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New Linux PDA Available
Jacob writes: "I just ran across an article about a new Linux-based PDA called the Powerplay III Linux PDA. The PDA is manufactured in Taiwan but is being sold by Canadian Linux company, Empower. This PDA is Palm IIIxe compatible (dragonball processor), is shipped with Empower's Linux DA O/S, and get this: its only $89! I'll be getting one..." We mentioned this operating system a few weeks ago. They now have some sort of source download available, which seems like a step in the right direction.
Have you seen the license agreement to download the "SDK"??
http://www.linuxda.com/download/SDK_agree.html
Seems like all those restrictions just maaaaaaaybe against the GPL...
-=-=-=-=-
My mom's going to kick you in the face!
"...makes me wonder if it is real or not...."
and here, brothers and sisters, is as succinctly as it could be said, the reason why trying to crack an existing market in technolgy products is so tough....
i (and all my friends) usually expect our "devices" to have a major brand name on them...
whether that name is Sony or Palm or Compaq or Casio or Nintendo or Atari
it's up to us to take a chance, roll the dice on the $89, and if it's cool or even just usuable...
WE HAVE TO TELL EVERYONE WE KNOW
Ten quid, she's so easy to blind. And not a word is spoken...
A cheap Linux PDA is certainly an interesting path to go, but there are some issues based on that data sheet:
"6 month Linux DA O/S software upgrade" - This better be a stable OS if you only get 6 months of upgrades (setting aside whatever license restrictions there are)
8MB RAM and 2MB flash seems a bit small. Doubling the RAM wouldn't be very expensive, but you'd see a large performance increase (speaking from my work with the Agenda VR3). I'm not suggesting that Linux can't run in that space, but it might prevent much in the way of third party applications (assuming that it doesn't contain any software on a ROM chip).
For the price, however, it would be a good choice for a regular user (read: non-hacker). Most of the people who use it probably won't care that it's Linux anyway.
-Sean
The OS is not under that license.
Where on that site is the technical info about the device? i.e. how much RAM, what resolution, what peripherals, and so on? It's nice it runs Linux and all, and is only $89, but I'd like to try to figure out just how many e-books it would hold. :)
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The Dragonball CPU used in here doesn't have an MMU, which means that you don't get all kinds of things like memory protection, demand paging, fixed address executables etc. Oh, no fork() either. No glibc, so porting gets harder too.
Don't get me wrong; ucLinux is still very cool, but it's not in the same league as the Agenda VR3, VTech Helio, or mono iPaq. Of course, they're all at least double the price....
Altogether, I'd stay away. If you want a nice, functional Linux PDA, take a look at the Agenda. HP also will be coming out with a real Linux PDA.
At this time, PowerPlay III PDA is available for shipping to US and Canadian residents ONLY.
*Taxes not included. Prices are subject to local taxes. Shipping and handling costs will be added to the final price.
And then there was nice little box where you could add the quantity of products you wish to buy.. Allthou they dont ship the damned product outside US and Canada. I would have ordered it right away.
Anyone have previewed this thing allready ?
yush
You can afford $99 on a product that very well may be a piece of crap and has only the built-in apps, but not $149 on something that has a proven record of being a pretty nice PDA with tons of users and apps behind it? I mean christ, at least wait until a review comes out, so you can hear if they even ship you one after they take your cash! But then again, it runs Linux, so it must be good, eh?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Allah forbid you use something that is popular! What would all the other kids at school think?!?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
If you're looking to waste money on a piece of junk, with your rationale being that it's "still cheaper than any MS license fee," please send me $75, and in return I will send you something fun. It may or may not be useful, but not only is it "cheaper than any MS license fee," it is also cheaper than one of these puppies! With deals like this, how could you even consider passing it up?
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
That is the way Graffiti is implemented on the Newton. Why one would bother with Graffiti on a Newton is beyond me- the actual HWR (not character-recog) is a lot faster and far more natural. But if one chooses to use Palm Computing's Graffiti, the window can be moved around whever the user chooses.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
..if you want a real Linux PDA, the Agenda VR3 is the way to go. It's designed from the ground up for Linux, and 100% open-source.
I just recieved mine a few days ago because I thought it would be a cool toy, not expecting it to to useful as a PDA. Fortunately it is useful for both, however. If you've read negative reviews of the VR3 indicating otherwise, keep in mind that the system has improved greatly since the initial release.
A few good and bad points to keep in mind if you're thinking of getting one:
The good:
The bad:
-Karl
If you shop around, you can get a mono iPAQ for less than twice the price.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Doesn't it actually look like an artist's mockup? Plus, those buttons look suspiciously like Visor's...
After all, that's probably what Palm is doing with BeOS now... I can't wait to see what comes out.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
For 89 bucks, and it's the equal of a palm IIIx? Hell, my visor doesn't even have flash memory.
If the hardware's palm-compatible, one could, I imagine, grab the rom out of a real IIIx and jam it in there. rock.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
A lot of people on here are say that there are no apps, and why would you buy one of these. I haven't been a big proponent of linux PDAs for home users. However, businessed have a needs that involve to rolling out PDAs to their employees, and in these cases, linux PDAs are the best fit. Since there is little licensing involved in the OS, they can typically beat a Palm or CE device by $50. When you have to roll out to a couple hundres people, that can make a difference, especially with todays budgets. Since the software typically has to be custom built anyways, the number of native applications doesn't matter. In fact, sometime less apps is better, since people are then using their PDAs for their work.
-no broken link
There's underfunding, and then there's underfunding. If the operation just has a few flaky aspects here and there, well, OK, maybe they're just concentrating their money where it can do the most good.
But if they're leaving huge garbage files in their source tree -- and distributing same -- they obviously have problems in their R&D, QA, and Integration departments.
In fact, if a company has a slick exterior, but makes a lot of bad engineering mistakes, I'd be very wary of them. Especially if they claim to be able to sell Linux-based, Palm-Compatible PDAs for a hundred bucks! These are all symptoms of a company that is making all kinds of absurd plans in the hope that it will attract funding.
However, the anemic amount of RAM seems to be an important downside.
If this thing works at all like the Palm Vx works, 8M is more than plenty for over 90% of its intended audience.
My Vx has all manner of applications loaded, games, time/expense tracking, email, development, etc. and I've still got 3 or 4 megs free.
I just installed the LinuxDA demo on my Palm IIIxe. Here are some observations.
First off, The demo is very annoying. About every 15-20 seconds, a message that takes up the entire screen pops up and says, "LinuxDa... a demo copy for limited use... blah blah". I seriously don't think this stuff is GPL. Their license is on their site here.
Second, the UI sucks. I'm not sure why Linux UI implementations have to be so cumbersome. But this one is no different. The drop-down menus are hard-to-control. Often times, selecting a drop-down menu item requires several taps. The UI is 'Palm-like', but it fails horribly in a few key areas of navigability.
Third, I have sent an email off to LinuxDA asking them if they have a shell interface to the RAM filesystem. The demo doesn't have one. Their 'full' version doesn't appear to have one, either. I also asked about whether or not LinuxDA has a TCP/IP stack, or ethernet support. Again, I saw nothing like that in the demo or in the specs of their full version.
So far, my conclusion is thumbs down. I don't like it. Yeah, its Linux, but it sucks right now.
If they give me a shell. If they give me a TCP/IP stack, and ethernet support... then I'm on board. I'm not sure what good Linux on a handheld is without those three things.
So, i've always got that. as you say 8M is plenty for over 90% of its intended audience. i suppose i'm in that 10% then. oh well. such is life.
Actually I consider myself in that 10% as well; I have had under 100k of memory left but after working with the palm for a while I realized I didn't need all that shit in memory and tossed a good portion of it. I think the vast majority of people would be happy with 4M; the 8M versions are for people who have enormous addressbooks or very (very!) busy schedules.
8M doesn't sound like a lot but think about it: Reading books on it sucks and GIS information is best viewed in colour. It hasn't got the processor power to crunch huge databases and it's designed to be an extension to a computer, not a standalone computer itself. I haven't been able to find a really heavy appication to that works well on it. Hell even with the folding keyboard PocketC still blows. :-)
he only thing really missing on teh embedded front at this point are development tools...that said, the GPASM and Atmel tools for Linux are quite nice.
I've been pestering both Microchip and Advanced Transdata for the specs on their ICE-2000 and Rice17 respectively. Nothing to date. However I believe that I can muck with the VMWare parallel port module and have it timestamp and dump all communications in both directions. After that, I'd like to try my shot at using KDevelop and create a debugger/IDE without the inconsistencies that both MPLAB and Rice17 has.
If anyone has any more information on the protocol that either of these ICEs use, I'd love to hear from you.
I doubt a review made by a person who bought something purely on the basis of it running Linux or the fact that it was dirt cheap would be unbiased. A lot of the times, it's a web site or a magazine which reviews these things first. And why not? That's what review articles are for. Often enough, they get a free demo unit to keep or borrow, where individuals do not. But I suppose it's good for some irrational boobs or a magazine/website to waste her money than me.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad