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Zaurus Software Reviews
Steve Emms writes "The Zaurus SL-5500 PDA represents a new frontier. Here Linux is not an afterthought shoehorned onto a windows product - the Zaurus is a PDA that comes configured with Linux out of the box. And it's a good fit, Linux works well on relatively low spec machines like PDAs. But it's the software that makes the machine. So LinuxLinks has started a series of reviews of commercial Linux software for the Zaurus." Little thin right now, but a nice start for anyone interested in the PDA.
10$ each for a ogg player a battleship clone and reversi, if the things based on linux wouldnt it be rather easy to port many freeware games to it? I would think at least ogg123 and some simple frontend for it
Nice summary by O'Reilly
Sharp USA site
Zaurus user's site
Sharp Developer site
ZDNet UK review
cNet review
Linuxdevices.com review
ZDnet review
TechTV review
ThinkGeek review
PC Magazine review
IT Reviews review
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A PDA running linux ? great !
c Pl ayer-MediaLibrary.png
Now when you look at the screenshots, it *really* looks like they are trying to make it look like Windows XP.
http://www.linuxlinks.com/portal/content/png/tk
That's a pity that the Kompany cannot even develop its own look and feel. People tired of windows ME & co, who will buy this, will be quite disappointed to get linux with a windowsish style, won't they ?
theefer
It's good to see that, right off the block, there are apps for a Linux-based handheld.
Granted, most of them are games, and a bit on the bad side, but Linux is starting to make mainstream strides beyond the server market...which is always good to see.
Personally, though, I'd be more interested to see a review of the software included with the Zarius.
I mod down anyone who uses M$ in their posts. I like to live on the edge.
Opie player 2 is better in many ways though, because it supports OGG, MP3, MPEG4 (divx), MPEG1, MPEG2, RV10 (early real video codec) (ffpeg's codec) and has a pretty graphical front end.
Some of The Kompany's stuff looks interesting, but their multimedia stuff is just a rip off. (tkcVideo uses ffmpeg as the backend (which is also used by opie player 2 and mplayer, all it provides is a $10 pretty GUI, which opie player 2 does as well now)
It is nice but check your firmware rev out of the box. Mine came with v2.12 and when I tried to load The Kompany's address book program, the PDA encountered a load error and would no longer allow file transfers after that. I reset it, threatened it and even offered it flowers but no go. Calls to Sharp Tech Support revealed that I needed level 2 help as the suggestion script they were reading was of no use. I was told the level 2 guy would call me back so I waited. Every day for 3 days I called and reviewed my problem. I never did hear from the level 2 guy. I eventually got through to someone at Sharp who had a clue and they revealed that there is a firmware problem with 2.12 and The Kompany Address book. A simple flash upgrade to v2.38 solved all of my issues and I was off and running. Sharp could do a better job with their frontline helpdesk.
My 5500 replaces a Palm 3. Synchronizing that data was seamless. Being able to pop a CF wireless or networking card saves me the hassle of having to pack a laptop for troubleshooting network problems.
Software for the 5500 is constantly being added. One of my favorite sites is
http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/
Please stop continuing to spread your lies, I've talked to you about this in the #zaurus channel before. tkcVideo does in fact use ffmpeg, but it is just one of the things that go into it, we have a lot of assembler floating point optimization routines and other code around and in addition to ffmpeg because ffmpeg wasn't available as an lgpl library when we started. ffmpeg is a great piece of work, but it is more icing on the cake and that is why mplayer isn't the same, nor the opie players. Since you don't have a copy of tkcVideo, all your statements about it would tend to be false.
Shawn Gordon
President
theKompany.com
The Zaurus keyboard is better than nothing, but it's not good enough -- and handwriting input isn't what I want. 90% of what I do with a laptop when I'm on the move is concerned with text, and the Zaurus with a folding external keyboard and a spare battery would actually replace a laptop for most purposes. So where are the hardware add-ons?
There are over 550 programs for the Zaurus at the Zaurus Software Index. Also the Zaurus is more than just a PDA, it's a complete computer in a very small case.
Does the Zaurus SL-5500 support a non-GUI (console) mode?
I am currently on the lookout for a good developent on the go PDA. (Mostly for a hobby) Has anyone here had any experience using the Zarius or similar PDA for mobile work? I am mostly thinking about wiriting Java apps. Thanks guys.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
Eon Games has a number of great titles available for for the Zaurus. Including Pyrogon's excellent puzzle game, Candy Cruncher.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
The GUI shells you can get for the machine work pretty well, as do X and the C compiler off the Open Zaurus web page. The X package seems to be made to install in RAM and doesn't like being relocated to install on a CF or SD card. The C compiler is not a package file and can be detarred anywhere, though making all the links to get it working right can be tricky.
Oh yeah, and battery life sucks. That kinda goes without saying. I get about 2 to 3 hours of powered on use out of a battery. I keep a spare on hand, and that helps a little. Palm users will have to modify habits (And take that AC adaptor with you on business trips.)
You can also replace the initrd with a build of your own. So if you want to completely build your environment from the ground up (or try Debian's build) that's pretty easy.
All in all a nice little machine, though it could benefit from fuel cell technology.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
www.handhelds.org
:)
opie.sf.net
And that's all you need.
Install Familiar on your iPAQ (you need a serial cable), then install opie (if it's not already installed.) Use ipkg to install zaurus packages. Then smirk and go "NYAHHHH" to all those trying to charge you money for it.
Have fun!
--pi
First, Qt is clearly is a desktop widget set that has been converted to a handheld: the shape and size of many components simply takes up way too much space, completely unnecessarily, and the overall layout of applications is also quite wasteful of screen space. The Zaurus Opera browser illustrates this: at the "tiny" settings: you still get the 3D decorations for buttons and text entry boxes, but the text for those widgets is completely gone; now, which is more important--wasting pixels on a 3D look or being able to see the actual text? There are lots of ways of indicating buttons that do not require a several pixel wide 3D border. Of course, even at larger scales, when you can read the text, those pixels take up unnecessary space. If you only have 240x320 pixels to play around with, this kind of thing needs to be highly optimized, and there are better ways of doing this. What we really need is a special-purpose handheld toolkit, not a port from a desktop. Altogether, with its 240x320 screen, Zaurus applications feel more space constrained than a Palm Pilot; it's the same problem that Windows CE and PocketPC have.
Second, Qt/QPE software takes up lots of memory to run. The QPE process alone takes up nearly 8 Mbytes of memory, with a terminal application taking an additional 3.8 Mbytes (all RSS while being used). A full, running X server (Xvnc) running on the same system takes 1.3 Mbytes, and that includes additional support for the VNC protocol, and a handheld version of rxvt can be run in a few hundred kbytes of memory. The Agenda/VR applications also took up a fraction of the amount of memory of what the equivalent Zaurus applications take up. It's a myth that Qt/Embedded is memory-efficient.
Third, the use of Qt/Embedded cuts the Zaurus off from a lot of other Linux handheld development: there are lots of neat, small, efficient applications written for other widget sets, some of them straight to X11, some of them using FLTK and others. While you can run them using Xvnc on a Zaurus, you end up with two completely unintegrated environments--that is not acceptable for day-to-day usage.
Sharp and Lineo should recompile the Zaurus applications to use X11; given that they are written in Qt, that should be easy, although they may have to do some performance tuning on the X11 version of Qt. Then, people could pick and choose which applications they like to run among a larger variety of software. I'd replace some of the built-in applications with FLTK-based ones, saving both memory and getting an interface I prefer. And then there would be a lot more software available for it and we wouldn't need reviews of four tiny applets at the amazing price of $10 each.
...I must say that I am stunned by the usablility of the thing. I have a basement littered with various handhelds (we use them often on customer projects and usually get one for ourselves for testing) that never get used because, well, they aren't very usefull. Storing contacts, having a calendar, etc. is great, but it's faster and easier on paper. Yes, I can get my e-mail on it, but entering text is a hassle to say the least. The fact is, I (speaking personally here) want to do much more with my handheld than just play "Daytimer" with it. The SL-5500 is just the ticket. My company is teaching "Intro to Linux" classes that target existing MS administrators. For the class we need a server sitting there for them to hit during exercises. I need an MS box (so they can setup and use SMB client connectivity), a web server, FTP server, ssh server and a telnet server (again for use during exercises). I wanted to do something at the end of the class to really wow the students (who are all new to Linux). The answer in my opinion was the 5500. I received it a few days ago, and within 30 minutes of unboxing it had SaMBa, Telnet, ssh, Boa, and FTP serving happily on it and a Linksys CF 802.11b card for connectivity. Threw a 128MB SD card in it for storing the files used during the class and stuck a SaMBa share on it. Works beautifully. Tested the various pertinent "servers" under load (10 concurrent users pulling data - as the class is limited to 10) and it worked like a champ. This is what I have always dreamed of in a handheld...something that lets me do 75%+ of what I do on my desktop (albeit in a more limited but still very useful fashion). I would recommend it to anyone in the market for a PDA. I have seen a few comments about the interface "Trying to look like XP." You obviously HAVE NOT used one. The interface is all it's own. VERY fast to get around, totally customizable. All around fabulous. Later.
AFAIK, there effectively has been only one commercially released model (the developer model is similar but has only 32 Mbytes).
It's slow as hell!
You must be confusing the Zaurus with something else. There have been three Linux PDAs: the Agenda/VR, the Yopy, and the Zaurus. Linux also runs in the iPaqs. The Agenda/VR runs on a 66MHz MIPS chip, and it is a bit sluggish--but once applications are loaded, it's OK. I haven't tried the Yopy, but I don't think you could have either--as far as I know, it's only available mail order.
While it has some flaws (see above), the Zaurus UI is very fast and responsive, comparable to Palm and better than Windows CE, in my experience. In fact, the quality of the Zaurus UI is at least comparable to Windows CE, not just in my opinion, but also in many reviews. On the iPaq, we can even make a side-by-side comparison of the performance on identical hardware, and X11 running on the iPaq beats Windows CE hands down.
the price wasn't there, though much cheaper than the linux models.
The Zaurus costs $340 mail order, for a 206MHz device with keyboard, CF, MMC, MP3, and other features, and it comes with a huge amount of software. It is, and has always been, cheaper than comparable Windows CE machines.
I know people with WinCE models and love them
To each their own. To me, the Windows CE machines aren't even in the running: they are expensive, slow, and lack most of the software that I would want to run.
I often say that Bill Gates doesn't have to lift a finger to crush linux on the desktop because so many people in the linux community do his job for him.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I am _still_ waiting for my PDA and my mobile phone to be one device! Does anybody know if there are any accessories that give the Zaurus GSM capability?
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
http://people.inf.elte.hu/isten/xmms/
My Zaurus (just bought it a couple of weeks ago) has now effectly replaced my old laptop.
Now mind you, my laptop, in terms of processor power, wasn't much more powerful than the Zaurus. But it was much heavier. I can do everything on my Zaurus I used to do on my laptop and actually much more. It's much easier to carry around to classes or work. It's a perfect "datebook" and personal computer. I have faced a few bugs here and there, but you know, the nice thing was that I could often figure them out and fix them, while with my old palm I felt much more helpless.
Probably the thing I love the most is how easy it is to transfer information to and from the Zaurus. With my palm, all my files had to be converted and manipulated between formats. Now it's a matter of FTP or swapping a compact flash card. Text files are still text files, PDF files are still PDF files. I'm dealing with a real computer here which is wonderful.
Is the Zaurus perfect? No. In fact, there's plenty of people I would NOT recommend the Zaurus to. PDAs like any technology should be considered with need and use in mind and some people don't need a whole little Linux box in there pocket, a Palm works just fine. But for me, the Zaurus is one of those devices I've always been looking for.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I initially bought this for three reasons:
:-)
:-)
1) It's the only portable OGG player right now
2) It's a reasonably full functional, and powerful PDA
3) It runs linux, thus has endless potential -- far more than any proprietary PDA
Already there is a completely opensource replacement OS for the Zaurus.
But... there is no "killer app" yet. A few possibilities though:
1) Real, usable, opensource GPS software using one of the many CF GPS cards out there.
2) Wireless portable OpenH323 terminal
For now, zaurus xmms and zmame are enough to keep me busy for a long time
Okay, here you go.
The Calander application is thin, but adequate.
The synch software pretty much sucks and is the only piece of software that needs a complete overhaul.
The text editor is a functional text editor.
The address book, email, todo list, voice recorder, image viewer, and media player apps - ditto.
Asteroids is a pretty good asteroids clone.
I don't know how to play Go, so I can't comment on that.
Mindbreaker is like the Logic game on some Nokia phones.
Mine hunt is a good Minesweeper clone.
Patience is a reasonably good solitaire game, with one caveat. You can't double-click on the cards to send them home.
Snake is a much better version of the Nokia phone game.
Tetrix is a passable Tetris clone.
Word game is very fun once you figure out the UI eccentricities.
There are a couple of unnecessary Java demos that I can't understand why were included.
The appearance app doesn't allow for enough control over the appearance, but more than other handhelds that I've used.
Hancom Office is a totally usable, MS Office compatible office suite (though I admit to using the text editor more than Hancom Word).
Opera is - well, Opera. If you hit a site that tries to open more than one window, you're given the option of which one you want to open which is kind of nice. I think I'm going to try to track down a flash plug-in for it, though.
All that said it might sound like I don't like the Zaurus that much. Not so. I love it. The power of it being Linux based is all of the software available for it NOT included (oh, and I LOVE the keyboard). I immediately downloaded the terminal app so that I could get to a bash shell without having to reboot it. It's a nice terminal - has shortcuts to commonly used commands - very cool. I also installed a VNC client/server, ZIC for IRC, Sketches of Q - which is a nice little drawing app, FTP spftware (opie ftp), and even a nice version of PacMan.
The machine is snappy and has a great screen. Text input via the keyboard is much faster and more accurate than any handwriting recognition. On the other hand, the handwriting recognition on the Zaurus is outstanding. No grafiti to learn, just write normally in the appropriate section of the screen and it works. In addition, it has a predictive text input system, so as you're writing on the screen, it gives you several suggestions as to what word you're attempting to type. If it makes a hit, just clikc on the word and move on. Very nice.
I've also added a WAP (in my home office) and a Wireless CF card. Both are Linksys and the installation was basically non-existant. True plug and play (except for security on the WAP). I can surf the net, hang out on slashnet or #everything, ftp, vnc, whatever from the Zaurus. My next foray may be into a wireless modem. Still deciding whether it's worth it.
The cradle it USB and synching is easy (once you've got it set up), but lacking in options. You can synch to the proprietary app (Qtopia desktop) or Outlook. I use Eudora, and would like an option to synch my contacts to there, and the other stuff (calander, etc...) to elsewhere, but alas nothing yet exists to allow for this. Of course, that the system is Open Source, this probably is not far off.
Copying individual files to and from the Zaurus is also easy as the device works sort of like an external USB harddrive. No, it doesn't get a drive letter, but through QTopia Desktop, you upload and download files as if it were a drive. Simple and reasonably quick.
There are some areas that need work, but overall the Zaurus is a hell of a little handheld that is already very powerful because of its Linux roots and has a significant amount of potential.