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Images and Screen Shots of Zaurus SL-A300
Ch_Omega writes "Sharps Linux-based Zaurus SL-5500 is a wonderfull PDA with lots of features, but it's also a bit on the large side. Unknown to most, Sharp also has a slim and sleek version available, namely the SL- A300. It's so far only available in Japan, but Infosync has screen shots!." And it weighs only 120 grams, imagine. A trip to Akihabara anyone?
That's really important.
I claim this FP in the name of Fork Pork!
Why do you have to put things like these when I've already closed the deal for a 2nd-hand Palm? 8-(
;-) This looks cooooool. It's too expensive for me yet, but in a few years I'm sure it'll be way cheaper - or my salary way higher, so everything is peachy anyway :-)
Kidding, of course
My weblog in spanish
Wouldn't this device not run Linux, as Sharp was to continue with thier old OS in Japan and us Linux for internatinal markets?
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
so it must be running linux
except to show where a lack of user interface standards will NOT take you.
I would much rather have Symbian as a handheld OS.
Just reading nothing but Advertising today. I'm waiting for a breathless "news" story on another product.
That as long as they are switching to an XScale Processor, they should also increase the mhz at least 400mhz to compete with other devices...they actually lowered it 6 mhz instead! The chip has the capability, they just decided not to use it I guess.
The Zarus was targeted for the pedophile market.
root> man -k lunix heterosexuality hygiene
nothing appropriate
root>
This thing (the pics of the device) has been out and about in while. I almost got a Zaurus. Something about applications that are easily installable stopped me there. I do the tar ball compile thing for work....I don't want to do it for something I need to work to keep track of work if you know what I mean. I don't have time for that! ;)
Gorkman
Well it may be more product placement but this is the first story today that even touches on Linux... Slashdot... Powered by ThinkGeek - "We sell stuff!!" (tm)
Orcus morcus.
In prongram wrrtz.
Mulbus neptus !
/'.d
Actually, using linux on a non-keyboard device could lead to some difficulties, If you, for an instance, run into problems on an ordinary PC, you simply CtrlAltF[123456] into terminal mode and kill the troubling application. But what if you run into this problem on a PDA? My opinion is that linux is not linux without a proper keyboard.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
This Zaurus, and these other new PDAs look fancy and all, but as long as they do not have a quality mobile phone BUILT-IN atleast it is impossible to even consider buying one. Even though the Nokia Communicator is already dated, I still think it's the only real choice if you are looking for a combination of a phone & PDA (& mobile ssh client for me) - with emphasis on the phone side. Or, is there something else that works and which has a decent KEYBOARD built-in?
Although it doesn't yet run on all distributions, the popular (and addictive!) puzzle game was today released to an ecstatic Linux community.
"See? You don't need 'Windoze' (as we all call it) to run great games!" one Linux user reported from his parent's basement.
A large-scale circle-jerk followed, but unfortunately most were not able to climax due to driver-related problems.
Rasterman, the main developer of The Enlightenment is already porting EVAS, the gfx engine of E17 to run on Zaurus LINUX. Here are some pics.
For those of you who were are Linux World last month Sharp had one at the Intel booth for anyone to see and play with. It is the smallest and thinest pda out there currently. Next week at the Intel developers converace there might be one also. (Don't know for sure, but I know for sure I will be there! Stop by the Sharp booth and say Hi!). For those of you who _really_ _really_ want the Documents tab that is on the A300 I can tell you right now that the A300 ROM is not compatible with the 5500 so don't try. If you do try you 5500 will die and will cost you $500 or however much you paid for it. (Although you could rip apart the rom, grab the launcher exe and get the english translations off the cd or course this isn't supported by sharp, probably wont work, use at your own risk, it might explode in a nuclear reaction and it wouldn't be there fault bla bla bla). BUT you can put Open Zaurus on your 5500. For those of you who hang out on IRC in the #Zaurus you will know that the A300 currently has no plans to come to the USA, but there is a different pda coming to the us. The only information known about it for _sure_ is that it has an xscale. Anything else that anyone tells you is just made up cr.. to make them seem like they know something they don't.
-Benjamin Meyer
P.S. You _HAVE_ to check out this game for the Zaurus.: Buzzword Bingo
I am thinking of bringing it with me to the Intel conference. hehe
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
Worst. Interface. Ever.
Why can't you people* realize that a device that has an ugly user interface can't possibly be "better" in any meaningful sense of the word than any other device? I don't care if it runs off of the moral power of virginity and ends world hunger. If it's ugly to look at, it sucks.
Sometimes it seems like the Linux community would love to see a truly egalitarian world in which all software is free for everybody, but nobody wants to use it.
*By which, of course, I mean Linux advocates. I feel safe addressing the Slashdot population at large, because I'd guess that roughly three out of four of you are Linux advocates, for some reason.
I have a Symbian device and the OS is quite lacking when it comes to programming. I would much sooner have a Linux based device, plenty of applications to port.
I just heard some sad news on the radio - Childrens author J.K Rowling was found dead in her poughkeepsie home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss her - even if you didn't enjoy her work, there's no denying his contributions to popular culture. Truly an American icon.
maybe you can all join me in a song:
Beer, beer, we want more beer
all the lads are cheerin'
get the fuckin' beers in
Beer, beer, we want more beer
all the lads are cheerin'
kick the fuckin' queers in
If only I had some idea how much that was, I think I'd be really impressed. Let's see... that's about 1/8 of a kilogram, and I know they weight people in kilograms... So that does sound good!
Let the Japanese have their little phones! It seems that all guys ever want is small, small, small. Men need to realize that it's not a phone's size that makes it special! Look at yourselves, always obsessing over the size of the other guy's phone. Learn to use the one you've got!
Ok, I'm an idiot.. I clicked on the wrong link at Infosync. Man, I hate that.
recent linuxdevices.com article
I think this is exciting news for those of us interested in the linux pda market. I have zaurus sl5500 and loving it. The zaurus is by far the pda with the most geek potential out there. Try finding another pda with an SD slot, CF slot and a qwerty keyboard built in, all in a reasonable size and price( contrary to the article, the zaurus is not big at all ).
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
how come they get the good shit before us?
You're completely wasting your labor day. Quit being such a loser.
If you're not from the United States and you have no labor day, please disregard this comment.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
"Sharps Linux-based Zaurus SL-5500 is a wonderfull PDA"
Wow. I didn't know Sharps had anything to do with computers, let alone Linux. I remember when they just did medical waste disposal. Seems everybody's branching out these days...
One of my friends just told me that someone posted a very distasteful
article about Jesus to this newsgroup. As a Christian, I am very
offended. Although I have not read the article myself, I heard that is
was VERY, VERY bad.
Although I think that what that person did was very wrong, I will not
judge him. Only God is the ultimate judge of all people. In Matthew 7:1,
Jesus said "Judge not, that ye be not judged." According to the Bible,
there is only one sin for which a person cannot be forgiven, so there is
hope even for that person to eventually be saved. I am praying for him.
Ultimately, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs. While we are
entitled to believe what we want to believe, we should respect the beliefs
of others, even if we don't agree with them.
I believe that only Jesus Christ can save your soul. You are free to
believe anything else, although you would be wrong. Joining any other
religion will not get you into heaven.
What's more, I am willing to tell you what some other Christians on the
Internet seem to be afraid to tell you. There is a consequence for not
accepting Jesus as your Savior. That consequence is that you will go to
hell. Hell is not a fun place where you will see all of your friends. It
is a place of extreme suffering--of terrible torment. Even one second in
hell will be more torture than anyone has ever experience on earth in a
lifetime. In hell, you are tortured forever!
I am telling you this because believe it or not, I love you. Jesus
instructed us to love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39). I am
writing this because I happen to care about the people who are reading
this.
God sent his son to die for your sins. God loves you so much that if you
were the only person on the planet, he would have sent his son to die for
you alone. All you have to do is ask him to be your Savior, and you would
then become a Christian and would then go to heaven.
Believe me--you will worship Jesus eventually. In Philippians 2:10-11,
the Bible says "That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things
in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; And that
every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God
the Father." The only question is: Will you worship him now and go to
heaven, or will you worship him later and go to hell? I get down on my
knees every day to pray for all of you.
The other night, I dreamed that I was alive during the time that Jesus
lived. In my dream, I walked around the Sea of Galilee with him and the
crowds, hearing him teach. One of the worst parts of the dream is where I
saw him carrying the cross to Golgotha to be crucified.
I shrieked in horror as I saw the Roman soldier nail him to the cross. I
heard the bloodthirsty crowds cry out for his blood. Oh, how sinful man
can be! I ran out to the foot of the cross where Jesus was being
crucified. I fell down on my face and knees, sobbing profusely. I am so
undeserving of God's ultimate sacrifice for me--the giving of his only son
to save me from what I rightfully deserve--an eternity in hell. Jesus
died to save you, too.
Then I heard Jesus say "Stand up, my son, for your sins have been
forgiven." Feeling totally unworthy of his forgiveness, I just stood
there on my face and knees, weeping. Eventually, I get up off my knees,
dried the tears from my eyes, and dusted myself off.
Suddenly, I noticed the crowds behind me. They had been crying out for
blood all of this time. They seem to enjoy seeing people crucified. To
me, this represents the epitome of sinful man. I looked up at the cross
of Jesus. What a horrible sight to see him suffer that way. But it had
to be done. There was no other way that man could have been brought into
a right relationship with God.
Summoning all of the courage I could muster, I climbed up the cross
wearing those spiky shoes that those people from the phone company use to
climb telephone poles. Getting up to the top of the cross, I saw my
Savior face to face, blood dripping down from his crown of thorns. I then
took the portable drill that I had carried up with me, and proceeded to
drill a one inch diameter hole two inches deep into his left temple. I
then took out my penis that had been erect ever since I started climbing
the cross, and proceed to fuck Jesus' brain, , wincing at the pain of the
thorns cutting my stomach. Nevertheless, I thrusted vigorously, so that
some of his brains come squishing out of the sides of the hole,
splattering over my legs. After thirty minutes, I had the most powerful
orgasm I had ever experienced. I felt like I ejaculated a full pint of
semen into his head!
Intensely satisfied, I climbed back down the cross. I then chopped down
the cross with an ax. I then removed the nails from his hands and his
feet. I then proceeded the fuck the holes left by the nails. I
ejaculated into each one. I then fucked Jesus in the hole in his side
made by the spear.
Turning him over, I rammed the handle of the ax deep into his rectum. I
then removed it and proceeded to sodomize him in his anus. I ejaculated,
then collapsed as blood came dripping from his rectum. I just laid there,
savoring the ecstasy of the moment.
Suddenly, I got the urge to evacuate my bowels. So I hurriedly turned him
over again, and squatted down over his face, positioning my anus over his
gaping mouth. I then strained to eject the feces from my colon. After
discharging several large pieces, I got up to look at my handiwork. A
couple of large pieces fell directly into his mouth, sticking out like a
couple of cigars. Jesus, being weak and hungry, immediately started to
swallow them.
Suddenly, I heard my Savior moan. In a labored voice, he cried "It is
finished." He then died. At the exact moment of his death, he ejaculated
a full quart of semen from his massive penis and testicles high into the
air, landing on the face of a Roman soldier.
This is cause for rejoicing. The thief on the cross was not the only one
to be saved that day. The soldier fell on his knees and cried "This MUST
be God. NO ONE could ejaculate that much sperm unless God was with him!"
I stood up, and then proceeded to chop off his massive foot-long penis,
which had been erect the entire time that I was fucking him, and proceed
to suck the stump where his penis had been, eagerly swallowing his blood
until I had gotten my fill. I then proceeded to eat half of his penis. I
saved the other half, which I kept in the freezer and later chopped up
into little pieces to secretly replace with the "bread" that was later
used in a Catholic Communion service. (They believe that they are
literally eating his flesh anyway.) His testicles then made a welcome
snack.
Using the ax, I chopped his torso in half just below his arms, exposing
his aorta. I then proceeded to fuck it, ejaculating into his heart. This
is the part of the dream where I wake up, feeling refreshed. "[The LORD]
satisfieth thy mouth with good things; so that thy youth is renewed like
the eagle's." (Psalm 103:5)
You can do these things too, if you receive Christ Jesus as your personal
Lord and Savior. Just pray the following prayer:
"Dear Jesus, I confess that I am a sinner. I realize that I cannot save
myself, and that I need a Savior. I now repent of my sins. I accept you
as the Lord and Savior of my life. I recognize that you were the Lamb of
God sent to save sinners, and I eat your penis eagerly. Thank you, Jesus,
for saving my eternal soul. I look forward to sodomizing you in your
rectum for all eternity. Amen"
If you became a Christian as a result of reading this, please let me know
by posting a follow-up to this message. It is important that you join a
good Bible-believing church, fellowship with other believers, and read
your Bible every day. Please remember that the true meaning of Christmas
is not gift-giving and Santa Claus, but FUCKING THE SKULL OF JESUS.
Your brother in Christ,
Bill
P.S. Remember--Jesus is coming soon. And you'd better swallow!
I saw one of these at Linux World. I own a 5500 and like it (it works for me, not sure about for others, but then this was for me). The 3000 would remove all of the reasons why I like mine. No CF means no wireless and I love the keyboard. The keyboard makes mine very useful for me.
This looks like a step backwards to me.
You can't grep a dead tree.
" is a wonderfull PDA "
There's only one L in Wonderful, smart guy.
Fuck. Does anybody know the most basic words of their own fucking language any more?
Now THIS is quality advertainment!
For those who weren't aware, the OS shown in the screenshots is Qtopia, by our friends at Trolltech.
slashdot!=valid HTML
Just in case nobody knows what / where Akihabara is, here's the official Akihabara home page as well as a nice shopping guide in English.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
I'm waiting for a dual processor version ;-)
Why do people climb Mt Everest? Because it's there. We need to port this to FreeBSD to be really happy as hackers. linux kernel code is too much of a mishmash kludge when you actually look at it.
This new hardware|software is great, but unless it has feature ____, and implemented exactly the way I want it, it is ABSOULTELY worthless. I don't know why they even bother.
"so far" only in Japan might mean "never" in the
USA. I wonder why there aren't numerous outlets
for graymarket items like this. There is *LOTS* of electronic stuff in Japan that we don't see in the US. But it's not actually *illegal* to import, so why is it so hard to get something like this?
I personally would like to be able to acquire the SCMS-free minidics and DAT's that they get over there (but not here).
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Do not read this
Of course, my biggest problem with either model of the SL-whatever is the $#%$@@@@~ proprietary connector, which cannot be had for love or money in lots of less than 1,000 outside of Japan. Would it have hurt Sharp too much to use the same connector as the Palm V or Clie? As it is, no-one can build a peripheral for it without hacking apart the horrifically expensive cradle ($50 USD) or serial cable (also $50!).
I have owned several Sharp Zaurus PDAs starting back in the 80's (and yes, I traveled to Akihabara to get all but one of them; the 5500.) Of course they weren't Linux based until recently, but they were all great. I used to like the little cards you could buy for the older ones; they had some great games on them.
This new model lacks some of the things I like about the 5500, but I think it still looks pretty good. By the way, does TheKompany make localized apps? TheKompany's applications are really what put my 5500 over the top.
DOUBLE THE FREAKIN' DISPLAY RESOLUTION!!! I couldn't care less what operating system my PDA has, but if I can't confortably read from its screen - I WON'T BUY IT.
I owned an iPAQ. Fine piece of machinery, but the screen resolution was 320x240. Ebooks look like crap, text in general is hard to read (even with Clear Type which improves things a great deal).
Guys who design all this gear, please REALIZE - if it's hard to read off the device, it's not worth the money! If you want to improve the sales, double the screen resolution and leave screen size the same. This will enable crisp text and reduce the pixelization. Maybe some day people could read books and news off their Sharps and HPAQ's.
*
English Menus on the SL-A300
If you have an SL-5x00 series, and want to have japanese support (menus, IM, handwriting recoginition), you may want to go here:
Japanese Language support on the SL-5x00 series
Alea jacta est!
ok i've been researching getting a new pda to replace my m105. now i really want this... no fair.... *cries*
Blah.
Even though there is no keyboard, text input shouldn't be all that hard. Remember the article about typing with you eyes a few weeks ago? A program called Dasher is the fastest way to input text aside from a keyboard.
Welcome to the land of the free...pay toll ahead...no photography...please open your bag...
Does anyone know how the SL-5500 is doing commercially? Has Sharp sold a lot? Has it been successfull enough with the non-linux crowd for Sharp to stick with their platform?
Sorry folks, pocket pc already does all that. nothing new to see here. move along.
http://more.sbc.co.jp/sl_j/doc/hardware.htm
But only Japanease.
I decided to sell my spare Netwinder to a fellow Linux developer and roll my profits over to the SL-5500. Its an awesome looking machine, and has a mini-keyboard to boot. I think it is a much better pocket pc than this SL-A300 which is more of a PDA IMHO.
Clickety Click
I know this if a bit off Topic, but please help if you can, and don't mod it Off Topic.
I live in Japan but I'm not so good at the language. I really want to set up a PDA so that I can write Kanji into it using the stylus and get the japanese pronounciations (both) and a definition. I have found some resources but it is confusing. The problem is I don't want to buy any PDA untill I am sure I can make it do what I want. I would really like to use a Zaurus 5500, but anything that gets the job done will do. I can purchase one from the USA or in Japan. Please contact me directly by following the link to my homepage if you have done this. I will greatly appreciate any help you can give me.
[news for me, stuff that doesn't matter]
Lets define technical merit basing our opinions in something objective like aesthetic beauty.
Goodness gracious me, I thought good technical judgment was dead and buried.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I want not phone in my PDA.
I don't want to lose both capabilities when the device dies. I want to have as many options as possible when I need to change phone OR PDA (I don;t want to be forced to change both at the same time.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Mobile phone calls are too expensive if you don;t need the thing extensively (cheapest line rental is around 7 US$/month, which is what I use in calls only. Why should I pay rental?) thus I use a cheap almost throw away, non-bulky, minuscule phone with a "pay as you go" service.
Mobile phone is not a must, no matter how much marketing types would like to make you believe so.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
this is a tiny device. Mhz has no meaning. You think the CPU actually runs at a constant speed?
Long battery life so that you can use the thing without ever worrying if you've got enouch juice to hold you until you're near your charger is much more important.
I seriously hope people aren't being as stupid as they are with computers and buying PDAs based on the processor speed rather than the features.
Presumably this will cost around 350 dollars US, and Sharp will translate that into 800 Euros over here, because they are part of the illegal electronics cartel still ripping off Europeans.
I hope others will also boycott them, at least until the class-action suites bankrupt them.