16mb a "Plus"? (Psion Revo Plus)

Member Name: FoRk

Product:	Psion Revo Plus
Date:	11/03/01 (1052 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Infinite

Disadvantages: Hmm...don't know...

I have always been interested in gadgets and gizmos, and used to own a PalmPilot personal, until it broke, and was out of stock to get it replaced :/

Anyway, about 6 months ago I was very disorganised, and had Dooyoo money to spend, so I went out and purchased a Revo Plus (at special discount and VAT free - thx dad) which was a bonus. I receieved the Revo Plus as soon as possible, but had to wait a couple of days because of the petrol crisis at the time!

After the PDA finally arriving, I opened the shiny box, and took out my baby. The first thing I noticed was how sleek it looked. The deep grey and sliver cover, with the "Revo Plus" tag looked very smart. The curved edges gave it a smooth feel and it fitted great into the hand. Once I opened the case, via a very sleek opening mechanism that the wizards at Psion thought up, I was impressed with the inside. A bigger-than-expected screen, and a slim keyboard that felt great. After opening and closing the lid to marvel at the mechanism again, I plugged the adapter into the back of the machine. The Plus comes with a built-in rechargable battery that lasts a good 12 hours of use and many weeks of standby time, backed up by a smaller battery incase of power loss. I pulled out the stylus from the side of the case (the spring mechanism of the Series 5 has been removed due to problems with it, and a simple click attatched stylus came out).

I powered up the machine, and was greeted with a screen calibration program. After this simple process, I began to explore the machine. The O/S is very easy to use and uses the same shortcuts (cut, paste etc) as windows, so I was at home already. After setting up the machine with password, user details and general preferences in Control Panel, I started playing with the applications built into the 8mb of ROM on the machine. The applications include...

*Contacts - contact management, with customisable fields for each contact and easy to use searc
h facilities etc.
*Agenda - fully fledged calenders, to-do lists, with many, many features.
*Email - built in email program to store, send and receive email (assuming you have the appropriate mobile phone or other modem)
*Phone - ability to sync your phone contacts with the Psion via infa-red, which I did instantly and had all my phone contacts safely stored in a matter of seconds.
*Time - world map with every time zone you could imagine of all major cities of the world. Also, this is where general alarms are set.
*Calc - both standard and scientific calculator.
*Jotter - for writing down notes, shopping lists etc.
*Data - database application.
*Word - very similar to Microsoft Word.
*Sheet - Microsoft Excel clone.
*Sketch (from CD) - a paint program with clipart!
*Spell (from CD) - dictionary, thesaurus etc with thousands of words.
*Cascade - the Revo game!

Most of those programs are in the ROM, which leaves 16mb of RAM to play about with. Also, two web browsers are included on the CD for installation should you wish. These are surprisingly fast and can cope with frames, pictures, tables, text etc on the web.

The Revo comes complete with docking station to serial port and software, which was very easy to install. Simply attatching the Psion and pressing backup saves all your data to your PC. Also, this can be synced with PIMs if you so wish. On a laptop, simply use the built in infa-red to syncronise, leaving you wire free.

The screen on the Revo is crystal clear, and this is mainly because there is no backlight. This deterred me to start with, but as the screen is so incredibly acccurate and complete with 16 shades of grey, I rarely if ever need to use a light to see with. The accuracy of the stylus is excellent and the screen is protected enough to use your fingers to control the screen too. The speaker can produce digital sound of impressive quality as I found out by downloading games for
boring lessons at school. I have linked it to a Nokia 7110 and recieved email at school and on the train, and this makes me truly mobile. I have even sent an email from the summit of "Cadaer Idris" in North Wales! The speedy CPU inside the Revo makes programs run incredibly fast, and after seing people use Windows CE machines, it makes me laugh!

I could go on for ages about this beautiful machine, and could write a 10 page review of all the features etc. However I won't do that now. All I can say is that from personal use, the Revo Plus has organised my life tremendously. I enjoy downloading freeware software (http://pda.tucows.com) and playing Chess on my Revo, or even using it as a metronome for my music, or as a catalogue to store my videos in.

I am sure there is much that I have missed out a lot on this review, but there is simply too much to write about. I suggest you go to "The Link" and try out one of these babies - there are too good to be true.

Summary: