Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

InfoSync Reviews Sharp Zaurus

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the wiping-the-spittle-off-the-lip dept.

Bill Kendrick writes "infoSync has just posted a very well-rounded (and long) review of the Sharp Zaurus PDA. Get out the kleenex - you'll be drooling." Gotta say, thats a sharp looking little device.

6 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. AmigaDE by yota · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The Zaurus in a (not so) near future should feature the new AmigaDE (DE=Digital Enviroment).

    Something about it is avaiable at http://www.amiga.com, any of you /.'ers know something more about this AmigaDE?

    Andrea

    1. Re:AmigaDE by Jhan · · Score: 2, Interesting

      any of you /.'ers know something more about this AmigaDE?

      Well, now that you mention it :-)

      The AmigaDE (Digital Environment), as some people have already commented, is really (currently) just TAO Elate®. However, Amiga is promising (and have been, for months and months, without being able to show anything, sigh) to add substantial value to Elate® (more on that later.) However, Elate® is cool enough in and of itself:

      Elate® is a cross platform framework much like Java. It fixes some major faults that both Java and C# has in common (if you can call .NET a cross-platform framework...). Someone should tell Sun and Microsoft both that if you are trying to construct a common platform that can be run on any processor, any hardware, any OS, you should not make it as large as possible, you should make it as slim and small as possible...

      Java and C# both have very high level concepts built right into their VMs, like OOP and advanced memory handling (garbage allocation), not to mention retrospection. TAO, OTOH has taken a very minimal approach to the problem. They have defined a virtual processor, with a virtual machine code. When an 'object file' written in this VP (virtual processor) code is loaded, it is statically converted to the machine code of the host processor and cached on disk.

      The code translation algorithm is so simple that one of their first (small but complete) VP->x86 translators was < 1kB. As mentioned the code is cached on disk, meaning that the next time the program is started, the cached native machine code version is run.

      Elate® does have a few bells-and-whistles above pure machine-codeness though... An Elate® VP object file is called a 'ToolBox' (library). It contains Tools (functions). Each ToolBox has its own name space, meaning that you can have same-named tools (functions), if they are in different ToolBoxes (libraries).

      All this was about Elate®, what about Amiga? Well, they intend to do three things:

      1: Elate is very basic. It does not contain many of the things you would expect in a modern OS. So Amiga will provide AFC, the Amiga Foundation Classes, a class hierarchiy covering most everything.

      2: Amiga will provide content (buzzword joy!) for the Amiga-enabled platforms. In reailty this means that a few months ago, Amiga pleaded (not too strong a word) on every Amiga news channel for any remaining developers to write PDA-ish games for DE (Elate). Some have. Some of these games are even great!

      3: Amiga will provide a content distribution system, where you can easily buy single programs on the Internet (from your PDA-ish device) and have them installed. A feotal version of this is the DE Shop.

      Oh, and as side note, the TAO Java Engine compiles Java classes into VP code, and then into native ML. It is one of the best performing JVMs in the world.

      --

      I choose to remain celibate, like my father and his father before him.

  2. Re:To any employee of Sharp ... by rhadamanthus · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Interestingly, if you were actually inclined to send them an email, you can only contact them via forms from the website, rather than sending an email. However, since the site supposedly "requires" IE, those who wish to "comment on the site" with regards to the lack of other browser support can't. What a way to minimize complaints! (oh and don't make fun of me. I am at work, and therefore am forced to use IE...)


    --------------rhad

    --
    Slashdot needs to interview Natalie Portman.
  3. Zaurus is the future of PDA's by jamesdood · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I have been using a zaurus for about a month now..
    It is nice to have a machine with robust networking built in as opposed to the M$ pocketpc which is so slow it isn't even funny.. The consumer version should be cleaner than the development version but hey when you can run a webserver from a PDA that is extremely cool.. I can see the future of truly useful PDA's in the enterprise and the future is Linux!!

    --
    *narf!*
  4. Re:To any employee of Sharp ... by abischof · · Score: 4, Interesting

    BTW, this Sharp nonsense is Tech Evangelism bug 63915 at Mozilla.org.

    --

    Alex Bischoff
    HTML/CSS coder for hire

  5. Re:puns by cosmo7 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    freakier than that. from one of their websites:

    The Sharp Corporation was founded in 1912 by Tokuji Hayakawa and takes its name from one of our founder's first inventions, the Ever Sharp propelling pencil, developed in 1915.