Every travelling salesman dreams in the late 90's; this is the PDA with a journal, Word, some sort of Excel knock off, infra-red capability, and all the alarm sounds you could hope to wish for.
Goood old days... I used my Revo for over 10 years and I missed only a phone call ability. On those years I translated all types of things from users manuals to books and I translated over 1000 A4 pages during commuting on train. I still miss the keyboard of Revo-once you got accustomed to it it was like a bless, fast, sure, reliable and configurable. My mother language uses tons of accented characters and those modifying or even completely changing the meaning of the words (like in English "morning" or "mourning" is not the same) and with the factory provided keyboard driver I could type on it almost as fast as on a computer. Still missing it-I have it but the batteries went dead and the shell got loose and creaking, screen is worn badly and nobody has parts to fix it on an affordable price...
@@weirdoldtech It was not that big thing actually. Revos (and the old Series 5s) were heavy duty things, compared to Palm and especially the Symbian-based Nokia siblings. Nokia 9300 fell apart after one and half years due to plastic fatigue. (Nokia started as cellulose processing plants and knew everything about plastics, I must assume.)
@@B2BWide Nokia even had an entire factory _specifically_ for making concepts, demos and test devices. Although it was small compared to the others. Erm, do you think you could email me some pictures? I might be able to take a look. No promises though.
Mine's in daily use! The IrDA also uses the same communication method as the RS-232 which is how PsiWin functions with an IrDA dongle. Because of this some people have managed to (Series 5) wire a Bluetooth transceiver to the IrDA, I don't really know anything about that though. However there is software which you can either install as an application or completely replace EPOC's infrared driver to use standard IrDA communication instead, allowing you to connect it to various devices such as Windows 95, 98 etc, Palm I think and most infrared compatible phones. My second phone is a Nokia 6230i and I can confirm you can manage, dial, synch, send SMS and use WAP (There's a downloadable WAP browser for EPOC) and funnily enough it's both easier to use and infinitely more reliable than any modern equivalent I've tried... There is a big programming limitation though, which is that after sending a text message, for example, the two devices disconnect. I did read up on it but I don't remember, I think it's a software issue that the phones have. Also if I remember right there's a bug that makes files over 10K fail transfer sometimes? I've never seen a Psion's screen needing calibration that badly. 😆 Also something too note, realistically the Revo battery begins getting diminishing returns on battery life after three years or so. I'm amazed the battery in there had it running for as long as it did, usually they're completely did. PsiWin runs on all of Windows operating systems once it's installed but NVIDIA recently did something that broke PsiWin's installer graphics, you can find out by seeing if the installer is running in Task Manager. If it is then downgrade your graphics driver to something not that much older and set all of PsiWin's .exe files to compatibility mode for the most stability.
Just imagine yourself back to 2004. I was in Egypt with my friends and visited Siwa Oasis. On our way back I sent an e-mail to home about halfway from Medinet Siwa and Marsa Matruh in the "middle" of the desert. I used my REVO and a Nokia 6310i via IR port. My friends assumed I lied about the trip because couldn't believe that it worked even there. Actually they couldn't really believe that it worked AT ALL :D Also the battery pack of the good old REVO consisted four AAA size batteries McGyvered together, said a Psion service expert partner. When it died after six years they replaced it with AAA size NiMH batteries (I think, it was long ago) and it served more happily. The display hinge got loose after 10+ years and it turned unstable but I could use it as a non-portable desktop-only unit if I had to. I really want'em back so badly...
@@B2BWide That's right, it's two AAA NiMH 600MAh but 800 for the Plus. There's surprisingly a good amount of information on Revo repair, but if the case is cracking... To follow on from my last reply, I have a spares or repair Revo sitting on my shelf...
Psion Revo was utter disappointment. Because they did not want Revo to parasite on their Series 5, they intentionally made its harwarde shitty and at same time priced it insanely high (like 50 USD under much more capable S5mx). Problem was, that S5mx was internally extremely obsolete at that time. Yes, of course. Optimized EPOC and build in application were running smoothly. But when you ran program, which needed raw CPU or RAM power, you were screwed (maps or even map navigation for example). Windows CE devices had immensely more power. And their displays, they were in totally different game. S5/Revo was usable only in ideal light conditions. Especially artificial light in evening made them almost unusable. Also low resolution of diplay was problem. Even worse thing was, that PSION decided, that Revo would have smaller resolution, despite fact, that display was almost same size as in S5! This lower resolution made many 3rd party app intended for S5 unusable on Revo. Absence of CF slot was another major drawback. Imagine having Iphone just with absolute minimum storage and no cloud storage.... Revo also have reachargeable batteries, but they were NiCd! In that era every other competitor, even cheaper were using li-ion or at least ni-mh, but Brits said NO!, lets put worst batteries on market in this device and made quite hard to replace them. So Revo had like half endurance on battery compared to S5mx with alkaline batteries and after 2-3 years, they were so wear out, that risky and complicated exchange. Almost any more skilled user of Revo made its own powerbank for revo combining holder for 4 AA batteires and charging connector (fortunately Revo power system was so primitive, it worked flawlessly). Because althought S5 was relatively expensive to run because of AA batteries, you were totaly independent on any power grid with just handfull of batteries in your pocket. Worst thing was, that it was not good PDA anymore. It was still quite bulky and hard to operate standing or even walking. Compared to PalmPilot/Visor, it was clumsy PDA and those PDAs costed half of REVOs price in 1999. I was quite fan of PSION. But when their reaction to Windows CE machines was pathetic S5mx "upgreade" and overpriced halfcompatible REVO "PDA" I started worried of PSIONs future. When they announced new, powerful color PDA, I was excited, that it will be some S5 with color LCD, much more CPU and RAM and liion batteries. And when we get Psion S7, I knew, that PSION is dead. 2 years later, PSION stopped producing hardware and in 2004 lost its control over EPOC/Symbian. This was year of its factual death.
