Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Psion Organiser - Blast from the Past

I watched with part interest and part astonishment this morning as a guy in the Mace shop in the IFSC was using a Psion Organiser II in the shop. I couldn't resist going over to him and asking him what he was doing. You see I have an old Psion Organiser that I picked up in March 1989 which is still working (photo to the right shows same, and was taken by me with my iPhone in my office today) - this would make the one guy was using at least 20 years old.

In conversation with him, he told me that he and about six other guys in his company use them for stock taking. He says that they work fine - no need for the modern WiFi enabled bar code scanners. He also told me that they are still traded on the Internet - right now, eBay.ie has 10 of them for sale. Prices range from €1.67 to €58.33. There is also one on eBay.com for $299.00!

There is no USB port or wireless connection for the Psion - you need a RS232 cable to connect to a computer. According to the guy, the original software still works with today's computers. The Psion Organiser II has 16K of RAM - that's 16,250,000 times less processing power than the computer (2GB RAM) on which I am writing this post.

With all the modern technology that is available, it's good to see some vintage gear still working - the Psion Organiser clearly has stood the test of time.

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