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Review Of The Sharp Zaurus 5000D
Tim_F writes: "Palmstation has a nice review of the recently available development release of the Sharp Zaurus 5000D. This device looks sweet, with QT Embedded, and Lineo Embeddix. It also features a full JVM based on JDK 1.1.8." Any readers out there who have managed to try one of these out as well?
It has a number of nice features for this application:
Adding a single PCMCIA slot and wireless card to an iPaq increases the cost to $850/unit and yields a device with no free slots, but 802.11b networking.
Adding a wireless card to this Zaurus yields a device with networking and one free slot (an SD slot) for $500. Plus, its noticeable smaller and lighter, and much easier to hold for a long time. Only problem so far: the 802.11b card blocks the stylus slot.
Now we just need apps! apps! apps! so that Sharp will ship this thing retail and sell them at best buy. It includes all the usual stuff - address book, calendar, todo list, email (pop/smtp), etc. Also includes games, like asteroids (everyone in my office found the asteroids game almost immediately). It just needs "fit and finish."
Sync over 802.11b would be a nice trick. Currently it uses Intellisync over USB, using 192.168.1.200 and 192.168.1.201 as the unit and host addresses for its private network. It would seem that a major corporate nice-thing would be to have a sync server for the Zaurus, so that employees could just walk near an access point and get things synced.
Anyway, it's easily the nicest PDA I've seen, and held.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Uhhh... you may want to go look a the article and/or the pics on the Sharp website.
;)
This PDA has a nice little tuck-away QWERTY keyboard... built in... so no "5 minutes using graffiti" required.
The download size of the file
jre-1_1_8_008-win.exe = 2,764,736 bytes.
j2re-1_4_0-beta3-win.exe = 9,156,008 bytes.
j2re-1_4_0-beta3-linux-i386.bin = 21,550,344 bytes.
This could be of some concern for a PDA.
Of course, all those numbers apply only for x86 CPUs an were not optimised for size.
Lastly, the VM is based on JDK 1.1.8, which is a (industry) standard, and not necessarily a JRE.
In other words, the VM may be quite new.
Now the question, why did they use a full fledged Java-enviroment instead of the Java 2, Micro Edition? Probably, because the device can handle it.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Certain folks in Cupertino can't be happy about this. Java doesn't seem to be winning much acceptance in hand-held application development. Given the failure of Java in other markets, the technology seems to be limited to writing business logic for app servers and hacking out specialized XML editors and filters.
Here's my review of the Sharp Zaurus. Maybe it sucks, and that's why it wasn't published as a Slashdot story? Anyway, you can read it for yourself.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
Actually there is no significant difference between JDK118 and J2ME. Minor security classes.
The major addition to J2SE was Swing, which nobody in their right mind would use on a PDA. Unfortunately most RADs only emit Swing code. However for PDA you're talking hand-written small code (AWT).
I just got back from the LISA '01 conference and there was a guy (can't remember his name...) that had a SHARP there. He had received it on Thursday before the conference and was showing it off at the Linux on Handhelds BOF.
I got a chance to use it and it was quite nifty. The thumb keyboard is very usable. I opened a terminal window and was able to type in a few stock UNIX commands, no problems. The keyboard's main problem was a lack of control keys and the escape key. They may be there with some funny mapping, but I couldn't find them in the few minutes I had to play with the device.
The other impression I got was how well built the device is. It's much stronger than it looks and the slide that hides the keyboard has a nice solid feel to it.
I'm planning on ordering one in the next few days...
I was one of the lucky few invited to the Symposium they held the day before the Internet World Wireless West conference in San Jose last week (many, was that place desserted! - and, not too surprisingly, Sharp's booth was by far the kick-ass-est). (Not doubt because of all of the random Linux development I've done, including stuff for the Agenda (another Linux-based PDA).
As for the hardware, it's quite sturdy (compared to my poor, beat up dev. edition of the Agenda), and the keyboard is a godsend. (I knew I'd love it, because I have a pager with a similar keyboard, and love it.) Now - the onscreen keyboard, pickboard, unicode and handwriting aren't to sneeze at, though. They're quite useful!
It's just, when you whip out your PDA, turn it on to show off its color screen, and then pop out the keyboard, THAT's when people's eyes bug out. ;^)
Anyway.. I love it. Expect plenty of games for it from me once I get my USB, development environment, etc. set up. (Oh, and learn Qt and that damned C++ language.)
It is not JDK 1.1.8 on that device, it is Insignias Jeode runtime version of Personal JAVA, which is in most parts JRE 1.1.8 compliant (and JRE, not JDK).
PJ is a (though almost complete) subset designed for use with embedded devices.
Taking a fully bloated JDK/JRE of tha JAVA2 environment would require the device to be extended with much more memory and CPU power- Swing is a beast here.
Oliver