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Sharp Ships Zaurus SL-5600; 5500 Available Cheap
Bill Kendrick writes "LinuxDevices is reporting the good news: Sharp is now shipping the Zaurus SL-5600 Linux-based PDA. Compared to the SL-5500 that's been out for the past year, this new model sports a 400MHz X-Scale CPU, twice the Flash (32MB), twice the RAM (64MB) a much better battery (1700 mAh), and a real speaker and mic. Learn more at Sharp's website." And IceFox writes "Well I wasn't expecting this to happen till next week, but I guess it was put up early. For a limited time on hsn.com you can get a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA for $198.92, combined with a hsn.com coupon you can bring the price down to $169.08. For anyone who has wanted to play with this Linux PDA here is your chance to get it for very cheap." Update: 03/18 02:03 GMT by T : Reader Brendan Hoar corrects the listed specs: "The specs for the SL-5600 are incorrect. It should be 64MB of flash, 32MB
of SDRAM. It's technically *half* the RAM of the SL-5500, not twice the RAM." Thanks.
The sharp zaurus is one of the best tools ever. I have used it in many different situations where before I would have had to grab my laptop. Using Minicom I have programmed routers with the nifty serial cable. I have spent many hours playing Dopewars and Wyvern (a pretty nifty graphical mud). The sharp image comes with Opera and is readable even at the furthest zoom (-4 or something.) My options are NOT restricted by sharp, there is even OpenZaurus (or OZ as the Z junkies call it.) The walkthroughs on the pages are mostly made for Linux noobs.
It runs Kismet (with the special socket drivers I can run low power for about 2 hours.) The software library is always growing, and the developers are happy to share their techniques for cross compiling/QT developing.
The wonderful thing about the Zaurus, is people already have developed and even COMPILED programs for the arm that run just fine on the Z, (mostly Ipaq/other linux SA device developers) but that means an even BIGGER software library.
The community is so helpful, you may be asking questions in the #zaurus channel in irc.openprojects.org and the person answering your question, just might have been the one developing the program you are asking about. It is not infrequent to hear "#Zaurus:So_and_so Yeah here that version is kinda buggy, I just compiled the new one here."
I have to mention Zauruszone even though it is no where near the community it used to be, there still are useful links
The 5500 has 64MB of RAM (but half was reserved for file storage) and 16MB of read-only flash.
The 5600 has 32MB of RAM (giving it the same working memory in the standard configuration) and 64MB of read-write flash (giving it slightly more storage space).
So, there isn't really any more RAM for applications in the SL-5600.
Desktop apps for Linux are available (and usually more reliable), but they are brought to you by trolltech (Qtopia Desktop) and available through Sharp's website.
I actually like Qtopia Desktop better than Intellisync. Intellisync tends to freeze up windows if anything unusual happens with the transfer--never had that happen with Qtopia Desktop, even in windows.
It has a thumb keyboard (really the only way to use it efficiently.) Runs Linux, can run GCC, can be used to program routers with a 15 dollar cable. Has a SD slot and a CF slot, can run a swap file on either memory storage unit, so real memory is not quite so big a deal.
It's cheaper than any comporable device, has a screen which is backlit, and readable in the sunlight, has a software library with hundreds of titles.
It can run kismet, it has a wireless internet service (not WIFI but CDPD or some hybrid.) The battery is replaceable so you can carry 3-4 LIon batteries with you on a long flight (although expensive but worth it in my eyes). Flite is precompiled to run on the SA and can be used to read books/trigger events via your WIFI card/CF storage whatever.
Lets put it this way, if you like to play with your PDA, get a Zaurus and best of all it fits in your pocket.
It's called "power consumption".
Memory on embedded devices is kept low, yes, partially because RAM costs $$, but more because RAM costs watts, and watts cost time (as in, less run-time) or weight+size (as in a bigger battery).
Often the type of RAM that uses less power is also bigger and more expensive than high-power-use cheap ram.
Your keychain device can afford the power-consumption, which comes from the wall where power is cheap. Also, your keychain device can go head and use that power-sucking RAM, 'cause it's got access to that wall-socket.