Psion PLC is a consumer hardware company mostly known for developing the Psion Organiser as well as a whole range of more advanced, clamshell-design Personal Digital Assistants. Psion today comprises one remaining operating division, the Canadian Psion Teklogix, having closed or disposed of all its previous operation. Although its actual operations are based in Canada, Psion itself is a British company.

History

---

Psion was established in 1980 as a software house with a close relationship with Sinclair Research. The company developed games and other software for the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers, released under the Sinclair brand. Its name is said to mean "Potter Scientific Instruments Or Nothing", a reference to its founder Sir David Potter. Psion's games for the ZX Spectrum included "Psion Chess", and Horace goes skiing. In early 1983, Sinclair approached Psion regarding the development of a suite of office applications for the forthcoming Sinclair QL personal computer. Psion were already working on a project in this area and the QL was launched in 1984, bundled with Quill, Archive, Abacus and Easel; respectively a word processor, database, spreadsheet and business graphics application. These were later ported to MS-DOS, collectively called PC-Four, or Xchange in an enhanced version. 1984 also marked Psion's first foray into hardware; the Psion Organiser, an early example of a personal digital assistant, resembling an enlarged pocket calculator. This led to the later Psion MC-series laptops and Psion Series 3 and Series 5 products. Psion developed its own operating system called EPOC to run its PDA products.

In 1989 Psion purchased Dacom, and rebranded the new business "Psion Dacom" (later rebranded to "Psion Connect"). This business focused on connectivity products, in particular the Gold Card range of PC cards for laptops.

More on [ Psion PLC ]

Business Applications - RSS Sponsorship

Microsoft to ratchet IE8 security another notch in Beta 2
Wed, 02 Jul 2008 10:05:00 -0700
Sometime in August, Microsoft plans to release Beta 2 of Internet Explorer 8. Yesterday, I spoke with Austin Wilson, Director of Windows Client Product Management at Microsoft, about some of the security-related changes due in this milestone, and got a preview of the changes announced today. Here are some details...
Sony PlayStation's site SQL injected, redirecting to rogue security software
Wed, 02 Jul 2008 09:10:06 -0700
The latest high trafficked web site to fall victim into the continuing waves of massive SQL injection attacks courtesy of copycats and the ASProx botnet, is Sony's PlayStation U.S site according to a recent post at SophosLabs's blog : "Researchers at IT security firm Sophos have warned lovers of...
Stop the madness: 10 steps to kill failures
Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:30:30 -0700
Are you too pussy-footed to pull the plug on projects that will inevitably fail? If so, you're not alone. Whether through fear, denial, or ignorance, many organizations don't kill their doomed projects fast enough. It's a darn shame because these lousy things can drive everyone crazy while burning scarce resources....
SlideShare: user communication failure
Sun, 29 Jun 2008 09:20:27 -0700
While Enterprise 2.0 applications can be useful, hassles sometimes abound. In this case, I innocently tried to upload a simple file to SlideShare, only to learn things aren't always straightforward.After attempting to upload the file, I received an error message stating in part: There's a big chance this is...
What programming language should we teach?
Fri, 27 Jun 2008 10:21:54 -0700
I had a discussion shortly before the end of the year with one of our exchange students regarding a programming class I wanted to teach. My goal was simply to introduce programming concepts and algorithmic thinking. Heck, I'd be happy if the kids could walk out of the...
Eclipse Foundation delivers Ganymede train with 23 cars, but where are the cloud on-ramps?
Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:28:47 -0700
Now that the Eclipse Foundation has proven it mettle with delivery of consistent and complete packages of downloads -- now's the time to take this puppy to the cloud. I'd like to see more integration between Eclipse products and cloud-based development, integration and deployment services. And I'm not alone on...

Subscribe to Software RSS feed