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New Zaurus Prototype, Sony Palm OS 5 Devices, Yopy 3500
dnomla writes "There is an article on PC WORLD giving a few details on the next revision of the Sharp Zaurus PDA. Sounds like the display is wider now than the current longer display and folds up. Not a whole lot of information, but at least we know there's a new model on the way. I really like the current Zaurus, can't wait to find out all the details." Also in handheld news, Lee writes "Sony just announced the first Palm OS 5 devices, available later this month. These are the first Palm OS devices to include an ARM processor! Get the scoop at Palm Infocenter or see them at Sony Style." Reader Big Mike also points out the new model of Yopy (3500) being previewed at www.yopy.at.
Wanted to mention Opie, which is an open environment for handhelds (notably the Zaurus and the iPAQ)
:)
Check out the screenshots of opie in action... I was hooked at first sight
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
Remember when a Visor could work for a month on a set of AAA's without having to restrict your use to 10 minutes a day?
Ñ'
...why a lot of the new PDA's keep getting bigger, having keyboards, etc. I've always considered two of the benefits of a PDA to be a small size and an easy to use interface. With keyboards and flip-style screens and such, they get bigger and more complicated to use. Improved functionality is one thing, but it seems like these things get closer to being laptop computers every time a new model comes out.
No mention of processor (My guess is Xscale), because if they don't no one will be able to play back full screen video (mplayer has to frame drop on the 206MHz SA-1100 in the SL-5500 (current model)) either that or a real video device instead of the memory mapped framebuffer it has.
How much RAM? and if they are putting it in a notebook like design, PCMCIA, CF, SD, internal microdrive?
I personally don't like the idea of a fold out, but it might work.
Don't get me wrong: I love my zaurus, (shameless ego building: I even ported mplayer to it (mostly due to the wonderful other people working on mplayer), but I did it first :) ) This article on the other hand is not really worth actually reading the article (cept to find out where it will be previewed.)
Do any of these new devices license Apple's handwriting recognition, from the Newton? In fact, the Newton is so old, I wonder if anyone has taken that code and improved it even further? I loved not having to learn Graffiti. I want to buy a new handheld, but I want it to be hyper-intuitive. What about voice commands? Can any of them handle that out-of-the-box yet?
My Greasemonkey scripts for Digg &
All your Zaurus are belong to us!
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these new Clies!
Ok, the jokes have been made, move along.
I promised myself I would avoid the first model of the cool Sharp Zaurus. I've been burned by jumping on first generation devices too many times (like WinCE 1.0, first gen mp3 CD player, etc). Even if the first generation was good (like the reviews seem to be saying), the second generation is usually worth waiting for.
Here I thought it would take several more months before we heard the first bits about the new model...now I'm going to have to (well, not really have to..but want to) figure out how to buy one.
I don't know if I really like the whole subnotebook thing. I just picked up a $200 Thinkpad off Ebay that's all of 4 lbs at 233 Mhz...it works great. I'm rather sold on the whole PDA idea (happy Visor owner), so perhaps I will be able to put off more spending a little longer until they come out with a next-gen handheld.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
2) Open memory? Nope... only their lovely Magic Gate DRM sticks.
Well... at least your network and your audio will be "protected" Sony style. Makes me sick. I stay away from Sony at all costs.
As for design, it is a choice. I personally would prefer the 'old' Zaurus, and it's smaller, but qwerty keyboard.
I think MagicGate sucks ass too. I have a 128 meg and 64 meg memory stick that I use with my camera, but I can't use either of them with my Network Walkman. But surely these things take normal memory sticks.
If only Sony stuff wasn't so freekin cool! If I was starting again I wouldn't buy a Sony digital camera. And then I wouldn't have bought a Vaio for a laptop. And then I wouldn't have bought a Network Walkman.
So my advice if you haven't already bought Sony is to keep it that way.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The NX handhelds have a built-in microphone which turns the NX series in a digital ATRAC3/MP3/ADPCM format voice recorder to store your memos.
Am I the only one who thinks that one of these PDA makers needs to include a line-in jack? It doesn't seem like much to ask, and given this simple feature and some accompanying software, I can effectively do away with my mini-disk recorder for most tasks...
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Jedimom.com, Ph Balanced for Women.
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I use serial ports on lots of my machines I administer. That includes Cisco's, HP routers, Linux, FreeBSD, and a few other misc stuffs. What I really would like is a serial port with a terminal program. It's either a handheld 'puter has it or I haul around a small laptop.
I'd prefer to get rid of the laptop (heh, not permanently). ANy suggestions?
Here is what it looks like. More pics and info can be found here (warning - page is in japanese).
I'll get one for sure when they hit the States!
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Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
IDG Singapore has the same article as PC World but with a photo of the new Zaurus. Very slick. Keys on the keyboard are much larger than the current Z, but probably still too small for anything but thumb-typing.
I couldn't agree with you more. I've been really disappointed that many of the linux and palm offerings haven't applied the ever-increasing number of cpu cycles and MB of RAM to using more complex HWR algorithms to provide more accurate and forgiving hand-writing recognition. It's kind of messed up when we now have PDA's running webservers, playing MP3's, and logging into networks using ssh but the state of HWR on many PDA's is not better than it was five years ago running on machines that were 20 times less powerful. Given the linux community's lack of attention to usability issues and incredulous attitudes towards HCI experts, I'm not terribly surpised that most linux PDA's have sucky HWR. But Palm has been saavy about interface design in the past, so they should really know better than to keep grafitti from receiving important and long overdue improvements.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
See subject. Oh, and I hate to rock your world, but PocketPC has a command line. It's a DOS command line, but it's still a command line. :)
Just to follow up.
It took a while to find the bit of fine print that mentioned them and MagicGate sticks specifically. I thought the original poster might be right because I couldn't find what the little (*2) superscript was supposed to indicate.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
I bought the Zaurus because it shared the single feature that I loved the most about my dear, departed Revo - a keyboard. Now that I've seen the new design, I'm salivating all over again. I LOVE this format, but history would indicate that I'm in the minority. Notice that there's no Revo MKII.
Come on, 5 hours WITHOUT backlight and including the Wi-Fi card brings it to 2.5 WITHOUT backlight. So conservative estimates put it at 2 hours with NORMAL use... how is this seperating itself from the PocketPC handhelds?
Well, I guess there are two schools of thought concerning PDAs: the one that favors a light, slim, pocketable device and the other which prefers the commodity of a real QWERTY (or AZERTY or Dvorak or whatever else) keyboard. Good to see that there are offers for both tastes out there!
-- Serge K. Keller
A 400MHz XScale running on a 640x480 device is plenty for running X11 and regular X11 applications very well. It would make excellent sense to switch from Qt/Embedded to Qt/X11 now so that people can run regular software on the device without rewriting the complete GUI in Qt.
Is Opie really necessary on the Zaurus? From what I can figure out from the website, Opie is basically Qtopia (which is already fully GPL) with some extra applications. For iPAQ this might be a big deal since it doesn't even run Linux at all. But the Zaurus already has Qtopia, so...
Question: Why should I use Opie instead of standard Qtopia? What advantages/disadvantages does Opie have when compared to Qtopia?
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
I have a Rex 6000 for the PDA side of things, and an old but good Libretto 100CT for the PC side of things. It's the size of a video casette (remember them? ;-) ) and does everything I need. It'd be cool if I could play movies, but hey you can't have everything, and besides, do I really need it? :-)
The Sony U1 (see conics.net for an importer) looks far more use. It's a PC that's small enough to challenge the libretto but way more powerful. The new JVC mininotes look interesting too, or the Fujitsu P-series.
I think this is technology looking for a niche that just plain isn't there.
I used a Psion Netbook as well for about 2 years. Thought it was the absolute bees knees .... I just wanted them to publish decent network drivers.
Two years later, I gave up all hope and went for an ebay purchased Zaurus. Yes I loved the full keyboard combo with the touchscreen of the netbook. Yes I thought the fact that it never needed a hard reset (apart from once) and that all the apps appeared automagically depending on what CF card you had in (and the fact that it had both a CF slot and PC slot - WOW !). But the bottom line for me was that it DIDN'T NETWORK !!
How ironic, of course, that when I finally gave up hope with Psion, they release "production" network drivers.
My lesson learnt ? If it doesn't ALREADY do what it says that it might be able to do, then don't buy it until it does.
Two wrongs may not make a right, but three
Forget CPU speed, memory, apps. This one point on the Yopi specs has got me wanting more already...
Visueller Alarm (a la Knight Rider (TM))
I'll take two!
If you connect the serial cable to the Zaurus, it covers the pull-out keyboard, so you can't type while it's connected.
There is a way to modify it so it works, but Sharp still really missed the boat.
I also have some test devices which I use a serial port to communicate with, and I really loved my HP 200LX for that.
I could keep the 200LX and it's serial cable in my pocket, and I didn't have to lug around a laptop.
I bought the Zaurus to replace the 200LX, and so far it's done a great job.
I only have two complaints so far:
I wish it had come with a working serial cable
I wish the address book was easier to port from the 200LX.
Fortunately, the good points - touchscreen, color, CF & SD ports, wireless support, faster processor, linux, etc. far outweigh the negatives.
I definitely recommend trying one out.
Help find a cure for Gidget.
http://guir.berkeley.edu/projects/satin/
They have some sharp sample apps, and interesting publications.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
This is going to be a great year for competition. Just a year ago Pocket PC's had huge advantages in both hardware and software. Palm OS 4 devices were stuck using 16-bit Motorola processors that for the most part ran at 33MHz, while on the PPC the norm was a 200Mhz 32-bit StrongARM processor with around 20 times the MIPS. The PPC OS was multithreaded, the Palm OS was not. The normal PPC could run 320x240 full screen resolution; the majority of Palm models were running 160x160 with a hard graffiti area. About the only advantage Palm units had was battery life, and even that was being challenged by lithium-powered PPC units such as the iPAQ. A lot can change in a year.
Software is more equal now. OS 5 is a 32-bit, (from the 32-bit OS experience of 4 dozen former BeOS employees inherited by Palmsource), multithreaded, offers system-wide 128-bit encryption, SSL support, and has new multimedia video and audio APIs. It will run code on Intel, Motorola, and TI ARM-based processors, without recompiling thanks to translation layers. And it is lean; it can fit under 4 megs.
OS 5 also has a large advantage over PPC 2002 -- native support of the ARM V5 instruction set. The PPC 2002 OS does not, eliminating what could have been large performance increases. While the next PPC OS will undoubtedly rectify this, some analysts are predicting this may not be released until 2004. This is partly why the new XScale PPCs are not showing the speed improvements everyone was expecting over the older StrongARM PPCs. For some tasks, new PPCs actually run
slower.
Not upgrading the PPC OS to use V5 was a rational decision on Microsoft's part, as it would have made "obsolete all SA1110 iPAQ devices" and "strand[ed] an installed base of over 2 million iPAQ users", according to MS (same link above.) Palm in is a much better position. OS 5 only has to emulate the old Motorola code to run programs written exclusively for OS 4. While emulation usually slows things down considerably, the Motorola was *so* slow that the ARM V5 processors are actually running many apps faster than before (if marketing can be believed).
The Palm OS also has a huge advantage as it can already use the ARM V5's automatic clock and voltage throttling abilities. For example, if you run a CPU-intensive game the Xscale can run full-bore (200-400Mhz), while if you run your datebook it throttles back (say 50Mhz), conserving battery life. This function is so important the XScale was named after it (it "scales" itself). Current XScale PPC's don't seem able to do this little trick. (The ASUS MyPal PPC worked out a kludge for this -- a software control so you can throttle the processor manually -- and is promising a more elegant OS patch in future MyPal's to throttle automatically, "fixing" this part of the PPC 2002 OS.)
What about hardware? Well, both Palms and PPCs can now use basically the same hardware (and even vendors). ASUS is making both current PPCs and upcoming (1Q 2003) Palms. Palm OS 5 units have an advantage as they can use a varied range of ARM processors, and already some Palm OS units (like this Sony) have a higher resolution . The Ipaq is rumored to be going up to 480x320 next year, but we will have to wait and see.
Even though these particular Clieâ(TM)s are not my bag (too bulky), it wonâ(TM)t be long until the entire high-end Clie line is ported over to XScale, including the smaller form factor models.
These things look cool but I want to see specs before I get my hopes up...
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
That is worse than a page in goatsecx!
> Ok, what is it with those damn Germans and David Hasselhoff?
It's not the quality of his acting per se but merely the idea that a German has made it to some level of prominence in US Entertainment. Besides, the kinds of Germans that would even express appreciation of him would be the same people that in the US would also be considered cheesers--they're sneered at in Germany, too.
He problably was less hung up on the Magic Gate and more on the Memory Stick thing. Personally I consider the Sonys the nicest Palm implementations at the moment, save for the damn Memory Stick. Yet another instance of Sony's obsession with knocking down a wall with their head until it bleeds and cracks open (the head, not the wall). Five or ten years down the road of nobody else adopting the MS and everyone else standardizing on CF or SD, and they'll finally quietly drop it from their products and pretend that it never existed. Why not do that now and spare a lot of buyers the nagging feeling of having purchased a great device with one fatal flaw?
The new Zaurus looks really good, from the pictures I have seen from other links in the comments.
:D
But it would have been nice to have a widescreen display instead of a standard VGA display. There is certainly room in the case for this. Then with a Firewire/USB external DVD drive, you could have watched DVD movies on the move in full widescreen amongst other benefits. The resolution would have been around 800x450 instead of 640x480.
Also the keyboard looks pretty dire - it doesn't look as nice as the keyboard on the old Psion 5s and Psion Revos.
The screen clarity is excellent though - it must be around 200dpi though.
It also looks a bit chunky, but with a full PCMCIA slot (it looks like it anyway), SD slots and other slots, plus keyboard and screen I suppose that is to be expected
I'm not American (I'm English and Australian) and from what I see available to me all the stuff I have is (or possibly was, in case of the camera which is a bit old now, it's a DSC-P1) pretty close to being the best I could buy. I have this Network Walkman and the PCG-GRX316MP as my Vaio, both about a month old now.
Perhaps you have some alternate suggestions?
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park