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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.
Given that some of the responces here say that people have synced with outlook with no problem, could his problem be with the fact that it is outlook on XP?
Anybody got one that can try?
I'd not use it, but it would be fun to show how picky (it dosen't work for MY setup) a journalist could be.
"...why the hell was I reading the WSJ for a technology product review... talk about mismatch between product and end user."
Actually in many ways you are completley wrong on this point. The end user is a guy who travels, does a lot of appointments, etc. That means CEOs, salesdorks, CFOs, and the like.
A bad review like this in the WSJ, means the when Joe Techie walks up to the CEO or CFO with a purchase order for 50 of the little Sharp Zaurus PDAs, he is going to be told NO.
Thats the thing that the Journal does. It reaches the non-techies, and guess what, they hold the purse strings. If you can't come up with a killer reason (other than Linux) to own a Zaurus over a Palm or other more mainstream PDA, your NOT going to get approval to buy the device.
Corporate purchase and acceptance of a PDA is what is necessary for a company to make money. If every active slashdot poster bought a Zaurus, it still would be a loss for Sharp. They need the corporate sales, and a review in the WSJ saying it sucks kills a lot of corporate sales.