And would be very useful if you want to do proper typing. ie for email, or blogging, or anything else.
The Psion keyboard is much better than typing on any sort of touchscreen.
Absolutely. A tablet with a decent keyboard case is a reasonable substitute for many of those uses, but the great advantage to the Psion form-factor was that you could use it to type properly without a solid surface to rest it on - great for taking notes in the field, or to use while travelling.
Shame it won't have the month long battery life of a Psion.
When I was a Penniless Student Oaf, I used my 5MX for taking notes. It ran on NiMHs (and occasionally partially-depleted Procells that a housemate brought home
[1]), and due to heavy use of backlight in lecture theatres the actual battery life was comparable to that of a modern device. It would run for ages without the backlight, though.
The real advantage was that if it ran out you could just swap in a new set of AAs, eTrex-style. That's less of an advantage these days, as we now have a standard way of charging mobile devices.
[1] He worked for a company providing data collection devices for clinical trials, and they were sent out with fresh batteries.
