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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's a sweet little machine. I have spent all of 5 minutes playing with it as the day job is insane these days.
:)
I love the keyboard, and I love the size of the thing. A few things stick out as sore thumbs. One is that it needs some sort of carrying case. I guess I'll see if I can find one from a CE or Palm that it would fit nicely in.
Another is that while it attempts to do hand writing recognition, it's brain dead at it. Sure the keyboard is there, but I find it quicker to write on the screen being used to my Newton 2100. Would be nice if it had Graffitti (not sure it doesn't) or the ability to write text on the screen.
When you do HWR, you have to switch modes (a UI design no-no) and it splits your screen into two areas, one into which you write. Once it recognizes your handwriting - and it never does, it pastes the text into the currently open application. In other words, it's brain dead.
This would be a great area for improvement.
I totally love the color screen. The size and clarity of the display would be perfect for reading text, playing games (porting MAME would be awesome), and with the camera attachment - taking pix.
It would be really sweet if I could attach a small hard drive to this, like one of those IBM microdriver in some sort of backpack/cradle - then I could use it to see short mpegs, have some real mp3 storage, etc.
That it has an mp3 player is awesome, but CF and the secure flash lots limit how much you can store, so I won't be using this as my mp3.
Another annoyance is I find is that it doesn't fit very well into the cradle. You have to wiggle it a bit, and I'm afraid of breaking the connector...
It looks very promising though.
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.
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.
Iv'e not found anything particularly nice about WinCE or its included apps. I find Windows more difficult to program for than Linux, using GTK. I've not started programming with QT, but it looks as easy, maybe easier. I'll avoid the JVM.
/etc/pcmcia/* without a text editor. For instance, this would be nice:
I agree with your "quirks" assessment. As I mentioned earlier, it still needs some "fit and finish." For instance, a way to edit
1) insert Linksys 802.11b card
2) Zaurus sees if it is already listed in config files
3) if no, start a configuration app that asks what kind of device it is, etc.
4) zaurus modifies config files
... the same app could be used to view/configure already configured devices, or configure a device in advance of plugging it in. Or read an installer file from an SD or CF card that contains drivers for a new device. OR read installer packages on the device that came over from IntelliSync. Maybe they'll do things like this in the retail model. This is the developer model, the "D" on the model number is there for a reason. You have a pre-release device. They even cut the RAM in half (to 32MB) to encourage developers to write smaller apps. It absolutely rocks for a pre-release developer model. I can't wait to see the final version.
Also, as far as the remote-desktop thing goes, I can use VNC on the Zaurus to do the same thing, and it works with windows, macs and unix, unlike "Terminal Services."
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
As an open source developer, why would I want to develop for an embedded toolkit that almost nobody uses? A toolkit that's put out in this form as an advertising gimmick by a software company? A toolkit that takes over the screen and excludes all other open source GUI software?
And as a commercial developer, why would I want to develop for a toolkit that's more expensive than an MSDN subscription and is used on almost no platforms?
Sharp shot themselves in the foot when they picked Lineo and Qt/Embedded--there is no way this is going to attract a large developer following. They should have gone with X11/FLTK on Familiar or something combo like that. It's too bad, too, because the hardware is really nice.
The dead have risen, and they're reviewing handhelds! AAAHHHHHHH!!!!
The Free desktop that Just Works
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
Depending on where you are located it's possible you shouldn't be using your cell phone in the car anyway, let alone working on some DPA. Perhaps it would be beneficial to use the scheduling features of PDA's so that you are not pressed into making appointments and holding meetings while driving a car. If you're that important, then hire a driver so that you can really do your job while travelling.
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 ;)
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.)
Qt is still being released under the GPL to generate business for Qt from commercial customers. You may think that arrangement is pretty swell, I think it will ultimately kill Linux on handhelds if any commercial developer has to pay thousands of dollars before being able to create GUI software for something like the Sharp.
/can/ get Swing) is just too much of a pig. Still, you really want the widgets ... and Qt has 'em and they're tight and fast like you wish Swing would be.
Actually, buying the development unit entitles you to the development software. Even if that weren't the case, though, it's pretty much the same place you're standing if you were developing for PalmOS or WinCE/PPC. Somebody here was saying that QPE was more money than MSDN. Uh, have you received your MSDN bill recently? Sure, if you're getting the docs only subscription it's still relatively cheap, but if you want those compilers you better cough up a lung.
The best part about MSDN, for me, was sitting there opening my mail and watching the news and hearing that Microsoft had told the judge that they weren't a price-gouging monopoly. I opened my MSDN renewal invoice and in the span of one year the price had jumped 40%. That was the year that the last of the competitive Windows development tools producers gave up....
As a developer I am not especially turned off by the fact that the whole thing isn't open source. It's more important that it be open information. This tool is the most open of any of the palm devices I've seen; anyone with any Linux or UNIX experience at all is going to be able to make this thing do backflips.
Lots of people have been wondering where the market will be for this device, since Linux people are such a small market in and of themselves. I don't see that being the issue at all. We're the seed market, but the real market going out the door is going to be integrators and vertical market apps people. Java and superb 802.11b support? Damn, in a couple of weeks I could deploy this thing as a handheld database access tool with a custom application. And this can be done for about $600/unit ($100 less for the preproduction units). You can't touch the extensibility with the Palms and you can't touch the price with the PPCs.
And that, my friends, is going to sell units -- even if they don't do anything to the unit at all by the time it ships.
If there's any one thing I'd like to see, though, it would be Qt bindings for the Java interpreter. AWT sucks, and Swing (you
It's a very interesting unit.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com