6. Operating System And Miscellaneous

Operating System

Despite not being among the original eight questions, this one deserves a category of its own. The operating system that was referred to the most was Windows XP. There are however one or two things to consider: Windows XP was not originally designed to work efficiently from flash drives or compact flash cards. The write cycles in a flash drive are already quite good, up to a million, but a swap file can easily reach and exceed that level. Therefore Windows XP Embedded SP2 seems like the best choice.

Besides the manufacturer being able to choose which components will be put into the operating system, XP Embedded has two other great advantages: the Enhanced Write Filter (EWF) and Hibernate Once, Resume Many (HORM).

Leaving out the gory details, EWF enables read-only media, such as CD-ROM or flash memory to boot and run most anything including an operating system.

HORM addresses the concerns of many Psion users about preserving the computer's powerful "instant on/instant off" capability. With HORM the OS can come from a cold boot to fully running in 5-6 seconds, according to Microsoft. For a mini laptop running Windows XP that isn't bad at all!

Miscellaneous

Having answered all questions, but the last one (Price), it is now time to make a short list of miscellaneous enhancements that could affect our experience using the new Psion.

Some readers like Simon, Nigel, mobilesalesman, pembers and many others praise the Psion's' keyboard, although some, like fluppeteer, would like it to be a little bit bigger. A remark concerning the Spacebar is also due. It really only reacts if you press it right on the center. This is due to the fact that it only has one contact point. This should be addressed by putting two or three contact points underneath it, instead of just one.

A metal casing to help the CPU run cooler, as also suggested by fluppeteer, makes sense.

In a modern computer two speakers are necessary. They could be located under the sliding keyboard, the right speaker to the right of the recording buttons (the recording light could be moved to the opposite side), and the left speaker appropriately to the left.

That would leave an empty slot at the back where the speaker was to put the VGA connector, hiding behind an elegant sliding door, like the new rear USB ports.

The microphone could be left as it is; it's conveniently located to operate the Psion as a voice recorder while holding it, although it could take only half the space.

Andreas Revkin made the remark that the headphone output as shown in the sketches should be placed somewhere else, because left handed people holding the Psion with the right hand would have problems with a headphone jack plugged in. It could therefore be placed further back, above the stylus. See the section Storage above for a composite photo showing the new location of the headphone jack.

Speaking of headphones and as suggested by Kirk Wagner, the Psion should have external sound controls. This way it could act as an MP3 player while closed. The Play (Pause)/Stop/Record buttons already exist, three more could be added to the screen lid just above - a rewind/previous and a fast forward/next and a function button that would let you use the first two to control the volume. And when the screen is opened, they can act as Contrast/Brightness controls.

This photo shows the Psion 20xx with stereo speakers and MP3 sound controls (gold buttons above the Psion 5mx sound controls); computer composite image by Tiago Pascoal.