It's 10 years since Psion launched the Series 5 handheld computer, and Andrew Orlowski has produced the biggest ever story on The Register to celebrate it. He also tackles the bigger question: given its world lead and some competent staff (who went on to TomTom and Apple, among others), why did Psion never become a consumer electronics giant?
Well, given that the Acorn ARM chip and Symbian operating system are both British inventions, why don't we even have a leading mobile phone company?
The Series 5 was a wonderful machine and I've never found a real replacement. However, fact is that it broke far too often, and Psion failed to move with the times in terms of rapidly adding support for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB and other new technologies. That's one reason why it ended up using Microsoft Windows CE. Sad, but there it is.
Did Psion get its just desserts, or can we blame somebody else?
