run immediately on the 5. However, OPL has had only relatively minor changes, so shareware authors using OPL should be able to port their applications to take advantage of the extra facilities of the Series 5 relatively quickly. A simple rebuild on the Series 5 means applications immediately take advantage of the new-look user interface with no other changes to the code. To test this, I converted some simple OPL programs from a Series 3a and most, but not all of them, ran immediately without changes on the 5.

Being able to connect your PDA to your PC and work easily between both is fast becoming the battleground that may win the PDA war. The PalmPilot and Windows CE are both easy to connect to your PC, but previously you had to buy an extra package to connect a Psion. This changes with the Series 5 as PsiWin 2 is in the box, along with a serial cable. The software works with Windows 95 and NT 4.