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Comment by Zenst | Hacker News Reader

Also if a Series 5 Psion, an early owner of mobile ARM in its younger days.

Even though it's sort of an aside, I'm glad someone mentions Psion. I'd love to check whether their keyboards are on par with the legend. I wonder how many others relate, at the global scale :)

For the time, it was good, maybe better mechnisms available now, but darn - it was built to last and my 5MX still works. Though a lot of psions market was retail/stock warehous stuff, their handheld terminals had a huge market. So robust design was key. Only design issue on the 5MX that griped me was the stylus holder spring being not as industrial designed. Apart from that, all works well.

Since then, dreamed of some comparable device, basic linux, enough for vi and terminal stuff, wifi/bluetooth and well, happy with the screen. Alas all devoplment of anything close, tend to wack in CPU's that would be classed as a supercomputer of the 5MX time, power hogging colour screens and you end up with devices that will last a day perhaps, but not the month the 5mx would pull with comparable usage with the rs232 adapter.

Hence a cheap terminal, basic local editor wifi device in that form factor and if it could do bluetooth and double as a keyboard for a smartphone, well, a simple device like that would tick my boxes and maybe many others.

My 3, 3a, 5, and 5MX all still work (as do my Atari Portfolios and HP LX series palmtops, save one 200LX with physically damaged screen. I too keep wanting to see something like the 5Mx, or the PS-1000, or something similar with modern specs. I don't need the screen to be fast, just useful and low power. The 16-color E-Ink screens I keep reading about in Chinese tablets should work. Big battery for the form factor wouldn't hurt, but we used to use AAs. A dual-core or quad-core A53 with all solid-state storage, a nice legible low-power screen, and a great little keyboard would be quite a find.

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