Jules Jones

I've barely used the new (to me) Psion a friend gave me three months ago, because not long after that I started getting some nasty medication side-effects which meant that I had to minimise my keyboard use, especially anything not on an ergonomic keyboard. But yesterday I pulled it out on the bus to type up last night's (f-locked) post about lunchtime silliness at work. The fresh alkaline batteries I'd put in exactly three months earlier had finally drained to the point where it wouldn't let me save any new work, although it hadn't quite switched to the back-up to preserve the settings in RAM. That's almost entirely standby use, as according to the battery log screen I'd only used it for 3 and a bit hours during that time. But getting 3 months of standby out of one set of alkaline AAs is one of the reasons I liked these little machines in the first place. They were extremely practical for travelling, because of the long battery life and ease of replacing batteries with off-the-shelf if you weren't anywhere near a suitable power point. (Indeed, I've never used one on a power supply other than to check the power port was still working.) And indeed, what I did was pull out the spare set and change the batteries before merrily typing away.

As for the typing on the bus -- slow but feasible now that I have one with a keyboard in good working order. It's not going to get used every day, but it is extremely useful to have it in my backpack if I think of something I want to make notes on. I need to pull off my notes on the production of Edward II which kalypso_v and I went to see last week.

Looks like I'm getting a new second-hand Psion 5mx. :-) However, I have a box full of decrepit Psions of various types, and a mixed bag of their accessories, mostly acquired from eBay a few years ago in pursuit of a 5mx that worked. I pulled out the not-in-use ones today to ascertain exactly how decrepit, with a view to thinning the herd. (I seem to be down to two functional styli amongst them.) I think this is the correct acquisition history:

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