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Psion to UIQ

(Moving from a Psion or Palm PDA to the Sony Ericsson P800, P900, P910i or compatible smartphones)

(Although the notes below are pitched at a Psion PDA owner, much of the content applies equally to a Palm OS PDA)

Unicode issues Symbian devices sport the new 'Unicode' version of the EPOC operating system. Instead of using just 16 bits per text character, with different code pages for each country, you now have 32 bits of data per character, the same set for every market. While this benefits the manufacturer, it's a pain for you, the user, as it means that all text created on an earlier, 16-bit character palmtop is now incompatible and needs to be converted. The best path for each data type is determined by the application concerned, as you'll see below.
Hardware One thing you'll obviously have to get used to is that all your old Psion CF cards and accessories are totally incompatible with the P800/P900/P910. On the plus side, Memory Stick Duo cards are now ridiculously cheap and many of the connectivity accessories for the Psion aren't needed anymore because everything's now built-in.
RAM Unless you're trying to run all the most ambitious games, you shouldn't get hit too hard by RAM limits. Just be aware that opening up something memory hungry may cause apps in the background to save data and close down, meaning that you'll have to wait a few seconds next time you want them.
On the newer P910i, of course, there's a lot more RAM, so you won't hit any limits.
Agenda (Calendar) If you've got less than 20 or 30 entries in the next year, it's quicker to re-enter them on the smartphone than to mess around trying to convert anything.
If you have more than this, beg or borrow a copy of Microsoft Outlook, re-install PsiWin 2.3.3 if needed, sync over your Agenda entries using Psion Synchronizer. Check Outlook has your Agenda/Calendar information intact, complete with entry notes, and then do a similar sync between Outlook and your new UIQ smartphone, a process which is normally pretty solid. If you're not an Outlook user, you can always junk it after this one use if you really want to. Do make sure you use the very latest version of Sony Ericsson's Connect suite - check their web site before connecting up.
Tasks These are best synced across from Outlook, as mentioned above. 
Contacts Very similar to Agenda, by far the easiest way to move everything across is to use Outlook synchronisation, described above. Again, check that notes on individual entries are preserved and that all fields are carried across.
If your Psion contacts were in a Data file, you can always use the DataContact utility first.
If all else fails, or if you have relatively few entries (less than 50?), just take an hour or so to beam each contact across by infrared. It's more or less foolproof, just a bit tedious!
Word, Sheet To get your Psion Word/Sheet files across, you'll be hit by the Unicode thing mentioned above. So you'll have to go via your PC, with PsiWin handling the character conversion as the files go through Word/Excel formats on your PC hard disk.
The P910i comes with Quickoffice installed, but it's easy to add to previous UIQ devices. Once installed, you should be able to open standard Word/Excel files on the smartphone. Don't rely on the awful and slow Viewer app that comes free with earlier UIQ devices.
Data Unaccountably, Sony Ericsson specified the P800/P900 without a port of Symbian's Data, but there are several databases now available to help fill the gap. I like Epocware's Handy Databank. Getting your data out of Data will involve using 'Export as text file' on the Psion and then importing using the PC-hosted Handy Databank importer utility.
Sketch There's no easy way to convert Psion Sketches, but there's good support for displaying all standard image types under UIQ.
OPL Although Program (the OPL editor/translator) wasn't included by default, you can add it easily to Snoy Ericsson smartphones, giving you the ability to create your own applications and run dozens of others created by people like... err... me.
Jotter Essentially just a freeform database on the Psion, you'll have to export content as text. What you do with them next is up to you, I recommend using extra folders in Tasks, with one entry per note, as detailed in my UIQ tips page.
Third party software One of the strengths of the Psion world was the thousand (literally) or so freeware, shareware and commercial programs, ready for downloading and using.
Although the number for UIQ is much lower, perhaps not much more than a hundred, bear in mind that because the device can do more, quite a few of the old Psion programs aren't needed anymore. Then take away programs that were essentially duplicates and the numbers aren't too far apart.
Most importantly of all, quite a few successful shareware (and many freeware) programs, especially those created in OPL, have been converted into UIQ-compatible form. You may even be able to persuade the author/developer to give you a free 'upgrade' registration code for the UIQ version, although it's also common to pay an upgrade fee, typically half the original purchase cost.
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