Return of the Psion 5… Sorta…

Revisiting my bike trip reminded me how much I used to love my Psion 5. It was the first bit of tech I owned that made me feel like I was living in the future.

For context, we need to go back. Wayyyyyy back to the turn of the Millenium, all the way back to the year 2000. This was in the heyday of the PDA. You remember them? Stuff like the Palm Pilot or Newton? Precursors to the smartphone, really.

I never really cared for them. Sure, the Newton had good handwriting recognition and the Palm Pilot was small… but I didn’t really have any need for what they could do. An organizer? I was a young adult with undiagnosed ADHD, no way that was going to save me.

For me, it felt like a solution looking for a problem. Kind of like how early home computers had a hard time trying to find its niche.

Back then, I was a guy in his late twenties with unrealistic dreams of becoming a writer. And I was convinced that to be a writer, I needed to be able to write wherever I go. You know, “in case the Muse hits me.”

I add the sarcasm quotes there because, well, while I was a decent enough writer, I still had a ways to go and still had some silly notions in my head of how a writer writes.

Okay, maybe not silly, but certainly romanticized. And, if I’m being honest, I was thinking about image. The image of who I wanted to be, and how others would see me. I was the kind of guy who carried around a Moleskine notebook like Hemmingway, but also the kind of guy who looked to the future.

But this was a time in history before the smartphone, when PDAs were the cool portable tech device (actually, were they ever cool?), and laptops were still a pain in the ass to lug around.

Then along comes this beauty…

This… is small. It’s 6.7″x3.5″x0.9″ (70x90x23mm if you’re metric). That was only slightly bigger than the hardshell case for my eyeglasses at the time. It was basically just a fancy PDA.

But… that keyboard. That keyboard made all the difference.

It was just big enough for me to type on. Small, cramped, yes. My speed dropped from 70wpm to maybe 50wpm, but I could type, and it had a proper word processor built in. Other devices of the time tried to be even smaller and still have keyboards, but… those were really just the precursor to the Blackberry style keyboards, which were meant to be used with thumbs. Bleah.

There’s something to be said about flow here. When I’m typing, it’s much easier for me to stay in the flow of writing. It’s a Pavlovic response. Handwriting or dictation just won’t cut it.

So, yeah, it was love at first sight. I bought that after I moved to Vancouver and took it with me across Canada and through Japan. I wrote newspaper articles for the Globe and Mail and short stories that I would submit to magazines on it. When I was riding the subway to work in Japan, I wrote a novel for my friends back in Canada, based on our last roleplaying campaign.

Living in Japan, carrying this thing around, I felt like I was living in a Cyberpunk kind of setting… just without all the dystopic parts of it we’re feeling these days. I even had a shoulder holster for it, which only added to the vibe. It was extremely light, and it ran on just two AA batteries, which was crazy efficient and affordable.

But the damn thing had an Achilles heel. The ribbon that connected the screen to the keyboard. That sucker bends every single time you open and close the case.

Eventually, it wore out.

I got it repaired once, but when it broke again after an even shorter period of time, I gave up.

Over the years, I tried to find something that filled the same niche, but nothing was ever right. Laptops got smaller and lighter, but still needed to carry it in a backpack. There were some newer PDAs with keyboards out there, but they were heavier due to having an internal rechargeable battery (that didn’t last long!) and most were bigger than the PSION as well. And, perhaps surprisingly, they didn’t get the keyboard right.

Then came the smartphone, changing the landscape forever. Once, there had been dozens of unique designs out there, trying to fill different roles. But the smartphone became the do-everything device, and thumb typing became the norm.

Thumb typing sucks, but it’s hard not to recognize what these phones are capable of now. The screen is the right size, and it can do pretty much anything I need it to as a portable workstation… except for the keyboard.

Revisiting my Cross Canada trip, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia for my old Psion. But what would be the point of getting one now, whatever modern niche product might be out there? I already have a smartphone.

But what if I could add a keyboard to it?

I’m not alone looking for this. Small folding keyboards are a thing, and relatively easy to find.

That’s one option, but I wanted to find something more aesthetically pleasing. Compact. Spreading out a wide keyboard with a tiny screen in front just felt wrong. Then I found this…

Not bad. Not bad at all. It’s very light and fits in my vest’s upper pocket, where I can ignore it until I need it. Will I end up using my phone like a Psion? Maybe. I have the same word processor as my tablet installed, and can access all my files online the same way.

I guess the part of me that used to think about my “image” as a writer never went away. But that’s okay. What’s the point of having a romanticized image of your life to aspire to if you never actually try to do it?

Maybe it’s time to go for a bike ride and find a nice cafe to write at? Just like the old days.

Update: Well, the keyboard had a fatal flaw for me. To use quotes or apostrophes, you had to use a different set of keys (FN + < >). While I was able to adapt to this, it was enough of an annoyance that I decided to try a folding keyboard. Folded up, it’s slightly shorter, slightly wider, just as thick, and almost the same weight.

It might not quite fit the retro cyperpunk aesthetic I wanted, but they keys are all where they’re supposed to be. Sometimes practicality has to win out over Rule of Cool.

Well, I what I think is cool, anyway. Your milage may vary.