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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.)
But can it play Tux Racer?
---
Hello, Slashdot user. My name is Dr. Sbaitso. I am here to help you.
Until it comes down in price, the cons are (in my opinion) a big deal.
My advice is: pick a laptop or pick a PDA. Make sure that either of them does their respective job well. Don't expect your PDA to be a laptop, and don't expect your laptop to be small enough to put in your pocket (yet!).
On a side note, Fujitsu makes a killer laptop! I've seen it in action...perhaps one of the best laptops for its size...
A review that does not focus on the lack of English documentation (the most irrelevant thing when discussing a product that as of now, is only released in Japan) sums it up:
The Zaurus SL-C700 is an impressive PDA that departs from more traditional designs. The stellar display, mated with a comprehensive software suite, definitely impressed us and we look forward to production-level units of the C700. Pricing is estimated between $600 and $700, though that may change at the time of release.
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.
I'm still using a palm IIIx, and it's more than adequate. The color screens and multimedia coolness are great though...
;)
I admit that my use of a PDA is basically as a mobile "black book" and scheduling device. Seriously, how many people honestly require all these awesome features? (I understand the "bragging rights" argument, but I work with a stable of non-geeks who could hardly appreciate this device... they don't even know how to rip/encode an MP3...)
Still, I do like the fact that it runs on Linux
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
This device could really be a breakthrough device with the cool form factor, great display, and mainstream Linux support. I urge anyone who is interested to write to Sharp and/or post on the above forum. Don't let Sharp fsck this opportunity up...
"I say we take off, nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
Isnt it time to change the PDA in that icon? I think we've got something better now.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
it seems a lot of wear would come to the keys when the PDA is shoved in tiny places.
I always walk a little funny after doing this.
I'm waiting for Apple to adopt this slogan.
That's when I stopped reading. That's not a PDA, that's an undersized, underpowered laptop. A PDA should have a battery that at the minimum lasts a full day, so that the appointments for the day are accessible without recharging.
that's my 2cents.
~ a low user id is no indication I have a clue what I'm talking about.
Yopy was mentioned in European magazines, in December.
The Z. never was.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
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...
>I want something that works, not something to
> make a political stand.
Agreed. I use Palm OS. But at some point you have to make the decision between a moral/political stand and convenience. I believe in open source. I don't like Microsoft Ethics - therefore I refuse to use MS products.
> why is Linux (a server based OS) on something
> that should be totally embedded?
Linux in the enterprise is actually a fairly new concept. Linus never wrote it for any other machine than his own desktop. But of course it does run well as a server. But the same argument could be said of PocketPC. Why use a desktop OS on a PDA - and furthermore - why use a desktop OS on a server. In fact I imagine linux is more suited than windows ever was, as all they have really ported is the Kernel, the rest is rebuilt, and the kernel is shrunk and tailored to a PDA anyway.
And you are right, it is a mini laptop - which is why I want it. I work 24x7 support, and the idea of pulling out a linux machine with a useable keyboard from my pocket, logging in and doing my work, is very enticing.
And the XScale and the Crusoe are in completely different classes, please don't trust MHz ratings.
---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.
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?
---Agreed. I use Palm OS. But at some point you have to make the decision between a moral/political stand and convenience. I believe in open source. I don't like Microsoft Ethics - therefore I refuse to use MS products.
I really wouldnt mind using a MS PDA, but what I have saw, they eat battery power at horrendous rates (2 hours on my fiends pda-and that was the best times). That alone is the major deciding factor.
---Linux in the enterprise is actually a fairly new concept. Linus never wrote it for any other machine than his own desktop.
Unix based things have always been suited for servers. Linux is just a re-implementation of a Unix system.
---But of course it does run well as a server. But the same argument could be said of PocketPC. Why use a desktop OS on a PDA
In a way, that's what DOS was. Single user single tasking operating system. It didnt do much in terms of hardware (other than a very basic interface). Only the concept of 'Windowed content' brought multi-tasking to the masses.
---and furthermore - why use a desktop OS on a server. In fact I imagine linux is more suited than windows ever was, as all they have really ported is the Kernel, the rest is rebuilt, and the kernel is shrunk and tailored to a PDA anyway.
True, but the the "desktop OS vs server OS" was fought between Windows NT and Win9x. NT was network suited. If you bought the higher product, you got nt Server. MS just slapped server stuff on a Desktop OS. That's what merged those two together.
---And you are right, it is a mini laptop - which is why I want it. I work 24x7 support, and the idea of pulling out a linux machine with a useable keyboard from my pocket, logging in and doing my work, is very enticing.
That's exactlty my point. They oughtta call it MINI-laptop or something. Still, if you're in tech support, does it have serial ports to use? I didnt look close at the pictures.
---And the XScale and the Crusoe are in completely different classes, please don't trust MHz ratings.
I was asking based on related energy input and heat output. The less those 2 are, the better for small computers. In a PDA type setting, I really dont care about speed of the cpu, just as long the unit is snappy (and bloat-decreased).
- The going price in Japan for the SL-C700 is a touch under US$500 (if you can get any, that is; it's still in short supply, two months after release). Dynamism is getting a hefty margin for their effort.
- Battery life is one of the biggest problems with this unit. The biggest battery drainers are the LCD backlight and the CF card. If you keep the backlight dim (which is adequate if you're indoors), and you don't have a WiFi card or a wireless modem running, you can easily exceed 3.5h in battery time. If you go full blast on both, the battery life can be as low as 1.5h. If you want better battery life, a better solution would be the SL-6000 (sold as the SL-B500 in Japan), which doesn't have the nice display, but whose battery lasts as much as 18 hours.
- Memory is the other big problem. Actually, you can get by with 32MB of RAM if you turn off "resident in RAM" flags for the commonly used programs, but then you have to wait a few seconds every time you want to use them. Many Japanese users have resorted to creating swap files on SD cards. For some reason, Sharp is refusing to acknowledge this as an issue.
- The machine does feel a bit unresponsive, especially when starting applications. This appears to be mostly due to the toolkit (Qt-Embedded) and the unaccelerated framebuffer. OTOH, profiling reveals that a lot of time is wasted opening and closing huge Japanese font files on startup, so maybe the English version runs much faster.
- Sharp does publish kernel code, in accordance with GPL (although the SD card driver is proprietary). However, the QtE code, as well as most of the PIM code, is proprietary, which means that the users can't do much about the above problem. (Sharp's engineer said in an interview that recompiling the stock QtE library from Trolltech will likely not work.)
- Sharp's decision to make 802.11b optional makes perfect sense in Japan, because hotspots aren't as ubiquitous or interoperable here as they are in the US. The most popular PDA wireless solution here is a cell phone modem in CF form, which works in almost all urban areas at 32kbps-128kbps. And if you do need WiFi, what's so hard about plugging a modem in?
- Yes, third party application support is pretty patchy--unless you can live with console applications, in which virtually every non-X applications in Debian is a recompile away from running on the C700! A lot of Japanese users who were fed up with the default mailer are now happily using emacs to read their mail, for example.
To me, switching from the Palm Vx to the SL-C700 was like trading in a middle-aged accountant for a teenage math genius. The Palm was clearly better at traditional PDA work, and doesn't drive you up the wall like the C700 does sometimes, but there is something unquantifiable that is truly exciting about the C700 that the Palm can't begin to copy.The prices at Dynamism are a bit on the high side in my opinion. I purchased my SL-C700 in Japan at Yodobashi Camera for about 55000 JPY which at the current spot rate is about 460.00 USD.
/home/root/Settings/locale.conf.
Presumably part of that is to recoup shipping and some of the translation costs but a lot of what you are paying is for the after-purchase Fedex replacement service should you ever break the unit.
Short of hopping on the next plane to Tokyo, one alternative is to order one from Conics for 569USD. You may then switch to SL-C700 (mostly) to English yourself by adding the line:
Language = en
to
I currently have one C700 sitting on my desktop for a review. I also have a Sony Clié SJ20 (for old palm medical ebooks I can not read on the Zaurus due to DRM - no matter I *purchased* them I can't legally do what I want with them but that's another story) and a SL 5500. I also had a SL 5000d before, a Clié NR 70, a Clié 760 and various Visors.
...
The C700 is a killer - first it feels so cool! I can't remember being so impressed by a PDA except maybe by the Clié 760 which was really innovative for its time. The C700 can really hold in your shirt pocket - honnestly it's as small as the smallest clié available only a little wider. The screen is a pure marvel - forget the cliés or the ipaqs. I know I don't need color but when you see such a beautiful screen you realise can't live without it.. Just plug your CF in and show your digital pics to your friend on a real screen ! Or use the embedded web browser which can load real websites (no downgraded avantgo like stuff), uqtreader (http://www.timwentford.uklinux.net/) to read offline channels or P.Gutemberg ebooks,
The keyboard is big enought for real typing and the battery life is not a problem (~ 4h in a row? That's more than most color palms and pocket pcs!) since the charger is as big as a tic tac box. And I can afford a spare battery and an external charger if I really need ~8 h in a row.
The real problem is that most software written for the 5500 uses fixed sizes in pixels for a 240x340 screen - that does not scale well on a 640x480. Layouts *should* be used !!! And the emulation for 240x340 takes ~5 sec to load - forever if you need the application *now*. That's not a problem since most 5500 apps are GPL'ed so you can fix the code but if you are using poorly written commercial software on your 5500 forget it !
Moreover the memory is somehow limited : you can't launch many apps at the same time, especially memory hogs like java applications.
It is really promising once a) more software will be ported or cleanly coded and b) opie (http://www.opie.info) will be ported, allowing to put the root filesystem on a SD card thus keeping the while 64M of memory for the system.
If you have $700, if you don't mind replacing the pim by other software (PC syncs sucks - and for some reason they decided to drop the XML format from the PIM) do yourself a favor a get one. In some weeks you will be able to use Opie free software distribution and get the real power out of this baby!
Please check my C700 forum http://externe.net/zaurus/forum if you have one and need some help.
Guylhem
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***
For my PDA, I expect it's primary duties to be a notepad + address book + scheduler + RPN calculator. I want something that is small, nimble, quick to use, easy to backup, and will never crash on me. I'll live with a wait cursor on my computers but not on my PDA. I'll live with multiple clicks to perform one task on my computer but not on my PDA. If I want a portable MP3 player, I'll get a Zen or a iPod. And for my PDA needs, the PalmOS based ones are it. I currently use a Handera330 and have no complaints. I'd take a Tungsten T in a heartbeat. Not for its whizz bang features, but for its formfactor and screen. Oh, and I'd trade color for battery life anyday on a PDA.
The Sharp would be a cool laptop backup though. If I worked as a SysAdmin, I'd carry one with a CF ethernet adapter and a serial cable everywhere. However, I'm a code slinger and much prefer my Happy Hacking Keyboard to a thumbpad.
EnkiduEOT
There is no trap so deadly as the trap you set for yourself
-Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye
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.
> 1: Why not a single task system? Eliminates VM (and associated overhead).
I happy to enjoy being able to stop what I'm doing, looking up a phone number, and going right back to where I was without digging around to find the application I was running.
I also enjoy talking on IRC or checking my email while a web page loads. Or calculating some numbers while a new program is being installed.
> 2: Why soo big monitor? 640x480 is a lot of power to keep lit. Try 320x240
Hmm... Because you can see a lot more on it, no doubt? Perhaps that's why people keep making bigger monitors and TV sets. Or maybe they're all crazy, and it's an LCD conspiracy!
As for being 'big' physically (you seem to think it's a lot more space to 'keep lit'), it's no bigger than the SL-5500. The screen is about the same size as pretty much every other PDA out there. (It's the same as my Palm III, if I count the silkscreen area, which is 'soft' (ie, screen space) on most newer Palms)
> 3: WHy is monitor color? If it's a pda, you need text and grayscale images. Needless energy waste.
Since when do I need greyscale images? It's hard to read a map if all of the lines are black and white. And frankly, having a To-Do list item highlighted in red when it's past due is a pretty reasonable way to make it noticable.
> 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.
I see what you're getting at here, but batteries aren't light. If everything had batteries in them needlessly, the thing would weigh way too much to be comfortable to hold. Besides, spending the extra cash on a low-power device is probably much cheaper than if the device had its own battery!
> 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.
You'll be wanting the SL-A300 then.
> 6: Why not use a slower processor but have dedicated circuits that are only used when demanded (music decompresser).
I guess maybe you don't know much about modern PDA CPUs...
for some reason they decided to drop the XML format from the PIM
If this is really so, this means they lost me as a prospective customer. I don't want a Linux PDA to play the same old games with proprietary formats.
At least, until SyncML synchronization is unavailable for C700, there is little reason for me to prefer it over Pocket PC. Heck, there are SyncML add-ons for Pocket PC already.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.