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Bad Review for the Zaurus
higginsx writes "Sharp's new Linux PDA, the Zaurus SL-5500, gets pretty bad marks from The Wall Street Journal's tech columist Walter Mossberg. He doesn't get much into the OS (other than complaining it wouldn't synch up with his laptop), but concludes that "it failed to do the simple things well. It has a high price, a complicated user interface, and hefty dimensions and weight. Even the cool-looking keyboard turns out to be clumsy to use."" I still really want
to try one out since I don't expect I'll ever sync a Zaurus to Outlook.
I just got one of these at JavaOne last week. I agree that for a Windows business user (suit) it is probably not the best choice. But for a techie that wants to hack a little, they are awesome.
Does it really matter that it runs linux if it sucks as a PDA? It might have a Gee-Wiz cool factor, but if it sucks it sucks.
Although it is sad to see the Zaurus getting a bad review, this was more or less to be expected. After all the modified version of RTLinux that is included with the Zaurus may offer small footprint, but most people will concur that it's not quite ready for production use yet. I believe Sharp rushed it to market. With development cost on the Zaurus approaching $100 million though, who can blame them.
Pushin' 'n dealin', shovin' 'n stealin'
This guys sounds like he has some sort of chip on his shoulder. Just say that
you had problems synchronizing, don't go on bashing the company with
comments like "they obviously don't care about syncing". It's because of
idiots like this guy that a lot of the smaller companies have problems getting
market share..
If this was a Microsoft product, he would have been ALL OVER IT,
touting 101 advantages and ignoring any bugs, saying "Well I'm sure Microsoft
will have these fixed for the next version..."
*SIGH*
I have a Zaurus and have owned WinCE devices in the past as well. For a first commercial release I think the Zaurus is well done. WinCE and PocketPC sucked pretty bad early in their lifetimes, so I think the Qt/Embedded will improve with age. It will probably also improve rather rapidly with the gaggle of open source developers that will add apps and enhancements on their own schedule compared to the 2-3 years that it took Microsoft to make PocketPC usable.
There are some valid criticisms there. I'm still using my Clie as a PDA, but the Zaurus is great and will only get better. The US Robotics Pilot sucked when it first came out, but it evolved into an essestial tool over time. I hope the Zaurus evolves that way too. I'd like to see a smaller form factor, better s reen res, metal cases, and a way to place the display on hold while playing music. The battery life needs to improve dramatically, especially when using a wireless card.
That said, not many PDAs give you both CF and SD slots. Embedix/Qt is a great OS for the PDA, and I hope it grows and rivals Palm OS and Pocket PC.
"You done taken a wrong turn."
-Bill McKinney, in Deliverance
I still really want to try one out since I don't expect I'll ever sync a Zaurus to Outlook.
Welcome to the minority. Just because we may not want to, some people will. So, one has to decide between marketing for a (possibly unprofitable) niche market or just making something that will work with any Windows laptop so people can carry their outlook address books around.
I applaud Sharp for their work but if this thing is big and clunky, then they should go back to the drawing board.
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
Got one. Like it. I'm not sure why the reviewer has the troubles he does. I didnt have any troubles with syncing to outlook. Course I'm running 2000 for my gaming partition. On the size issue, I have large hands. Very large hands. I don't mind having a larger palm device, because it simply makes it easier to use. On the keyboard, 1) I like having the thumb board and find the position is more natuaral for thumboarding. Of course I'm of the gaming generatin with mutant thumbs :).
The interface is KDE riffic. I suppose for a dedicated windows user, it might take a few hours of use to get used to where everything is, but again I'm not sure thats such hurdle.
Finally battery life.. COuld be longer, but hey its a battery on a device with a fair amount of power, thats life. I don't expect to use a pda as a walkman with visualization anyway.
Finally on applications, I'm guessing the review never saw the host of applications for a newton just after release :) or Wince when it was released. These things take time, and the Zaurus provides, IMHO a better platform for coding applications to begin with. In a few months stuff will be out there.
It sounds like the review just had a product that wasn't suitable for him. Letsface it the guy went to a manual to figure out hius synchronization problems, perhaps he'd be better off with simpler products that will fit in his shirt pocket or wherever he keeps his PDA. Thats fine, I just feel that this review had alot more to do with the reviewers personal bias/ignorance rather than an objective evaluation of the product.
On the other hand, why the hell was I reading the WSJ for a technology product review... talk about mismatch between product and end user.
As a long time WSJ subscriber (both online and in print), I can tell you that Walt Mossberg's reviews are always thorough and fair. As a technology consultant I'm lucky enough to get the oportunity to test many of the same products he reviews.
This is another review where I think Walt is right on. The Zaurus SL-5500 is making the same mistake made by M$ with their PDA, mainly that the user interface is too complicated. The Palm OS is still the standard for simplicity as far as the GUI is concerned.
I can't speak for the issue of Outlook sync. However, if it's advertised on the box and in the company press release, there should at least be some documentation on how to get it to work.
I hope the word LINUX doesn't scare the average user away from using the product. I'm afraid that poor documentation will only make people fear it more.
If the Linux community wants a broader acceptance of the platform then we have to stop with the attitude that something is good enough because a nerd can figure it out.
Remember... ZG9uJ3QgZm9yZ2V0IHRvIGRyaW5rIHlvdXIgb3ZhbHRpbmU=
A review like that in the WSJ is almost a death sentance for a PDA.
I know all you Linux users are geeked out by the fact that it runs Linux, but PDAs are about simplicity of use, and compatability. If this unit from Sharp (who, in my opinion has always been a third rate electronics manufacturer) is as big and as clumsy as the reviewer says it is, it has almost zero chance of adoption.
This is a PalmOS and (God help us) WindowsCE market.
Think about the corporate buyer. These guys are conservative. They don't want something not mainstream, and a PDA not running PalmOS or WINCE is NOT mainstream. Nobody wants to get crap from his CEO about the PDA choice. Guess what else, the CEO doesn't give a crap that it runs Linux. All he knows is that his other CEO buddies have WINCE and PalmOS PDAs and wants to know why his company isn't doing what everybody else is.
This market simply doesn't and shouldn't care all that much about what OS the PDA is running. Its a big geek factor to run Linux, but was it really a good choice? Probably not.
I guess you intimated that with your second statement, I'm just saying that it was never a misuse by the user, just a lacking feature from the manufacturer. If users want to sync to Outlook, then 'but it's Linux!' should be met by the valid argument 'Then don't use Linux!'
I realise that Linux as an OS does not prevent the syncing, and that a bridge could be written, but you get my point.
Geez, I have been using the Zaurus for a little while now and it has been nothing but flawless. There is nothing the PocketPC can do that this can't. The Zaurus gives me a shell that now supports ssh.
But for the "consumer" wall street crowd.
I have the Wireless LAN Compact Flash card - sweet. the MAME port - yes Frogger and MsPacMan. the keyboard is actually better than the RIM Blackberry version. I can view/edit MS Word and Excel and even view Powerpoint slides. make sure you upgrade the memory though for this. I can play mp3, watch movies and do voice recordings. I have synched with my Palm and Outlook books w/o a problem. The TFT screen is the best I have seen on a PDA to date.
I guess we just want to make sure Walter files his 1099. hehe....
seriously Walter - what are you smoking???
Mossberg's right on with most of his points. There is an accepted feature set that PDAs must provide or they just aren't useful to the average user. And one of those features is syncing to Outlook.
His second point is that by using a completely new operating system, they lock out users from the thousands of existing Palm and Windows CE programs. Once again, we have the "no apps for it, so nobody buys it, so nobody programs apps for it" circle.
Palm managed to overcome that by providing most of the useful features (like syncing with Outlook) out of the box...and with the sheer coolness factor of owning a PDA.
Microsoft overcame that simply by taking the loss necessary to keep their handhelds on the market until their market share got bigger. And by adding features to Windows CE devices that Palm didn't want to, like media players.
Sharp didn't serve its customers well by putting Linux on this device.
We're not doing Zaurus and favors by dismissing Mossberg's comments as ignorant bunk. Mossberg is very well regarded and, more importantly, influences a huge section of Zaurus' intended market segment. From what I've seen, behind articles that have been dumbed-down to the technical level of the average WSJ reader is a journalist that really understands his stuff.
/. we might not get to see it in an improved second iteration. Let's drop the assumption that Linux products can do no bad, start accepting constructive criticism and focus on making products, software, etc. that will force praise for Linux and our community from even the most skeptical.
This is a first iteration product and if it only manages to appeal to the folks here on
He's given honest, reliable, reviews in the past so I see no reason to consider this to be a hyped up Ziff-style garbage piece. After seeing so many articles that just aren't well researched, I'll take one that is -- even if the review is not positive.
On the other hand, this is a first release for a fairly complex device, so I'd expect a few changes in the hardware and quite a few software changes. If they come gratis to the current Zaurus owners (and those soon to be), that would be good thing. That said, there are trade offs in any design so I don't expect all the gripes WM had to be addressed at all.
My main concern with Sharp is thier web page rejecting perfectly valid browsers. That alone has cooled me to considering a Zaurus myself.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Even better, let's not allow all those people "who dont know about PDAs" to use PDAs at all. This way we are guaranteed to only have reviews praising things just because they have an L*word associated with them. Forget about the fact that the average shipping volume on all those Zauri and Yopis will be approx. two dozens.
Anyone capable of getting Perl working on their PDA is probably quite technologically aware.
Perhaps the Geek Gods should be a little less condecending to us mere mortals.
--- My dad's political betting
I'm somehow disappointed in the Wall Street journal for making this man a Tech columnist. I understand that most people aren't tech savy and that news usually is for the masses. However for a tech writer to talk about Linux by calling it, "the renegade operating system that many techies worship.", is beyone my comprehension. In this day and age Linux is no more renegade than any other OS. Linux is increasingly becoming the OS behind big businesses, and especially the web. With companies like IBM, and Sun backing it, and with companies like Amazon and Merrill Lynch using it, to call it renegade only illustrates how ignorant he is. If you don't like Sharp's PDA fine, but don't knock an OS because you didn't like one experience with it.
Firstly, POSE and XPilot require a Palm ROM to operate. Because Palm would be none too eager to provide the competition with their ROMs, Sharp or its users would have to do it illegally.
Secondly, it doesn't allow the user to run their conduits, so many of these applications would be crippled at best.
Thirdly, the emulators are not perfect from an emulation point of view and also generally have problems from an interface stand point.
I get the feeling the thing uses Linux so you want it to succeed so much. This guy doesn't like it and makes some perfectly valid points as to why not and you're ready to thrash him.
Syncing to Outlook or anything else on a PC is not a pipe dream - it should be the one task this thing does best (I own an iPaq and I hate Microsoft's ActiveSync, yet it does the job). It's not "unreasonable" to expect a PDA to do that at all.
And then they just fulfill their own expectations by being too critical of things that they knew Palm and Wince did better (like the whole sync to Outlook thing).
The dude is thinking as a consumer, because that's what they pay him to do. He's not looking that the PDA from the POV of a 1337 kernel h^xx0r.
Is it possible to look at it from a different angle?
Not really. This is an end-consumer product for people who buy PDAs. There's no "other angle" regardless of how much you want one to exist.
64Meg will allow it to serve as a fair MP3 player. Maybe it's just that a WSJ guy doesn't want one of those.
64MB is pathetic for an MP3 player.
the comparison is becoming more valid because this thing is powerful enough to run Emacs and a Java compiler, so I really can do work on it...
I hope Sharp finds three of four hundred thousand people like you, although finding them among the "I want free everything" crowd and then asking them to shell out north of $500 is going to prove difficult. Otherwise this thing will be DOA.
Consumer embedded Linux has a long way to go to catch up to WinCE and a longer way still to catch up to Palm. It's not going to happen overnight.
"Begs the question" refers to how, if you use part of your conclusion to form part of your premises, and say that these premises prove your conclusion, then other rational listeners will point out that the question of whether the conclusion is justified is still open. Essentially, you have stated a circular argument, but in such bald terms that your listeners cannot help but ask if you have really accomplished anything. You have practically begged them to question your conclusions.
Or at least that's how it makes sense to me. It is a confusing term, which maybe shouldn't be used as much as it is. But we will be even more confused if we use the term to start meaning something else at this point.
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
As I said above, the WSJ is where the target market (guys with more money than sense) get a LOT of their info. Clueless or not, this matters to the Zarus' future.
I don't think that Mossberg is clueless, though his articles are definitely dumbed down. His advise has always struck me as sensible for folks with money but no clue. That is, I can do better than follow his advice, and so could my father, but not my mother or uncle.
The inventor of the Palm, Jeff Hawkins, didn't design the hardware and then the system software and then say "now that I'm done with everything else, I'll come up with a way the user should interact with the device". He started the palm project by fashioning a block of wood in a rough Palm-shape and carrying it around with him and thinking about how the user would interact with it in the real world. Only after he came up with the interaction model did they really proceed to design the Palm hardware and the Palm UI.
Any real UI designer is going to tell you that you must always design the interface and work out the user interaction before a single line of code is ever written. The same goes with a PDA, and then you have to add "before you ever design the hardware" to that provision.
One must also consider that PDA's and desktops PC's have an entirely different set of design constraints for their interfaces. One constraint is size: A type of widget that is perfectly clickable with a mouse at its 40x40 pixel desktop PC size is a target that is nearly impossible to hit at a 5x5 with a stylus and should not be used on a handheld just because it is familiar to someone who has used a desktop pc. Another PDA design constraint is time: people using PC's accept badly designed interfaces because they plan half a day around kludging their way through their task. People accept that computers are awkward and slow to use, and are able to plan they way around it. People using PDA's often don't have the luxury to plan when they're going to use their technology. They might have 20 seconds and not any more to get down an important phone number. My point is that the laws of physics for desktop machines and for PDA's are entirely different. Anyone who is too much of a clueless newbie (like many of the failed linux PDA developers) to understand this is really nothing more than marketplace cannon-fodder.
I will admit I haven't used a Sharp Zaurus, but from just looking at the layout of the buttons and looking at how the TrollTech embedded interface is designed (i.e. mirroring a full-size desktop interface) I can pretty much say that Sharp/Trolltech is guilty of the same thing that killed the Agenda Vr3: "We'll design the hardware and the basic user interface first and worry about creating the interface later." What Sharp and Trolltech really need to make the Zaurus succeed is a good block of wood.
People call the reviewer clueless. They say "he doesn't take the time to learn thing x or adapt himself to thing y". The real clueless newbies who don't want to learn are linux programmers who refuse to learn how to design usable interfaces for PDA's. Any attempt to deny the truth of this point will only further prove the truth of this post.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Allow me to be opinionated for a minute. It appears that this device suffers from the same problem that a lot of distros suffer from...poor or even NO user interface design. I can't quite figure out why people that are working on linux continue to ignore the fact that real people might actually try to use some of their creations...not just gear-head alpha geeks.
Don't get me wrong, linux is great, the whole community behind open source and the religion that is open source is just dandy. But people! get on the clue wagon, will ya? Somebody start an open source design group or something...these poor geeks doing all the work need help!!!
Say it with me "consistency" "ease of use"...there, that wasn't so bad...