Who Are Psion

When we set up the PsionStyle site, one of us had to draw the short straw and write the proverbial ‘what is’ and ‘why’ article… You guessed it, that unfortunate person was me. I’m the one who was born a Psion lover - ever since I discovered computers I’ve been fascinated by what they could do, and once Psion brought out the Series 3 I was a lost cause. Delusional on the other hand is a convert, someone unfortunate enough to be drawn in to the evil web that is Psion and Symbian by yours truly.

Anyway, less of the babbling on, you came to this page to read the answers to all those questions you’ve been wondering over for years. And no, Im sorry I can’t dedicate an article to why the answer to the Universe is 42 (if this makes not sense to you, you have clearly lead a deprived life and should go out and buy the five books that make up the trilogy that is Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy). What I can do however, is give you an insight into the nature of Psion.

Psion is a company which essentially produces pocket computers, palmtop computers or PDAs (Personal Digital Assistants) whatever suits you. The success of Psion has ridden on the incredibly neat operating systems which are SIBO and EPOC. But before I go on to describe these operating systems, I must attempt to disband the myth that Psion is a posh foreign word. Psion actually stands for Potter’s Scientific Instruments ON and those small symbols you’ll notice above the PSION letters are merely fragments of the letters themselves arranged in an unusual way. I’m afraid they’re not swish Greek characters or anything similar. Anyway back to SIBO and EPOC. Psion’s first pocket computers were the Organiser and Organiser II.

But what of the future? Psion has brought us this far with its machines, but now that other major companies have taken an interest in the pocket computer market. As a result of the arrival of Palm, Windows CE and Pocket PC (its successor), is there still a place for Psion in this far more competitive marketplace? Chances are you will of heard of Symbian, but I will take some time to outline it what it is and why we should keep our eyes on it for the next few months.

Symbian is the software group formed by Psion and (Need names) and currently includes (need names). Its main purpose was to continue to develop the EPOC operating system. As of yet, very little has been seen of what Symbian is actually capable of but the next six months or so should be an eye opener as new machines are produced which incorporate the Symbian Platform Version 6, or EPOC Release 6 (ER6) as we prefer to call it. The different reference designs provided by Symbian for ER6 help illustrate the needs of the different companies who have had a hand in its development.