From: smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds
Subject: Re: BOSS vs Psion vs Wizard
Date: 18 Dec 92 10:26:48 GMT
Reply-To: P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk (Paul Smee)
Organization: University of Bristol

In article <hankin.724518414@osf> hankin@sauron.osf.org (Scott Hankin) writes:
>    I've been looking at handhelds lately, and although I'm impressed with
>    their cleverness, I wonder about their flexibility.  Are any of these
>    units user-programmable?  If so, how?  I see good things about each of
>    these, but none is perfect - all would need to be extended.  If I cannot
>    hope to do so with any of them, it would make the selection process
>    easier.  Any info would be appreciated.  Thanks.

Well, I'm not familiar with the BOSS unless that's the Casio offering,
in which case (a) it's called something else over here, (b) a friend
has one, and (c) it is so similar in function to the Wizard that I
really suspect they both use the same chip.  (Is there some clever
Japanese company that makes 'electronic diary' chips?)

I moved from a Wizard (called 'IQ' over here) to a Psion.  My
comparative feelings:  The Psion comes with a programming language
which is sort of an enhanced Basic with functions, so it is easy to
personalise it.  However, to get info about the shape of the 'builtin'
databases, particularly the 'agenda' (appointment book), you need to
get a developer's kit, or do some heavy hacking.

In general, the Psion's builtin apps are as good as or better than the
Sharp.  One annoyance, though, is that the Psion has a much shorter
limit on the length of an agenda entry, so I had to modify my approach
a bit.  I also preferred the method of presentation used by the Sharp
for agendas to that used by the Psion.  (On my to-do list is to
implement a Sharp-like presentation interface to the Psion agenda.)
Similarly, I found the built-in outliner in the Sharp to be more
convenient than the outlining facility in Word on the Psion, and have
it on my to-do list to duplicate that.  Finally, the Sharp has a
(slightly) better keyboard spacing and touch.

So far, I seem to have been selling the Sharp, which is a good
machine.  The big wins of the Psion are, primarily:  Its multitasking
(you can nip into the phone book to find a phone number, without losing
your place in your diary or your Word 'notebook'); the fact of its
document bit being (approximately) Word compatible; and the fact that
you CAN make it do what you want by writing your own programs, where
with the Sharp you have to live with whatever you find limiting.

Hardwarily, the Psion is also more extensible, in that you have 2
rather than 1 extension card slot, and (if you buy a large Flash or RAM
disk) you can copy the programs from 'programmed ROM application packs'
into your own storage, and so have lots of them loaded at once.  With
the Sharp, you've got to keep swapping cards in and out of the single
slot.  (On the other hand, the Sharp's method of interfacing with its
cards is much cuter.)

Now one thing to watch out for is storage.  As I said somewhere else,
the Psion uses its internal memory for workspace as well as for data
storage, so the numbers aren't comparable.  I went from a 64K Sharp to
a 256K Psion, and, in practical terms, the Psion isn't really much
bigger, if you try to use it as designed, with several applications
open at once so you can take advantage of the multitasking.  I would
strongly recommend against buying the smaller (128K) Psion -- and
besides, some of the ROM application packs won't run on the smaller
machine.  The spreadsheet, for example, carries a warning that it is
for 256K models only.

-- 
Paul Smee, Computing Service, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UD, UK
 P.Smee@bristol.ac.uk - ..!uunet!uknet!bsmail!p.smee - Tel +44 272 303132
Newsgroups: comp.sys.handhelds