Psion alumni speak out

It's interesting to read David Hughes' heartfelt opinion on Psion and the netBook Trademark (which he declares "spurious"). He credits them with "practically inventing the PDA , creating some classic hardware designs and creating the operating system that powers a huge proporation of today’s smartphones: Symbian." before going on to explain the history of the netBook:

Psion launched the Psion netBook (also badged a Series 7) in 1999. The netBook was a sub-notebook running Psion’s EPOC operating system and discontinued in 2003.

A Psion netBook back in the day
I remember playing with a pre-production netBook giving my feedback as to how I felt the EPOC OS should be adapted to work on the bigger screen and thinking we had a very cool device here. Psion used external design consultants Therefore for their hardware design, and the netBook was another triumph of industrial design.

As with the Series 3 and 5 PDAs that preceded it the netBook had a clever hinge that made the device seem to grow as you opened it revealing a keyboard that seemed larger than it should be. The hinge itself was wrapped in leather so it felt like carrying a leather book or Filofax. As well as an almost full size keyboard the netBook had a touch screen and solid state internals. Writing this now I realise that the Psion netBook really was ahead of it’s time.

It's worth mentioning that we agree 100% that Psion were ahead of their time - almost a decade ahead! Unfortunately though, without the ability to produce the devices for an affordable price and without the support of extensive cloud computing infrastructure we're not all that surprised that it didn't work out for them.

This insight is interesting, and if I were Psion I'd be trying to work out what went wrong here (e.g. promoting the tech(s) who made it happen and firing the managers who killed it off, assuming they're not already gone):

A few years ago I bumped into an old colleague who showed me a netBook running Linux pre-dating the Eee PC and co. by some years. Sadly Psion didn’t release this version in yet another moment of corporate short-sightedness and cowardice.

He then wraps it up with this wordsmithery:

Palm chickened out of the two hottest personal technology markets despite having a massive head start on the competition. I was fortunate to see the designs and concepts for a range of smartphones Psion were working on but ultimately didn’t develop. Then of course Psion pulled out of the PDA market saying they couldn’t beat Palm.

Psion are now a pale imitation of the once great innovators they were; based in Canada Psion Teklogix now produce rugged industrial handheld computers. So their decision to claim the netbook trademark and to threaten websites, resellers and IT manufacturers with legal action felt like the last dieing actions of once great brand.

Shame on you Psion.

But well done Dell for challenging this ridiculous claim; it looks like game over for Psion before they’ve even started.

Update: Another Psion ex-employee, Craig Chambers, has shared his thoughts on the situation:

Come off it, I worked for Psion Teklogix when the netBook was in development and even I think that the netBook was poor in comparison to the Series 5. The software was simply not as stable as the earlier hardware's. Of all the people that have even heard of the Psion netBook (as opposed to the practically identical Series 7), I seriously doubt that anyone is in any way thinking that the new generic term 'netbook' trades on the "tremendous commercial value, reputation and goodwill of the Netbook mark"

I also find it speaks volumes that PT themselves can't spell the name correctly with the capitals in the right place - netBook!

Tux because I wish the Psion LX got further than the prototypes!

FWIW we'd have liked to have seen a Linux device hit the market too.