Motorola To Buy PDA-Inventor Psion For $200 Million 144
judgecorp writes "Psion, the company which made the first handheld computers in the 1980s, invented the PDA, and launched the once-unstoppable Symbian OS, is to be bought by Motorola Solutions for $200 million. Following a merger with Teklogix ten years ago, Psion has just been making ruggedised business devices, a business where Motorola Solutions also plays — note, this is Motorola Solutions, not the phones division Motorola Mobility, which Google recently bought."
Re:Two Motorolas? (Score:5, Interesting)
"And are these the same guys that make bar code scanners?"
I'm not entirely certain I'm answering the right question here, but, I used to work for Teklogix, in the 70s and again in the 90s. Teklogix invented the hand held barcode scanner. I wrote the barcode decoding software. And you know that thing where in UPC and EAN you can't tell 1's from 7's ad 2's from 9's? I found a way around that. it was basically an improvement to the IBM edge to edge detection technique. I wrote it up and told my boss we should patent it and he just sat on it till it was too late to patent it. AFAIK those are the only termials that have this, it was to fix Brown Shoe's one in a million scan error problem, and did. That patent would have been valuable to motorola, certainly more valuable than not having one. So, kids, if you hand in something like this to your boss an tell him to patent it, nag him till he does.
In the 70s Teklogix automated the postal plants and did special effects hardware for camera stuff. We had PDP-11's and Dave Conroy worked at the next desk from me and this is where he wrote his C compiler, which became DECUS C which became gcc.
Re:Thank you Elop (Score:1, Interesting)
Nokia was nowhere near the top when Elop came in. You're rewriting history to fit your agenda.
Also, WP7 is a better OS for the vast majority of people than Android is. It's a better, smoother, more uniform and less worrisome experience. It just works.
If you're a tinkerer then by all means use Android. If you just want a really nice phone then get one of Nokia's Lumias. The critics love em, and so do the people who have bought them.