The consumer technology story of this spring is, of course, the Apple iPad. It got a rather muted reception when Steve Jobs announced it in January, ahead of a launch that will probably come at about the time this column appears.
I would guess the iPad will be more appealing to consumers when they have handled it, although its fairly hefty price — probably £400 to £600 in the UK — will be a barrier to a lot of sales. However, one thing that’s not contested about the iPad is that it is wholly a pleasure machine, and not something I can envisage many business travellers packing into their already overloaded carry-on bags. If, by way of en route entertainment, you can already watch movies and listen to music on your laptop, why carry an iPad as well?
No, the thing that I as a regular business traveller have craved for years is a truly pocketable, usable, practical PC with a QWERTY keyboard on which you can type properly — perhaps not a War And Peace-length oeuvre, but certainly a stack of emails and a presentation or two.
I’ve tried everything. In the 80s, I bought something called an Atari Portfolio in the States. It was too small to type on. Later, I used to love the British Psion range, especially the 5mx of early 90s vintage.
On these, you could write proper documents, albeit in some weird format. I know a professor of medicine in New York who to this day writes books on a restored 5mx while sitting under a tree in Central Park. However, as well as the format issue, getting a 5mx on the internet is not very viable, so it’s not a real contender in 2010 unless you are a pretty dedicated eccentric.
In the late 90s, Nokia brought out its Communicator phones with a usable QWERTY keyboard. A lot of people loved these for emails and short documents, but Nokia has now withdrawn the range. Its new N-series phones have something like a proper keyboard but, like those on BlackBerrys and other phones, it’s too small for anything beyond quick emails.
In the past couple of years, there has been a flood of mini laptops, the ubiquitous netbooks you see being used on every flight these days. Some are good — I love Nokia’s glossy, expensive Booklet 3G. But, in terms of improved weight and size, you still know it if you’ve lugged one around all day.
In response, perhaps, stores such as Maplin in the UK and Radio Shack in the States have launched miniaturised netbooks, a few centimetres smaller in each direction.
I bought one of these recently (ominously discounted to less than £100) but it doesn’t really solve anything — too big for a pocket, too small to type on without an effort.
Which was about the end of the story, until early this year, when a new UK company launched something rather amazing — what can best be described as an updated Psion, the £425 PsiXPda. And this looks to be a plausible answer to what users like me have been hoping for all this time — a Windows PC that fits in a pocket, does internet and has a just-about-usable keyboard.
The PsiXPda is a really nicely made little machine. It measures 17.5cm by 8.4cm by 2.5cm thick and weighs 468g, which means you need a substantial pocket — but in a bag it is very practical. It is reasonably quick, with 1Gb of RAM, uses a stylus or finger for navigation and to add to the inbuilt 16Gb memory you can slot in a small, standard media card, which can currently take up to 32Gb of material. Battery life is in the three to five hour range and the unit has a SIM card slot for 3G internet use.
The key point: can you type on the PsiXPda’s 15.5cm by 4.7cm keyboard? The answer is, yes, just about, although not touch typing. It’s awkward, but do-able for most people. And will I buy one? Yes, I will. And I can’t truly say that about the iPad.
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