Psion Series 3a > Reviews > The Psion 3a - My little workhorse

Author's product rating:   

Look & Feel	Good
Memory / capacity	Good
Comfort & Portability	Excellent
Ease of use	Easy
Value For Money	Good

Advantages:	More useful than a Filofax and you can play games on it too
Disadvantages:	Expensive to repair

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

I have a Psion 3a with 2mb memory. This is comparable to the newer versions of the 3 except it is slower and doesn't have the notepad feature. I inherited my Psion and it was one of those things that I never knew I couldn't live without. Beforehand I had to store all my friends and families birthdays on bits of paper in my Filofax. Now I can just forget about the birthdays until I get an alarm two weeks before the due date, then all I have to do is remember to go out and get the card and present.

I have a number of extra programs including chess, an organisation chart creator and some extra games, but even with all of them and the standard programs loaded I still have 1mb remaining to sort my life out in. The onboard OPL programming language is a structured language and anyone who has used the old version of BASIC, before Visual Basic came along, will be familiar with the way it works. Any backup can be either onto a flash or ram memory card or directly onto a PC using Psi-Win or any similar program. The PC is the cheapest option as the cards can be as expensive as a Psion itself.

Most people treat the Psion as a PDA I think of it as a fully-fledged mini computer that can do a lot that a larger machine can. As before I bought my PC I was able to type letters (yes even on that keyboard) and even send e-mail using it. If you can’t afford a new Psion 7, 5 or 3mx go for anything from a 3a onwards as you can pick one up with a lot of bits for about £75 second-hand, it’s a bargain.

One word of warning DON'T break the screen as it is about £120 to replace.