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Retail Sharp Zaurus Released

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the little-is-better dept.

Arminius writes "It looks like Sharp has finally released the Linux based Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 for retail sale. This thing is so awesome! Other than only being able to listen to mp3's thru my headphones only, this thing blows away my iPaq 3835! It even has Opera as the web browser. "

2 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. Supports only Windoze Media files?!!?! by anticypher · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Not that the site likes my browsers all that much[netscape4.78 or IE4.0 on slowlaris], but from poking around it seems to only play Windoze Media files, but not .wav, mp3, or any other kind of audio file. Synch is proprietary, and the only synch agents run on windoze, etc.

    There may be some linux on this, but it seems to be completely crippled as a walkman/rio replacement. There are a ton of other limitations, and no mention of linux pretty much anywhere on the official site.

    Until I see some glowing reviews from independent sources, I'm sticking with pencil and notebook :-)

    the AC

    --
    Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
  2. Sharp "we are proprietary" Zaurus by mmusn · · Score: 2, Flamebait
    When I visit their site with Mozilla 0.9.9, I get an error message that they only support IE and Netscape4. And for their handheld, they chose a window system that excludes most open source toolkits from co-existing on the same screen.

    Looks to me Sharp is trying to milk open source for its advertising value, but somehow they just don't get it.

    Thanks, but I'll have a look at the new Sony instead. Commercial developers don't have to pay money to develop for the Sony, and it's a cool piece of hardware anyway.