Be Excellent To Each Other

After Kern showed me his iPod Touch in a pub, I was slightly sceptical. Then I got one. Ever since, I've carried it about with me. The wireless connectivity is awesome, in fact, I use it more than the PC at home to browse the net. I can get podcasts and stuff and play some games or read books. I'd take it to a desert island over any other gadget I own, what would you take?

iPad, for exactly the same reasons as above. Only my one would be bigger than yours.

Heh. One of the other reasons I love the touch is that it is small and slim.

Must. Resist.

The Touch is everything that Psion Siena that ruled my undergraduate life could have been had things like Wi-Fi etc been around then. I use the calendar function, synced straight to Google's one, as my main organiser these days. No more faffing around and losing data when the battery goes. But then, I rather liked my Siena at the time, but it doesn't slip into my jacket very well.

Me too, for work and everything. It's the first phone that I've ever bothered syncing contacts for, and I have put in addresses and other contact details so it's nice and comprehensive should anyone nick it and want to burgle my friends.

I was chatting to a friend last night about how lucky we are. In the olden days, a games consoles played games and that was it.. now consoles do tons of stuff like browse the internet, use Twitter or the Sky player.

For these reasons I would take my Xbox.... and a TV.... and a power source.



Oh, and I'll need an internet connection too.

Fragile as hell though. If the ribbon cable connecting the screen to the keyboard goes, you're left with two useless half-Sienas.

Speaking of Psions, I found a Psion Revo in a drawer at my parent's house last week. I think my mum bought it as a QVC impulse purchase, switched it on a few times, had it pointed out that it wasn't a laptop computer, or couldn't understand how to use it, or both, and left it completely unused. Typical really.

The Revo doesn't switch on any longer, so no idea what it's like to use by today's standards. I remember being impressed by it having a touch screen though. That did seem like something before the DS, iPhone and imitators became commonplace.

Gnnnnghghg. Don't get me started on what a fucking idiot David Potter was. Psion could and should have been the UK's equivalent to Apple, their devices were brilliant, they were way ahead of the pack and several of the lead engineers took their ideas and engineering skills to Apple, Tom Tom etc, when Potter decided that focusing on the Symbian OS was the future.

That Revo probably still works, but it needs two kinds of batteries — a flat watch type battery for back up and probably a couple of AAs for main juice. I know of a couple of quite smart people who kept one for a few months without the back up battery installed and lost all their data when the main battery went down. Idiots.

I just can't do it. One of the reasons I love your mum is that she's small and slim (also she has some awesome gadgets).

I had a Series 3a which was awesome (even if it had its hinges repaired twice under warranty) and a Series 5 which was the biggest crock of shit ever (the hinges also broke on this but I didn't bother to get it repaired).

If its a shit as the touch screen on the Series 5, I wouldn't bother.

The iPad is the device that I barely talk about on the internet. But I use it for hours every day. It is the best gadget I've ever had.

I wake up and use it to check my emails or anything else I need to do.
On my commute I read books. comics, the internet or RSS feeds. Or I watch TV shows. Or play games.

During work it's my calendar, organiser and book. I use it to replace printing sheets of paper and reading pdfs. Because it's easier and more convenient.

Commute as before, then in the evening it's the book that I read on the sofa. Except I could be reading everything.

I love it. and going without a tablet from now on would be very depressing.

Psions -- I love them. What DBSnappa said though. They had the world in their hand and fucked it up.

Best gadget to take to a desert island -- satellite phone with plenty of spare batteries, obviously.

Best gadgets ever -- Kindle, Logitech Harmony, iPad, and iPhone 4. Generally, things are replaced in my affections as they are superseded, but if I think back through my gadget history my Psion Revo would probably round that list out to a top five.

Best is probably my Kindle.

You were more restrained than I was going to be!

I was working at psion when the route down the symbian road was announced.
I believe that shows my age

Grim...

Ban him

@Trooper. C'mon, give us tales and the skinny. What was the rationale behind the tech suicide Psion did then.

I listen to the podcast of Desert Island Discs and no-one has mentioned this...

If you don't listen to this podcast Rich, I recommend listening to the one with Michael Metcalfe QC. The first five minutes will make you laugh.

[edit] Did I say Metcalfe? His surname is Mansfield...

Love my iPod touch but I must say that my HTC Wildfire has blown me away so far. I think it's because I didn't know half of its features before getting one, and I can play rude word games with Joans.

He was sniggering his way around the shops today playing that...

It's what the technology was invented for.

It was a while back, and it was also my first proper job from leaving uni, so I was very wet behind the ears and probably missed a huge amount of the rational behind anything

From what I remember, the Series 3 had been a massive success and dominated the market for a while, then they brought out the Series 5, which was just too expensive and not selling anywhere near enough. They were getting creamed by Palm and there wasn't anywhere to go really. The Palms were sexier and more compatible with other stuff, and outselling the Psions by significant margins.

Add to that, the department I was in (Psion Dacom) had traditionallly been one of the major money spinners for Psion, but the future of the separate GSM modem was dead, phones had their own modems in, laptops had their own modems in. Nobody was going to spend £200 for a 56k modem that would only work with a specific mobile, no matter how gold it was...

Psion needed money, or they would die. Ericsson needed an OS for their phones, and had money to spare. Deal was done.

As mentioned, that is all I knew from my little GSM modem testing lab in Milton Keynes, the world of the actual boardroom decisions was miles away, so we could have been reading into things way too much in our little backrooms (or the mobile phone transmitter test rig I sat next to, fried my brain more than I thought )

Ooh, and don't forget the Series 7. I have a friend who still uses his Series 7 everyday.

So basically they ran out of ideas.