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Clamshell Sharp Zaurus Reviewed
Bill Kendrick writes "The Gadgeteer has a review of the new clamshell-style Sharp Zaurus SL-C700 Linux-based PDA. This new model, currently only officially available in Japan, sports a larger keyboard than the SL-5500 we have in the US, as well as a full 640x480 screen and 400MHz XScale CPU. The review mostly compares it against the HP200. The reviewer got his hands on an 'English version,' made available by Dynamism for a hefty pricetag of USD$700." (See this earlier story for more screenshots from the English conversion of this device.)
And therefore is still the coolest PDA to date.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
What i really think is hurting PDAs today is un-inspired designs, and i love to see someone with a new twist on an old idea. But i think that they need to work on new user interface, alot more than they need to work on making them more powerful. A good user interface would make all the difference. There simply is no blueprint for an interface for such a device, but a "windows"ish interface is not the answer.
A Fatal OE Exception has occurred, Sig will now reboot.
Is it just me or are cutting-edge electronics priced at about 2.5 to 3 times too much?
I'm very tempted by this. My current PDA is the original 2MB Handspring Visor which my life has come to depend upon. I'm in the market for a replacement because I'm running out of room for my appointments, contacts, and notes.
My requirements for my new PDA are that it supports compact flash (I have tons of these cards for my and my wife's mp3 players, digital camera, and removable storage for her iBook), have more than 2MB memory (at least 8mb), have a battery life that will get me through an 8-5 workday (~3-4 hours of use before recharge), and have a usability that is at least close to that of the Palm platform (everything just works very quickly).
My wishlist items include built-in or available Wi-Fi, twice my required battery life, and a built-in MP3 player (one-less digital lifestyle device).
I think these are reasonable expectations for a modern PDA. I speculate many, many PDA owners and potential PDA owners would agree with these.
My choice up until I read this review was the Toshiba e740. It's tiny & light, accepts compact flash, has more than 2mb memory, has acceptable battery life, comes with built-in Wi-Fi (that can very easily be switched between my home and work setups), and can play MP3s.
This review made me think twice, but I'll still be buying the Toshiba when my company's next buying cycle comes around. Why?
The Zaurus gets some credentials for running on linux and having a sweet form-factor with a usable, built-on keyboard. The Pocket PC operating system is much closer to just working than the Linux version (though Pocket PC doesn't work well with my Linux & Mac desktops at home). I can get the Toshiba brand new for half the price of the Zaurus. The Zaurus doesn't offer anything to make up for the price difference. The cool form-factor is moot because the Toshiba is smaller and lighter.
Nothing else in the market comes close to the e740 except for this Zaurus. The e704 was released last June! I can't believe making a good PDA is so hard. Are there really that few EE's, embedded system programmers, and UI engineer's that it takes a company 3/4ths of a year to come up with a close, but ultimately inferior product?
Nice try Sharp. Try harder next time.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Since it's a linux machine out of the box, and appears to have decent connectors on it for peripherals (like in the CF slot), wouldn't this be an idea candidate for 802.11a/b sniffing? I mean, it's small, so small that it fits in a coat pocket, and since it's a PDA, generally people won't think to look if it's attempting to wiggle into their network or not. It also looks more useful than an IPaq, by having a keyboard, and could probably make a helluva good network diagnostic tool if not used for malovelent purposes.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
---The fact that linux is opensource and can be stripped down *does* make it an ideal embedded os. At least in its stripped down form its smaller than any other embedded os that still has a VM (this doesn't include palm as it was a single tasking os).
But why not stay with the single-tasking OS that palm is?
---And as for crusoe, it's only the lowest heat and energy intake for an intel compatible processor. The XScale is the next generation of the ARM processor, a completely different instruction set that just happens to be really easy to design a low power cpu out of.
I thought that was the case with the crusoe, but I wanted to be sure. Still, back to the PDA thing. I guess I want/expect only certain things out of PDA's.
1: Why not a single task system? Eliminates VM (and associated overhead).
2: Why soo big monitor? 640x480 is a lot of power to keep lit. Try 320x240
3: WHy is monitor color? If it's a pda, you need text and grayscale images. Needless energy waste.
4: People want devices that do XYZ. Why not have plugin devices that power themselves (on their own batteries)? Your 802.11 card dies. big deal. You can still use yoru pda.
5: Have no keyboard onboard. Makes things too klunky. Have the gui able to handle all touch access but have a keyboard adaptor (along with keyboard battery) so you dont have to hunt letters.
6: Why not use a slower processor but have dedicated circuits that are only used when demanded (music decompresser).
I want something small, lightweigat, something that isnt going to die on me, can do basic jobs and whatnot. IF I WANT LAPTOP FUNCTIONALITY, I'LL BUY A LAPTOP. I just need a basic name/address/phone/email catalog and time organizer.
Imagine pulling it out from my pocket, connect it with my client's PC and show a full-function website demo with MySQL, PHP, Apache, CRM, CMS, Sendmail, ....
I found the keyboard much better than Graffiti for inputting stuff but you're still not going to write a book on the thing. Your thumbs would eventually leap up of their own volition and gouge your eyes right out of their sockets. And believe me, that's a hard price to pay.
I'm currently pondering the Sony Clie, but the only models that seem to have keyboards on them are the $400 and up ones. And I don't need a voice recorder on my pilot.
I expect where the pocket PCs would really shine would be if you could attach 2 or 3 network interfaces to them. Then you could use them for corporate espionage. You could stash one of those suckers under a desk or in a comm closet, plugged in, for years. Take your choice; your competitor's network packets broadcast to WAP, or the slightly more dangerous option of scanning for interesting bits and forwarding them to an address out on the net (The latter also requires fairly extensive knowledge of his firewall setup.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There are a few Linux-based alternatives over on LinuxDevices.com (http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT8728350077 .html). My only question about the Zaurus is "Where's the Bluetooth?". I couldn't consider pouring money into a PDA which was lacking BT.
Considering that you can get the SL-C700 for about 55000 yen in Japan and for $569 at conics.net :).
and switching to English is just editing one file dynamism seems abit steep in their pricing.
I am waiting for my shipment from conics right now.
In Euros it's even cheaper
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Also, even with the smaller screen on the 5500, I find it very comfortable to lie back on my sofa and do a bit of email reading and web browsing, something only the far more expensive Tablet PCs come somewhere near.
A laptop is good for where you need to get lots of typing or editing done, but seeing as 90% of my leisure PC use is web surfing, the small form is what I love. But if I need to, I can fire up a shell, ssh into my servers for some emergency work, fire up VNC to get into my Windows servers, start Kismet to see what's in the area. If I'm sat in a small cramped train seat I can even watch a divx off of a compact flash card, and with a lot lower profile than a mugger enticing iBook.
Most glyph / font file management code is hopelessly unoptimized for Far East fonts: designers tend to make simplifying assumptions about character set size, font overlap, and glyph rendering that are expensive to correct later.
The latest fontconfig/Xft code has been carefully designed to do a really nice job with Far East glyphs and fonts, as well as most other languages on the face of the planet. Keith Packard is to be congratulated, as usual, for his leading-edge work on this. The problem with Qpe being closed-source is that there is no reasonable alternative for integrating this work except to be patient and hope that Trolltech does it: then hope there is an upgrade path.