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Review Of The Sharp Zaurus 5000D

Posted by timothy on from the sharp-but-not-dangerous dept.

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?

2 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. I have one of these... by bc90021 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    And I've been using it for half a week now. Some things to note:

    • The handwriting recognition isn't that bad. It requires you to train the device for certain characters if you want your own handwriting to work, but that doesn't take much time.
    • IBM MicroDrives work with no problem. I have a 340MB version, and several other Zaurus owners have reported the 1GB version working. (Though they drain the battery quickly.)
    • There are already tons of programs that have been ported. SSH, Telnet, Seminole Web Server, Jikes, Python, BitchX, Konqueror, NMap, and Perl to name just a few.
    • The keyboard is really easy (and actually kinda fun) to use!
    • The synching for Windows could use a little work, but it is a developer's model. Someone has already patched the 2.4.x kernels to allow USB networking over Linux in order to connect it to a Linux box, so it is now Linux friendly. :)
    • The "Word Game" that comes with it (like Scrabble) has been very addicting!
    • It is easily 80% of the size of a typical WinCE handheld, and includes two expansion slots (one CF and one SD) by default.

    Overall, it's a very neat little device. Since it is only a developer's version, it still has its few kinks to work out. But I won't be buying another PDA for a good long time.
    --
    libertarianswag.com
  2. Zauru by mduckworth · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hey, My roomate has the japanese equivalent, the Zaurus MI-E1 which has been out in japan for over a year now. He was over there last winter. He has all sorts of attachments for it including the Compact flash digital camera. This device is pretty amazing, the japanese one has an SH processor and runs ZaurusOS but it's very very sweet. Full screen mpeg4 video is not a problem for it. It's very fast, and this american one should be faster and a lot more amazing. These things put Ipaq's to shame, trust me ;)