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Rory Cellan-Jones

Only connect....

  • Rory Cellan-Jones
  • 22 Jan 08, 17:00 GMT

I鈥檓 writing this on a train between Nottingham and London 鈥 but getting it online from here is going to be too much of a struggle. I set off this morning on a quest to try and be connected wherever I went 鈥 and found it harder than you might imagine in 21st Century always - on Britain.

I left home 鈥 and my 2mb broadband connection 鈥 armed with a laptop, a Blackberry and an iPhone, confident that I had every base covered.

St Pancras station.jpgOn the tube, I was obviously offline 鈥 but surely at the sparkling new St Pancras International station, wi-fi would be everywhere? But the fact that the ticket office was closed because of a 鈥渟oftware problem鈥 didn鈥檛 bode well. My iPhone detected something called 鈥淔ree Public wi-fi鈥 but didn鈥檛 seem to like the look of it, so I hopped on the Nottingham train in search of something better.

A few train services now have on-board wi-fi 鈥 this wasn鈥檛 one of them 鈥 and the EDGE network which serves the iPhone seems to evaporate just north of Watford. No problem 鈥 I鈥檝e got a USB modem giving my laptop a 3g mobile broadband connection. I plugged it in and got the rather discouraging message 鈥渢he selected communications device does not exist.鈥

Error messageWhen, after a certain amount of cursing and fiddling, I eventually got the laptop online it was hardly worth the bother. It took about three minutes to load the 大象传媒 homepage, and then choked and gave up. Having enviously watched all those businessmen with similar devices furiously tapping away on trains, I鈥檓 now convinced they are just playing Tetris.

My iPhone was still refusing to go online and meet my desire to check what was happening on world stock markets, but my Blackberry, with its modest GPRS connection was at least delivering me emails about the dramas on the markets.

Nottingham Trent UniversityMy destination was the Computing and Informatics Building at Nottingham Trent University 鈥 surely here of all places I would be able to get online at lightning speed? Not a chance. Once inside, neither my laptop nor my iPhone could spot a trace of wi-fi. Apparently there is a network right through the building and across the campus 鈥 but you cannot even detect it unless you are a bona fide student who has signed up to the university鈥檚 conditions of service.

Nottingham Trent University student bar Frustrated beyond measure, I headed for the student union bar 鈥 and suddenly found myself in wi-fi heaven. My phone locked on to a wi-fi hotspot operated by The Cloud, which provides free access for iPhone customers (once they鈥檝e signed up to O2鈥檚 hefty monthly subscription). For a few brief minutes, I emailed, sent photos, and learned more than I needed to know about the nervous breakdown unfolding on the stock exchange.

Then it was back on the train and into the internet dead-zone again. All day, my most effective communication device had been the one which relies on the slowest network, my Blackberry. Which makes you wonder when the billions being invested in HSDPA, wi-fi, and eventually Wimax networks are finally going to make an impact on the way we connect.

Darren Waters

Forgotten concepts

  • Darren Waters
  • 22 Jan 08, 09:33 GMT

I was searching for a photograph in the 大象传媒's online stills library yesterday when I accidentally stumbled across photographs of the Psion Ace.

Psion AceThis was a concept model from 2001, built to show the potential of 3G technology and future PDA designs. Sadly, the Ace never saw the light of day because in the same year Psion dropped out of the PDA business due to pressure from competitors.

But for a numbers of years this British company was the top dog in the emerging PDA market - creating the Psion Organiser, developing the basis of the Symbian operating system and helping pave the way for mobile markets such as GPS and portable media players.

There's a really in The Register's archives by Andrew Orlowski, which outlines the plans Psion had for its final machine, the Protea project.

But coming across the Psion Ace made me wonder about other concepts which never went from design to execution, and technologies which were built but never sold...

What about the original Sony/Nintendo console the companies made together before the PlayStation? Or the aptly-named console?

If you have information about such products, leave a comment and any links to photos and we'll do a round-up later in the week.

UPDATE: at Jupiter Research (and formerly of Psion) has e-mailed me to point out that the Protea wasn't Psion's final consumer product. It was, in fact, the codename for the Psion Series 5.
He also throws light on the Ace. Apparently it was "the codename for a small, light, mass market handheld designed to compete with Palm".
He said it led to the , and that the Ace drawings were never a serious project within Psion.
Thanks for the info Ian.

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