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Inexpensive Linux/BSD Handhelds
cloudscout writes, "The latest craze in handheld computing isn't the new Palm IIIc, it's the IBM WorkPad z50 currently being unloaded at ridiculously low prices by all sorts of discount Internet retailers. This device runs Windows CE 2.11 by default, however, a successful NetBSD Port means that this device could be the first widespread *NIX handheld. There's even a Linux Port in the works. The initial blowout saw these devices selling for under $250, but the huge demand has driven that price up to the $400 range now. Still cheap for a nearly full-sized system with 640x480 color LCD. "
..once by a girl named Suzy. She was cute, but her third leg really caused the other kids to laugh. Boy, could she run fast though, until the bus hit her. Oh, I know what you're thinking, it was the short bus. Nope, full size.
-slo bob
Could this be used to make a Beowulf cluster?
Yeah, it does, I checked it against bc a while back. It's pretty impressive, actually.
:)
...but my favorite 'pi' program would have to be the Obfuscated C Contest entry that had a function that looked like a circle, and it said "To get a better approximation for Pi, write a bigger program." And it ran that function to mostly calculate Pi. I won't spoil the rest of it for you.
---
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Why do you assume that "Use the source, Luke!" refers to everyone? Okay, think of the obvious Jedi reference, or Luke in particular. In Lucas's little universe, was everyone a Jedi? Did everyone go around doing Jedi mind tricks? No. Those who had the power did so. Think about law enforcement, at least in the United States. If someone commits murder, does the average citizen go kill the killer? Hopefully, no. Those who are empowered to do so, do so, whether we agree with it or not. So, what am I getting at? If you can do this sort of coding on your own, then for God's sake, do it! The source code is there. If not, there's probably a commercial product available, or, if you're willing, go to CoSource and *pay* someone to develop it. Grandma doesn't have to develop the software herself. But if she is capable of doing so, she may, without having to purchase expensive compilers, without having to purchase OS source code, and hopefully without having to sign an NDA.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Why did this troll get a score of 2? Just curious, because I want to know how some asshole can get a score of 2 just for showing his/her ass to the public.
Seriously, guys, please stop bumping up "gee, sounds like a loser idea to me whenever I've already got better" and "this has been posted before" bozos that apparently do nothing more than sit slack-jawed at their computers, giggling with glee when they see a new story pop up, and take the opportunity to flame the folks at Slashdot for possible having the gall to post a story a second time, or post a story well after another site has.
Jesus, people, get fucking lives.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Heh, that's the ticket! :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
(Made ya look!)
Am I just missing it or is there no listing of the hard drive space that they come with?
All of the links that have the specs make the point that you can upgrade to 48MB memory easily. But, I did not see a single reference to storage space.
Can anyone here enlighten me?
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Good for you. But I'm guessing your laptop has less than 6 hours of battery life. That makes it next to useless as far as I'm concerned. I'd say for $500, you were ripped off. On the other hand, this device looks to be worth about that...
--
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
So.. anyone know somewhere in the UK I
could find one of these?
Somehow, I doubt you'll get them at $300 now that everyone who's selling them are being /.'ed.. ;)
Amiga - Back for the future!
Bought one a few weeks back on the recommendation of MSNBC, at $300. Already have a Palm IIIe, but told myself I'd find something to do with it. Haven't successfully installed telnet yet and Windows CE Services suck ass, otherwise I'd read my shell mail in comfort laying on my bed instead of sitting at my big box.
Now I just have to figure out if I'm up to learning how to get NetBSD onto it and maybe I'll be set. That and a network card. Yay!
And Linux already runs on that... sorta :)
----
The Z50 has pcmcia, and runs the NetBSD drivers for all supported ethernet, serial and wireless cards, so there is no trouble running you Z50
with any sort of net connectivity (including mobile) that you like!
To compete, they just need a >2 hour battery life...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I think I'll hang on to my Thinkpad 701, it's about the same size (just a bit thicker) and it has a bigger screen. Runs Debian just fiiine too. Excellent for playing nethack on train trips. And the folding 'butterfly' keyboard impresses people. :-)
Too bad the battery is dying, though... Anyone know where I can get replacement batteries for a 701C in .nl?
Because you'll spend a week trying to work around problems, and then give up, because it still doesn't work?
The server for my card didn't work until I patched it - for some reason, locking the console locked up the machine, and the API never returned. After working around this, xinit wouldn't work unless I was root. You need a beta (?) version of Watcom C to compile XFree86, and I wasn't willing to put that on a machine where I compile production code. I ended up putting off getting it to work for the forseeable future.
Mind you, the X11R5 package we got from QSSL was just as bad, and never worked either.
Let's see tote arouns something the size of my laptop?? heck why buy an underpowered junkmachine like that when for the same cash you can get a pentium laptop (P120-133) for the same price used!
anything that cant be operated while running is NOT a palmtop.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well, why bother buying a 1st generation crusoe machine when in a few months after they 1st ship, better ones will be available? And after that, you know, the next set of machines wil lbe even better.
No.
If someone needs a machine today, they should buy one today. The machines tomorrow will always be much better. After 15 or 20 years of desktop computers, hasn't that lesson been learnt yet?
How about the itsy?
Well, I haven't ever used a palmtop... But what I am looking for is a cheap box that can run any unix so that I can have an MP3 Player, that can have a wireless ethernet card, a microphone, speakers, web cam. I want them to be cheap so that I can put them around the house and have one to go on the road with.. (Portable MP3 Player / PDA)
I don't know if the current stock of palmtop/pda machines can really have all of these features (no USB port, no PCMCIA, parallel port, serial port, etc) Let alone the ability to run lynx over the wireless ethernet card.. (Or maybe netscape with a special version of X)..
The possibilities for a small PC are much greater than the current crop of PDA/Palms...
Dont you think?
What's the deal here?
Yes, there were 186's. But they were soon superceded by the blazing might of the 286 a few months later, so no one used them.
~~~~~~~~~
auntfloyd
http://www.pricewatch.com/. Do a search on IBM Workpad z50. Good hunting.
The party's over
I'd have to agree in waiting for a Crusoe for myself anyways.
;)
I'm not a Linux expert so for people like me it's nice to be able to put a standard copy of Mandrake 7 on a machine and just download x86 rpms of which there are many.
I'd also like to be able to play quake on it
-idealego
Ok so maybe I'm not that old(14)
And not so crotchety('hey damn kids get off my lawn')
But I happen to find my IBM personal portable computer JUST FINE thank you. In case of wondering yes it is that 30 pound _portable_ offered by IBM back sometime long ago. It cost me 5 bucks. It has a blazin 186 processor, and 612 whole kb of ram(with a delay time soooo slow it takes 30 seconds to count it all up during boot). But yeah baby, I can MOVE on this badboy. It has a full sized 8 inch CRT monitor built in. No hd to slow it down, and 2-count 'em 2 5.25inch floppy drives.
When I was a kid(wait i still am) we didn't have these Ninos and Palmpilots. You'd be lucky if you're "laptop" didn't crush your manlihood beyond recognition. The only thing we had to worry about screwing our transistors was rats(you're wimpy Pentiums getting screwed up by radiation, ha, ha).
I like to fire up my blazin 186 every now and then and goat over how much _faster_ mine is that both MIR and all the Apollo spacecraft. I'll take my 186 with 612kb of ram anyday over you're winCE devices, ick.
(And before you come over and beat me senseless with you're "mice" yes I am joking)
YES! Just the thing I was looking for. Finally I can put this Cassiopeia E-15 :(
to do something useful - wait... nooo... there's no mips-linux nor mips-netbsd
port of setiathome
Microsoft? Is that some kind of a toilet paper?
Have you checked out the Qbit? Looks to be a little more fleshed out than the ScreenMedia. Sounds like they'll have product out in the next few Q's. I also question whether the ScreenMedia (as described) is U.S. ready.
Why am I going to spend $800 (after I finish upgrading the system to have even less capability than the one I have now) for a machine that only runs experimental Linux ports?
Becuase it's not $800. You can get it right now for less than $400. If you were lucky (like me), you could have ordered one when it was less than $300 (shipped!).
Now I just have to get a Compact Flash and figure out how I can dual boot WinCE and NetBSD/hpcmips. Oh, oh; I think I'm about to geek-out.
I want to be able to read the Wall Street Journal on-line edition and Slashdot at the breakfast table, or in bed, or on the couch without having to worry about a keyboard and mouse. The ScreenMedia device seems to be the perfect wireless solution.
Anyone have new information? Their website looks the same as it did months ago...
yes!
let me repeat that
yes!
From my laptop, I want a big screen, good keyboard, large harddrive, long batterylife. Notice how processor speed a was abstent from my requirements. I'm thinking a 486 or even a 386 (hell all I do is use emacs anyway) would do me just fine.
Hey laptop makers! lookie here! This is a market segment waiting for your attention.
Johan
Stability is paramount in any palmtop w/o external storage. If a crash will kill your saved work, you'll never be able to trust the machine with _any_ work.
I've actually been toying with completely unmounting my harddrive in my laptop -- it has enough ram to hold a decent sized ramdisk and still have enough memory to work out of. By completely spinning down the harddisk, I hope to be able to extend the battery life to almost an hour (So I was a cheapskate and bought the noname brand. Now I'm paying for it). The only reason I would be willing to do this is because I know that my system is stable enough never to crash.
For some reason, slash adds random spaces to my sig! I don't know why but it may be because my sig is over the max length.
If i erase that space, another random space is inserted somewhere else!
:-(
I don't think they ment the x86 version of OS X...
.001 JWLS
they probally ment they havent developed PPC morphing
-my
=1000101
"So why bother with the old stuff?"
I'm going to wait for the time-machine cpu. This will be a cpu that sends itself far enough back in time for each process to complete just after it has started. That way, I can start a job that will take years and years of cpu-time, but to me will finish instantaneously.
Where am I going to get such a machine? Well, I'm sure that they are available in the future, so I'll just wait for a future-me to send one back. Hey, a package just appeared on my desk...
Mike van Lammeren
Mike van Lammeren
It will challenge your head, your brain, and your mind.
Are they very hard to get a hold of? I'm thinking that here in Canada they might be especially hard to find.
I can't spell or type, but that doesn't mean I'm unusually stupid.
8 months ago I bought a p233 w/mmx with 32 megs of ram, '95, 3gig hd for $900 off of ubid. :P It was only usefull then when I had a t3 to jack into to exploit the bandwith of off my laptop, the nic card I got as much as I paid for it back when I sold it recently also.
It's not bad, but I'm selling it off now for $600, I don't use it anymore, I got a better job and don't do tech anymore
Laptops are somewhat nice, but really they're damn near useless in every day work for me, but when I worked tech it was great to bring my own comp and not deal with a shared pc(yuck). But when the servers you work on are several hundred miles a way whats the point? I don't really need to check my email in the car, come on now lets get serious whats the point?
You people are overreacting to a bottom of the line pos wanna-be laptop, true it's nice and thin but no mussle. I bet you own a webphone don't ya, come on now admit it you spent that extra money to get 3 lines of yahoo! on your phone. We need a slashdot pda, one that has only 4 functions:
1. read slashdot.org
2. check stock quotes
3. telnet
4. mp3 player
with a huge battery life of a week or more, running a curosoe.
When are they going to make some decent batteries? Maybe I should just carry a gasoline generator and plug the ac adaptor into it? I love that 2 ~ 3 hour battery life my lappy packed without power saving modes.
Ok upon checking the net the Workpad z50 seems to actually be priced around $1000.00 dollars not the $250.00 - $400.00 range mentioned in the article. However the IBM Workpad Companion is more of a regualr PDA and is priced in the range. It however runs runs something called Wordpad O/S not Windows CE (can't execute?). The Wordpad z50 is not in short supply as the article says. It is instead not even due out until Mid May 2000. As for the NetBSD port that part I haven't verified yes or no. But if the facts play out in the same manor as they have so far then ..... well ... You do the math.:) It does seem that the cpu it's running should be capible of supporting either a BSD style or Linux style of Unix. However I still love my little Libretto. No porting needed it has an AMD K-5. Check this ZDnet article here.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
You forgot to initialize b.
Where is my mind?
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
heck, it's all pretty invalid!
Did you use > or < signs?
Where is my mind?
mfspr r3, pc / lvxl v0, 0, r3 / li r0, 16 / stvxl v0, r3, r0
Check out Project Upper/Mute, an all-around awesome compiler fra
It comes preinstalled with Windows CE, but you can install NetBSD or Linux?
I can see it now, geeks with no lives go marching onto microsoft marching on what they call a "Windows CE refund day".
Next thing you'll see is people wanting refunds cause they want to run Linux on their washing machines, not some proprietry crap.
I guess maybe Microsoft should produce hardware & software combos, then they wouldn't so much crap from people who see microsoft's licensing OSs to all sorts of manufacturers rather than control everything (eg. Windows CE compared to PalmOS/Palms, Windows compared to MacOS/Apple) as 'pure evil'.
Basically, people develop devices and software to run them, sell them (including cost of hardware & software development) noone cares.
Microsoft prefer to just write software, the license it to manufactueres so those with little software skill can easily create devices, everyone (at least here) start spouting "crap crap crap". The added advantage of Microsoft's model is that you *can easily* do things exactly like this, replace Windows CE with whatever you like.
WNT = VMS "done right"
Search for Cutler
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
I've een thinking of replacing the current Win98 with some kine of *BSD, but I am not sure whether that will support the PCMCIA CDPD modem, so I haven't invested the time yet. Considering this is just a small comms machine, I also don't think it is worth it.
FJ!!
MVS = "Multiple Virtual Storage", an OS for the IBM 390. It was later renamed to "OS/390".
VMS = "Virtuel Memory System", mad by DEC for their VAXens and later Alphas (OpenVMS).
> But until batteries get better and/or they stop putting moving parts (i.e., hard drives) in
> laptops, there's a niche for machines like the z50.
Hard drives are not the problem these days.
Old laptops with old NiCD-Batteries (~1994) had harddrives as well. Now we have modern hardrives wich need slightly less power and modern batteries wich can store much more energy (more than three times as much) but average battery times haven't improved at all (I have the feeling, it has gotten worse.)
Why? Because those "modern" CPUs you find in most laptops and the bigger displays have eaten up all advantages made in battery-developement.
Some numbers:
IBM's latest and greates Travelstar 25GS (25MB): 2.5W(reading), 2.9W(writing), 2W (idle but rotating).
Intel's Mobile-Pentium-III 500MHz: 8W
A crueso+the more of RAM it needs is bigger and sucks much more energy than a MIPS or [Strong]ARM.
And don't forget, the Crusoe is just s a dull and boring x86. It has some interesting internals, but from the outside it's not much more than a pentium compatible CPU wich needs extra RAM to run.
So from my POV Crusoe is *older* and by far not as "cool" as those pure RISC CPUs.
The x86/IA32-compatibility is the only advantage Crusoe has to MIPS or StrongARM. But we don't need - no - we don't *WANT* x86-compatibility for our PDAs. Let's get rid of this old crap: x86: DIE, DIE, DIE!
It's too bad that most of us (including me) can't afford something better than x86 for our desktops at the moment, but don't let this cancer spread to the PDAs.
(And no, that Crusoe was designed by a company where Linus works doesn't make it any better!)
Buzzz... That the WorkPad which is the Palm OEM. The article is abouth the WorkPadz50 which is completely differentp
-- The world's most ambitious and comprehensive PC game database project. http://www.mobygam
We need a slashdot pda, one that has only 4 functions: 1. read slashdot.org 2. check stock quotes 3. telnet 4. mp3 player It seems like transmitting clear text passwords over wireless is a really really pad idea, at least if wireless transmission is anything like ethernet. As I understand it, being within a certain range of someone using wireless enet would be kind of like being in the same subnet; i.e. you could sniff all the traffic, just by sitting next to someone. As someone that feels vaguely paranoid just using a wireless phone, i would DEFINITLY want something that could encrypt my traffic.
Am I reading the results of this correctly??? Does this _REALLY_ display PI or are you yanking my chain!!!
Why are all BSD fans grumpy?
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
-pf
Make affiliate bucks
They aren't intended to have the sheer grunt power of a standard PC (laptop/desktop) as this isn't the primary purpose, if they did - currently, the machine would have abismal battery life.
Storgae space is still an issue, but then its not intended to have a LOT of stuff on there - and solutions are coming, IBM already has a compactflash sized 340Mb hard drive, and a 1GB sized drive is in the works. Plenty of room.
just my $0.02
"Unix is a text processing system."
O.K, fine, If you want to get all historical. But by the same argument, why would you want a fully featured text processing system on your palmtop?
"Unix has "high overheads"?"
O.K, i'll revise that. You are right, UNIX itself does not have high overheads. But X sure does have high system overheads, and if they want to provide backwards compatibility with existing apps., i assume they'll need some type of X system included.
"to say nothing of "more stable""
Oh please, now you have to be joking. How often do you think a palmtop crashes? Do you have uptime competitions against your friends palmtops? If it's just that you don't want to run WinCE, there are other, better choices. Choose Palm, EPOC etc.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
And, as to your last question, why would I want what is now a generalized data-processing system on my palmtop?
That wasn't your original argument. *Any* OS is "a data-processing system", that's the whole point. Input - Process - Output. You seem to be going out of your way to bend the "Linux is a great OS that can do anything" argument all over the shop to suit yourself.
My entire point is, that there are much better choices for a palmtop OS. You even answered most of your points yourself when you said "I use a Psion, and it's never crashed."
This might be obvious, but maybe Psion, and OS that has been designed for a palmtop, and is stable, is a better choice for a palmtop?
Syllable : It's an Operating System
Why bother buying a laptop now if you can wait for Crusoe-powered machines?
You can run whatever OS you want, whenever you want, at near native speed.
With huge batterylife.
So why bother with the old stuff?
This would be the most neatest thing. Have Compact Flash so you can store some beck mp3s, or the matrix movie, an ethernet jack so you can sync from anywhere.
The most super tricky bit however - is making a circular display - is this possible?
:wq
WorkPad z50s are for sale on eBay for prices specified in the article... http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem& item=267345328 Note: I am NOT the seller.
shouldn't be too hard getting ssh running
.../pkgsrc/security/ssh
on NetBSD:
grab pkgsrc
cd
make install
echo done
(see ftp://ftp.netbsd.org/pub/NetBSD/packages/README for some more info)
- Hubert
IBM apparently aren't going to release it yet it Europe 'because of what happened to HP's Jordana' (whatever it was that happened to that...) I'm just going to get it shipped over at $47(!) from one of the US retailers... Doug
fyi. That is not for the z50.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Thanks for the info, your a true credit to /.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Actually, I think I am. I use this sub-notebook mostly for email and light web browsing (usually with lynx). Now, perhaps my daily load of email (200-400 messages depending on the day of the week) is more than most and I like to carry around a 20MB archive of messages. I have the Sierra Wireless Aircard for CDPD and an external battery for 5 hours of battery life. I have the ususal assortment of TCP/IP applications including fetchmail and ssh.
Now, your $279 price is a lot better than the $400 mentioned in the submission. But take that $400 unit mentioned above, add in 40 MB of Flash to have a filesystem big enough to hold a kernel a few apps and some data (click click click) for $328 at Insight and we're rapidly approaching my $800 figure. It dosn't look as good a deal.
For $279, I think that you're looking at a very attractive price point given that you still need to add on to get it to do much of anything. At $400, not so much.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
How much flash are you going to add? And for how much?
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Both of 'em work great together...small (even with the batteries) and just big enough and powerful enough to be useful.
In fact, I used it last winter to run BeetleCam (http://damon.durandfamily.org/Beetle). Perfect for these kind of applications. Telnet and ssh is a bit slow, but it works very well enough. It's much better in burst applications.
I usually used it just to feed the data across to another webserver, instead of serving it directly off the unit. Latency and bandwidth, as I said before, are limited.
Damn, that kicks some serious ass. Now I can be a complete geek on the go. Sharkey
http://www.badassmofo.com
What ?? I thought Linux for x86 was by definition an x86 binary?? Just as Linux for PowerPC chip is by defintion an PPC Binary and so on. Do you mean windows apps? Thats different, the Crusoe can emulate an x86 instruction and therefore run windows, Linux, SCO unix or any other x86 program provided the proper device drivers are available. And actually, from what I understand a TM3120 runs at about 1 watt, which less than the mips chip in my CE device (3 watts). THE CRUSOE IS NOT AN X86 CLONE.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
QNX support is in XFree 3.3.6 and I believe it is now also in 3.9.18. So why pay for a QNX Xserver that is only X11R5 when you can have X11R6.3 with XFree 3.3.6 and X11R6.4 with XFree 3.9.18
D.
Actually, yes. A buddy and I are in the process of starting up such a project. Not based on Itsy, because of it's license, but using the StrongARM processor. Similar to the LART, either using it's design, or, more likely, rolling our own (my buddy's a hardware guru) We're close to putting up a site so that we can start discussing details with the community. When we get the site up, I'll submit it to /. and see if they'll talk about it. The idea right now is a small, modularized system that is completely open source (ie, software and hardware). we have tons of ideas, but we want to find out from others (aka - you) what kind of stuff would be really cool. more to come (hopefully) ...
People are asking why you need a *NIX on a computer like this but I say why not. It's just plain cool and exactly what these OS's need to get popular w/the general public. It's a lot less hairy to set-up a trashy portable to use Linux/BSD where there isn't any risk of getting burned badly b/c you need to get it up and running b/f the next work week. In my opinion this is what will get more people playing around w/these OS's and that's how we all get hooked right? Don't tell me you came to love computers out of using WordStar and 1-2-3.
I think the Crusoe processor would be the thing to run PDAs on at this stage in the game. After all, these things are MADE for PDAs and they're MADE for Linux! Well, ok, they're not MADE for linux, but they're made by a company that employs the guy behind linux. Same thing.
I hope the people doing the linux port keep their nose clean regarding GPL violations. Not that it needed to be said, but you just never know...
For those of you looking for a wireless notebook, I just thought I'd mention that I'm sitting in bed with a WorkPad that's connected to the net via a WebGear Aviator card and running off battery. Works fine. B-)
Yes check out http://www.linuxce.org/ (and probably the netbsd guys too - for all i know they had it first) There are touchscreen drivers for some CE hardware. (The z50 has a little IBM-style joystick not a touchscreen)
I think everybody is at least creating an onscreen soft keyboard first before worrying about handwriting recognition. I expect that right now the non-gpl code that OEM's will bundle with their distro's will have better performance for at least another 1-2 years...
I bought one of these and I've been using it to connect in from the road via telnet for the last few weeks. The battery life just rocks - my first charge laster 10 hours and I'm still using it.
I tried the NetBSD port and was able to get it to boot up. Next step is to get ssh running.
There is also a Linux kernel port that will boot but isn't too useful as of yet. I haven't tried it out.
I have a friend who gets to play with a lot of embedded devices, and I actually was talking to him about these devices last week. His comment was that they just weren't making sense. In particular, the WinCE wasn't very stable on them. Perhaps the NetBSD port could make them more useful, but he recommends the plethora of other PDA types devices, and not this beast.
True,
Here are the computer shopper Prices for IBM WorkPad Z3
And prices from auctionwatcers are Here
Enjoy
--
It's brilliant.
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I think the big hullabaloo about Windows Refund Day was not necessarily getting the $50 or so back. The real issue was that users had a contract with OEMs/Microsoft for a refund, but the OEMs and Microsoft wanted to back out on that contract. If they had just given those few people who asked their $50 (or however much) right away, it would not have become a cause celebre.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Unfortunately, since IBM's discontinued it, there may not be enough demand at the $500-$1K price point. Too bad; in most ways the z50 was a much nicer machine than its competition (the HP Journadas and Compaq Aeros), being based on the rather slick Thinkpad 240 chassis. (The only problem is that it really ought to have had an 800x600 screen -- it's big enough.
I'm not sorry I bought mine; nothing better if you have to sit in a library all morning taking notes and in a cafe all afternoon writing your notes up, especially if you don't want to be bothered with carrying around a power supply or looking for electrical plugs. I just wish the Linux port was a little farther along.
-- Some things are to be believed, though not susceptible to rational proof.
Not VMS, MVS.
Once again, go do research; time-sharing systems are not the same as server OS's. Unix was designed for users to, given a terminal, be able to do their daily work. That's not a "server OS" thing.
The clients were users, not other computers.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Actually, yes, I do think palmtops crash. I use a Psion, and it's never crashed. However, the comp.sys.psion.misc newsgroup is full of ex-WinCE users who had *frequent* crashes.
Yes, stability matters.
Overhead? Yes, even with X, Unix has dramatically lower overhead than MacOS or Windows. I've run Windows and Unix on the same system; the difference is quite visible.
And, as to your last question, why would I want what is now a generalized data-processing system on my palmtop?
BECAUSE WHAT I MOSTLY DO WITH COMPUTERS OF ANY SORT IS PROCESS DATA!
Yes, I'd like a palmtop that had a good programming language built in, or the ability to run shell scripts or C programs I wrote for Unix.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
A couple of things. First off, I'm arguing for NetBSD, because that's what I use on many of my other systems.
Anyway, Psion's OS is great if you want to do *exactly* what they built the machine for. Beyond that, it's a closed, proprietary system. If I want a small, stable, general purpose computer, my best bet is a palmtop running some kind of Unix.
WinCE is too unstable. EPOC and Palm are too specialized. Thus, enter Unix on a palmtop. Yes, it's what I'd want if I were getting something like a WorkPad.
I'm not saying "Unix is the only thing it would ever make sense to run on a palmtop". I'm saying it's not particularly irrational to pick a Unix-derived system for a palmtop, because it's fundementally a general-purpose user OS, not some kind of mainframe-oriented server OS.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
I've always thought a good form factor for a handheld would be something along the lines of the medical tricorder device from Star Trek:TNG.
:-)
Basically, imagine something only slightly larger than a Pilot (but smaller than the z50 or these other "micro laptops"), with a thick clamshell design that evenly distributes the weight between the two halves.
The reason this would be cool is you could build it rugged as hell-- think a "metal with rubber trim" exterior-- and it would be perfectly suited for clipping onto a belt or whatnot. Just like a tape measure.
It would sure beat these super-delicate quarter-inch-thick Pilots and their flimsy plastic screen guards (well, as long as you don't want to slip it into that shirt pocket...
iSKUNK!
Slashdot needs it's own Mercata-like buying site. Thousands of geeks buying the latest gadget cheap.
Sure, UNIX was designed for mainframes running a bunch of dumb terminals, but the average pocket calculator these days has more computing power than those old mainframes.
The overhead is simply not an issue. You can fit a useful Linux distro on a floppy and run it on a 386. This is easily small and efficient enough for a palmtop.
Linux is nice because it's free and there's lots of free software for it. Why reinvent the wheel? Instead of needing a massive promotional campaign to get developers to make stuff for it, you've already got a pile of useful software.
Wrong WorkPad model, the IBM store sells the Palm-clones, not the z50 that the original post references.
The z50s have a built in 56k modem, and they have a PCMCIA slot for an ethernet card. I doubt they will play mp3s though, because the processor is slow. It will run a web browser, email, "pocket" MS Office, and other CE apps under CE. It's basically a cross between a subnotebook and palm device. It's very light, but offers a 6" screen or so with a decent keyboard. Well worth the money I think, especially with unix alternatives.
"In individuals, insanity is rare, but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs it is the rule." -Nietzsche
I don't know what your defination of cheap is, but you can get a Libretto (discontinued, or at least pulled from their website) or Sony Picturebook -now with 12 Gig HD. They will do everything you want.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
Yes it will play MP3's. Its a 131mhz vr4121 MIPS CPU - I think. The slowest part on all CE devices is the display subsystem. (You can even play mp3's on the old nino's and e10's - in mono)
what could be easier? Try doing that with Microsoft's windows.
with enough eyes, all new hardware is shallow : )
I don't know what kind of support there is for Linux at this very moment. At least not of the downloadable stuff. I leave that for the more knowledgeable people.
Transmeta was showing of a tablet at their presentation. I think you can still find it on their website. Now Linus (I think in an interview) said that the handwriting recognition software was better this week then the week before. Meaning that they work on it. If I am not mistaken the 400Mhz Crusoe was going to run the webpads using Mobile Linux. This means that there would be pen input for Linux in the near future.
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A commandline can be a very handy thing, didn't someone once say that 'the reason for windowing was to allow more xterms'?
If features of linux aren't needed, they can be deleted from the kernel, linux doesn't have to be restricted to being a 'server OS'.
Doubtlessly there are some companies using 'me too' factor, but alot of work has been done on embedded linux by other individuals,but linux is completely hackable, you can change it to make it fit your device - AND draw on previously written code, and lots of it - project managers love 'code reuse'....
just my $0.02
Why are everyone in such a rush to jump on the Linux bandwagon, and ignore the technical aspects?
Linux is derived from UNIX. UNIX is a server OS. It is multi-user, with tough security and relitivly high system overheads. Even getting it into a usable desktop OS is a pretty big hack, so why force a server OS onto a palmtop? What advantages do people think there are to using Linux on a palmtop? Maybe they'll provide an ethernet port and allow multiple users to telnet in? Didn't think so.
The only reason i can see for companies to use Linux is the "Me too!" factor involved.
Syllable : It's an Operating System
The itsy - did that have specifications? I think a project would be cool that was to make gpl circuit diagrams, so people can buy a crusoe cpu, compactflash card, ethernet driver and a touchscreen lcd - and make a hell funky pda.
:wq
I didn't notice any of the replies mentioning the Linux PDA announced by Samsung. No price mentrioned yet, but The Gadgeteer lists it, and it is fully described on the Samsung website at http://www.sem.samsung.co.kr/eng/product/digital/p da/index.htm
Yes. I do this routinely in the SF bay and other places I travel. I browse the web, and I read my POP3 email. I even get the first 100 characters of all my email sent to my phone - I now effectively have an 'email waiting' light (very cool) in my pocket at all times. there are several ways to do this, and I wrote up the way I went (a GSM + Psion PDA combo). The article discusses my 5mx, but I now use the smaller Revo. There is also a port of linux to this PDA family at www.calcaria.net (surprised no one has mentioned it).
I have an $800 Mitsubishi Amity with a 1.4 GB hard drive, a Pentium 133 and 32MB of RAM running a stock Mandrake 7.0 distribution. Why am I going to spend $800 (after I finish upgrading the system to have even less capability than the one I have now) for a machine that only runs experimental Linux ports?
Sounds like a loser move to me.
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
This post brings up a question that I have been wondering about, but haven't heard anything about. What kind of support is there right now for pen input in Linux? If Linux wants to make the jump to handheld/portable computers this is going to be an important part. Specifically is there hardware support at all and are there any opensourced handwriting recognition software projects? Anyone know? Thanks in advance.
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If you like your P90 notebook, I'm glad for you. But it's not comparable to the WorkPad by any stretch.
It will take years to get to 20,000 posts at this rate!
It is fairly straightforward. The NetBSD hpcmips crowd has been running on a wide variety of WinCE handhelds for a while. If you want to learn more, the web site and (more importantly) the mailing lists can help you out.
Reading this review points a few things that might be relevant.
1. 2.7 pounds.
2. No touchscreen.
3. Full keyboard.
This is NOT a palmtop folks. As a handheld it is more like a low power low graphic low memory low expansion ultralight, than a color palmpilot.
Certainly I could see some uses for a product like this, but since I see people in this discussion talking about handwriting recognition I would like to suggest they make sure they understand the specs. This one uses a nubby eraser pointer like thinkpads and such do.
For some reason the performance chart for this says it has handwriting recognition but since it doesn't have a touch screen that seems sort of a part of the OS and not really relevant to the piece of hardware we are talking about.
D
Unix is *NOT* a "server OS". Unix is a text processing system. Do your research.
Unix has "high overheads"? Compare it to MacOS or Windows, and laugh.
Why do I run NetBSD on my laptop, instead of Windows? Because it's a more flexible desktop platform. Why would I run Linux on a PDA, instead of Windows CE? Because it would be a more flexible platform - to say nothing of "more stable".
But mostly, you're just plain wrong about a "server OS". Unix isn't a server OS, it's a desktop/workstation OS that happens to scale well. MVS is a server OS.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
You don't want that space between the last * and =.
It comes preinstalled with Windows CE, but you can install NetBSD or Linux? Can you buy it prepackaged with NetBSD, or do you have to download and install it youself? How do you install it? This is a palmtop, remember. Do you install the files over the serial interface? Even after you have it installed, how do you interface with this thing? Does it have its own special version of X? Or is it just console commands? And why exactally would it be useful to have BSD or Linux on a palmtop anyways? Usually the palms proprietary OS does everything that the palmtop is supposed to do. Are you gonna be running Apache on your Workpad or what. C'mon people.
Last month, I bought a clearance laptop (Dell LM P90, 16 MB RAM, 1 Gig HD, and 640*480 active matrix display) for $500 Canadian.
I bought an extra ethernet/modem combo for 60$CDN and it runs linux (slackware) with X prefectly.
I don't know about these pda's or sub-laptops, but I think they must get a lot cheaper before they can compete with out-of-date computers.
you know, I would really like to have a little device such as this beast, but more important than low price or color screens or hard drive space is that my portable computer must be internet-enabled. I need to bea ble to reach the portable machine from the internet and I need to be able to reach the internet from the portable machine. is anyone out there doing this? does anyone have a plam with a minstrel, or a libretto with CDCP pcmcia hardware? how do you like it? are you able to run services on the mobile machine and connect to them from the rest of the internet?
this might be a bit off topic, but if anyone is doing this sort of thing, gimme a heads up.
(and yes, I've read homepages of several libretto+cdcp people; I know itspossible and it's being done, I just want to know if peopel are happy with it and hear some more experiences.)
Instant-on and extremely long battery life (8 hours on a single charge) make this a convenient device for those of us who deal with on-call support. A 56k modem would be nicer than the 33.6k modem built-in, but all-in-all, simple support activities aren't too painful at 33.6k. VNC is even bearable.
I have the Novatel Wirless Merlin PCMCIA CDPD modem in mine, but the usefulness is limited in Windows CE since TCP/IP applications for that platform are crappy at best.
Your P133 may suit your needs just fine, however it is not going to have instant-on or the long battery life afforded by the WorkPad z50. The people who will use this aren't going to use it as a primary workstation. It's going to be a slight step above a mobile thin-client.
Typical. He talks about the current NetBSD port thats working and mentions that there is a Linux port in progress so on the article title its "Inexpensive Linux/BSD Handhelds.
You are all in the wrong mindset and just posting because you think you are cool. =P Let me point out a few things about CE devices in general that will hopefully clear up a lot of confusion, I'll also make a few comments specifically about Linux & z50's...
On a CE device the RAM is SRAM not DRAM. So the RAM's state is maintained when you power down. So you install everything into RAM. (Unless you also have a compact flash card).
CE is loaded from ROM, and the ROM's are masked - meaning not flash upgradable. But the bootloader and OS are installed into ROM. SO to boot Linux or NetBSD you run a CE app which is a bootloader for a bsd/linux kernel which is on a compact flash or pcmcia card. (Don't even get me started on the lack of protection in CE that allows you to do this) There is hope, on the z50 the ROM card is removable. On some other CE devices its soldered on. So there's a possibility of people selling linux distro's for the z50 that you just pop in... that will be a long time coming though...
In response to a response below this level - IBM is not going to offer NetBSD or Linux as an install option. Ha! Keep dreaming. They have just dropped this device, why would they go on and bother to do development for a dead platform?
Also, yes you can play MP3's on it. It has a fast 131mhz r41xx MIPS chip. IMO its the display driver on all CE devices that makes them seem so slow. (Oh, and probably WinCE)
Oh, and this is not a palmtop. Its a Jupiter class device. Its a mini-notebook sized device. Roughly the size of a Sony VAIO...
Here's a screen shot of a developer running X on a z50: http://pc1.peanuts.gr.jp/~kei/Xscreen.gif
There's a review of it at Cnet