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Agenda Linux PDA Finally Out
MacauMan writes "Finally, after six months delay, Agenda Computing has just
released the Agenda
VR3, which, if I'm not mistaken, is now the world's first
PDA that ships with a Linux OS. It sports a 66MHz MIPS processor and comes with 8MB
RAM and 16MB flash memory. It looks like a nice little box, and at
$249 the price is right. I just hope they sorted out all those little
problems they had with the developer model..." The folks at Agenda shipped me a review model and I'll try to have a report soon. So far I have mixed feelings: the UI isn't as smooth as a Palm or Wince system, but you can get a terminal, so its the only system where I can use ps and kill.
Its a nice little unit, but what is their target market? Aside from geeks, who is going to buy one of these instead of the more standardized palm or wince device? Do they include a tool to move all your palm data to their format, or are they assuming that the people buying the Agenda won't be upgrading from an existing device?
Oh yeah, and are we taking bets on how long till somebody is running apache on it?
and vice-versa!
The screenshots I took of Atari800 running on the Agenda were done by running the program on the Agenda, and displaying it on the Agenda.
Then, I ran "xwd" on the workstation, with the Agenda set as the display. A crosshair cursor popped up on my Agenda's LCD and I tapped the screen. "Beep!" "Beep!" Suddenly a ".xwd" screenshot image file was stored on my workstation!
In other words:
Developing for this PDA is a f**king breeze!
So when they say "Join the Linux revolution" and "free software movement", does this mean that all of the software on the machine is GPL or something similar, so that unlike Palm OS, when I want to change a built-in app I can (provided I have skillz)? I'm not finding a lot on their site that indicates one way or the other.
IIRC, Palm has the source to all of the on-board applications (and a lot of the games) included as part of the development kit, so you can indeed change the application to do whatever you want. Some of them have, as I believe there are several very nice calendar replacements available based on the 'stock' code. You can even get the source code to the OS as a liscenced developer - is it free? No, but the code is available.
Palm has actively supported the free tools; They could be nicer about the USB specs, but I don't know enough to comment on that.
You might want to check out Palm Open Source for more goodies. There a nice little market doing custom development for palms, now, too.
NOBODY has come out and offered what I really want - linux on a PDA with a nice keyboard, a la the Jornada! GCC to go, with a real keyboard. I could toss the vaio then.
..don't panic
At $249 the price is right???? I honestly have to say that at about $99 the price would be right. This is not meant as a slam on the product, I've never seen it, but I think these things need to get around $100 to really fly. Until then it's nothing but a geek toy, a cool toy, yes, but a geek toy nonetheless.
It would be interesting to allow multiuser access to this kind of device. I'm not sure at what level the ir communication is at, but it is certainly possible, and would be neat.
Too many people begrudge neat for it's own sake. I think that it's by playing with things that are neat, which we are passionate about, that we make the truley innovate advances.
I think that the ability to code for these things yourself is fantastic. Are there many tech companies who write client-oriented software for these things? Who do 'solutions?'
[haven't you tried FunWithPerl?]