Psion Series 7 Smartphone

Think very carefully before you buy a Palm 7. If it's what you need, then nothing else can really compare. For many, a Palm or a Windows Laptop may meet their needs better. Personally, I love it, and it fits superbly into the way I need to use a portable machine.

I need a portable machine to prepare drafts of reports, write software code on the move, and take notes from meetings. I could use a full laptop, but they are twice the price, offer a *far* inferior battery life (I can fly from the UK to SE Asia and not run out of battery - try that with most laptops), and often have inferior keyboards.

The Psion offers enough screen real-estate to allow me to work, and a very good set of built-in applications. They are all considerably more effective than the Pocket Office provided with Pocket PC, offering a good range of formatting options and features - probably more than 95% of what I ever need, and I'm a pretty heavy MS Office user. I should also add that the Opera Web browser with a GSM phone makes a very good mobile connectivity solution (I use a Nokia 6210 and get 28kbit/sec connection, which is usually good enough when on the move)

The PsiLink software is some way behind the competition from Microsoft and (especially) Palm: documents can be synchronised automatically, but this has never worked well for me, and I therefore normally drag and drop documents between machines by hand. Synchronisation with Outlook works well, however.

Third party software support is quite good, although some way behind Palm (I'm no PocketPC expert as I don't own one). A good range of applications is available, although quality is rather variable. The best apps are superb, and Psion + handheld GPS receiver + suitable software makes an excellent navigation system for much less than dedicated in-car system (although without the "neatness" of integration in the car).

The use of a serial, rather than USB, sync interface is verging on the criminal for a machine of this class. Sync and backup times can be long, especially if, like me, you have a 64 MB Compact Flash expansion. Don't just go for coffee, consider lunch as well!

I should take a few moments to praise the Psion User Interface. It is very intuitive, can always be navigated by either stylus *or* by keyboard, which can make usage extremely rapid with familiarity. All apps can be used at different levels of zoom, so you can have large amounts of microscopic text (as I prefer) to get a good overview of what you're doing, or magnify the text to make it easy on your eyes. All in all, excellent, and far in advance of HPC devices.

In my opinion, the Psion Series 7 is for you if:

* You need a machine to prepare draft information/reports for formatting back at the office;
* You need better battery life than a Windows 98 portable, but want a good size keyboard and screen;
* You are considering a Windows HPC machine (it is *far* superior to any HPC machine I've seen);
* You want a capable mobile internet access tool (real browser, capable of interpreting pretty much every site around, and very acceptable mail client).

Don't get it if:
* You don't need to enter lots of data on the move - a Palm is smaller, and will probably meet your needs;
* You need to do presentation quality work on the move - better buy a real laptop;