Psion Handheld Computers

Psion Organiser Series 3 1991

The series 3 was not actually called an Organiser, it was the SIBO Family Series III. SIBO stood for Sixteen Bit Organiser, so they got the word in somewhere and also demonstrated that they were now using a 16 bit processor. From this model onwards they adopted a very clever clamshell design. The system was quite compact, 165mm x 85mm x 22mm and would fit in a largish pocket. The keyboard was proper QWERTY though the keys themselves were quite small. The screen was also smaller than the later models being a graphical display of 240 x 80 pixels (dots). The 3 came with internal memory of either 128 or 256K and up to two internal additional memory cards could provide more. Every one of the SIBO series (and the Series 5) came with software for calendar (agenda), word processing, spreadsheet and database as well as a programming language called OPL (Organiser Programming Language) which started on the Organiser I. These machines were strong (the hinge being the only weak point of the design), attractive and reliable.