Psion Advert - November 1989

Launched in 1989, the Psion MC 400 - for Mobile Computer - was Psion's first entry into the nascent "netbook" market. Although based on a CMOS version of Intel's 8086 - the 80C86 - the MC 400 wasn't actually IBM compatible, as it used the company's newly-developed EPOC operating system.

However, it did come with a suite of well-regarded productivity/PDA applications, and otherwise had an impressive specification including 640x400 pixel display and a touchpad which was used for the mouse pointer. There was even a voice processor module available which, according to Psion, could save eight minutes of speech into 64K memory^[1].

Unfortunately for Psion, the MC range was launched at the same time as other companies were launching fully-IBM-compatible notebook computers running MS-DOS.

Even though Psion was also shipping its MC 600 MS-DOS-compatible device, none of the range supported hard disks, and none of them used back-lit displays. Psion's founder David Potter said of the situation that:

"We have not achieved the markets that we were hoping on that product. The timing was awkward and at this stage we have not established the wider markets that the product has potential for. We will evolve it, we will be adding more software and more peripherals, and we will be evolving the mix to try to get the market right^[2]".

The price of the machines didn't help either, as the MC 400 was originally pitched by Psion's marketing department at £845 - about £2,540 in 2024 terms.

This made it seem very expensive for "a glorified jotter and diary", whilst corporate buyers were put off by the confusion over MS-DOS/IBM PC compatibility^[3].

Even the cheaper MC 200 - a device with a half-height screen - was £545 plus VAT, or about £1,880 now.