I have used it from a phone with a terminal emulator over ssh (all of my phones have had keyboards). It was impressive to see how the keyboard supported mapping swipe gestures to cursor movement keys so that I could swipe up and down in my mutt message listings.
You would have to use an ancient modem or just sync emails by serial cable/irda, but the Psion 5MX was about the pinnacle of portable content creation hardware, IMO. With it you can write emails or whole books if you wish. Some prefer the 3 series, but not necessarily for the keyboard. 25-40hr battery life on 2 AAs, insta-on operation, CF card transfer of files - no wonder people are still using them.
Now that people are not as fixated on having colour screens, being primed to now accept e-ink style displays, is there a chance we could get a similar device with more modern specs? I think I'd still rather work from a palmtop than a laptop or phone when not at a 'workstation'.
I used an N900 for a long time (relatively speaking) and found its keyboard to be solid, but not in a way that could make writing or emailing tasks more productive.
It does look pretty awesome, but I can't find anybody selling Psions here in Buenos Aires, and it seems like they might lack something in the camera, GPS, 3-D modeling, and audio department. Like, I recorded a beatboxer at a public gathering today on my Android phone, and more than once I've sketched things on paper and photographed them with it, quite aside from other creative uses for photography.
