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.

Comments

I dont get it

[odyrithm]

32meg? Ive got 512meg on my keychain device, after ripping it apart the chips really would'nt take up much room in a pda.. I guess its a cost thing.. but I'm sure it wouldnt cost much to expand to 256/512..

please enlighten me someone.

Re:I dont get it

[cdrudge]

I beleive the Flash is for the OS and the apps that come with it. Just pop in a CF card and use that as the "hard drive". It probably is a cost thing. People don't want to pay the extra money when many/most won't use it. I wouldn't be supprised if 50% of PDA owners never add additional software and of the other 50%, half wouldn't have a use/need for more then 32 megs.

No Linux Desktop Apps to go along?

[xZAQx]

From the hsn page, under "requirements:"

"Microsoft Windows 98/98SE/2000 Professional/ME/XP"

So, then, Linux is a good enough platform for developing the thing on, and running the handheld software, but Sharp can't write desktop apps for us to synchronize it?
I'm sure it's very easy to set it up to synchronize with Evolution or whatever-else-you-want, but, seriously, why doesn't Sharp at least tout that it runs Linux as a marketing strategy?

I don't understand, someone please enlighten me.

Re:No Linux Desktop Apps to go along?

[RobotRunAmok]

Same thing with TiVo. What's the purpose for excluding it from their advertisements?

Probably because the target audience for TiVos are humans. Seriously, Dude, we're "Geeks," and just _some_ of us care about a device's OS. Sure, it would be great from a Linux Evangelist's perspective for every mainstream thingamabob running Linux to promote such, but I can just as easily see the Marketing Guy saying, "Look, can we ose-lay the Inux-Lay references, it makes it sound too geeky." Perfectly reasonable, given these companies' goal is to sell widgets, not push Linux.

Mickey D's doesn't tout what brand of vegetable oil it uses on its fries, Chyrsler doesn't promote the brand of spark plugs they use, Tommy Hilfiger doesn't waste copy space telling people where he buys his textiles. A Broadway show puts its actors names up in lights, not those of its stage crew.

Which brings us back to Sharp and the Zaurus. The guys who use and compile Linux already _know_ the Zaurus runs on it. We're already on the team, have done the research. It's a given. Sharp is out there competing with the Palm and PocketPC crowd, and the LAST thing they want to do is muddy the comparison waters with even a whiff of OS incompatibility.

Re:Dare I?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want a PDA, the old Palm machines can't be beat. The Zaurus and Wince machines are totally inadequate because of the battery issue. I'm serious: a 5 year old Palm wipes the floor with any of the "modern" products as a PDA.

If you want a portable personal computer, though, the Zaurus is pretty fucking cool. Just remember: it's a PC, not a PDA.

A good minicomputer, but not a good PDA.

[ElGuapoGolf]

I have a Zaurus, and while it's a great minicomputer, it's not a good PDA by any stretch.

After about 3 or 4 months of using the Zaurus, it went back on the shelf, and the old Psion Revo+ came out instead. The Revo/5mx just kick it all over the Zaurus (and PocketPC) when it comes to doing Actual PDA Stuff. The address book/agenda tool on the Revo is miles ahead of what you have on the Zaurus, and still better than what's on the PocketPC. And, if you want to kick it up a notch, the Word/Sheet programs on the Revo handle Word and Excel files about a hundred times better than Hancom Word/Sheet on the Zaurus. I just feel more productive with the Revo, and it seems that the software is better.

It's funny, but the Revo+ runs at about 1/6 the speed of the Zaurus, but Opera seems to render pages just as fast. It has half the memory, but it doesn't have any of the memory/space limitations I ran into on the Zaurus' internal memory. (Yeah, I kept the MP3s on a CF card).

I do hope that the OpenZaurus project continues, but it seems that they're not making any huge strides in the PIM areas. From what I understand, OZ's email client doesn't really work at all. Not confidence inspiring.

But I do miss the mp3 player.

Re:A good minicomputer, but not a good PDA.

[druske]

After using the Zaurus SL-5500 for a few months, I'm inclined to agree, though everyone has their own idea of what a "PDA" needs to be. Even the SL-5500 was a very capable device, and I wrote a favorable review for PocketAnywhere.com (a site I'm no longer affiliated with). The PIM software was weak, though I was optimistic that offerings from theKompany would soon fix that, if Sharp didn't themselves. It was very cool browsing the web with Opera over a wireless link, and fooling around with VNC.

So why'd I sell it and go back to using a Palm m505 after a few months? Mostly because the capabilities of the SL-5500 were things I really had no use for. If I needed to browse the web on a tiny screen, or needed VNC or other networking tools in a miniature package, I never would've let this thing out of my sight. As it was, though, it didn't do basic PIM functions nearly as well as Palm (even with theKompany's products), and --- this is the real killer --- was simply too big. If a PDA is too big, I don't carry it around, and if I don't carry it with me, it's useless.

Everyone's needs are different, and I hope that a variety of devices continue to be available to meet them. Sharp's an important player here. Not only are they selling one of the best handheld tools out there, but their presence is one more barrier to the erosion of choice we'd have if Palm or Microsoft monopolized the market.

Re:Almost. So close, if only for the screen!

[jhunsake]

You're one fucked up little boy...

Re:Dare I?

[RevAaron]

When discussing the Zaurus in relation to WinCE, a lot of people go on about features they see as novel to a Linux PDA.

I'm a big PDA nerd. I'm working on my own PDA OS/computing environment. And I've done a lot of comparisons between WinCE, Palm OS, Newton OS, and Linux.

Linux on the PDA can do a lot of slick things- run Apache, Emacs, Vi, Perl, Python, SSH, VNC and X11. WinCE can do that as well. There is an XFree port, multiple SSH clients (Free, free and commercial), etc. You can tunnel X11 over SSH on a WinCE machine. You can use a serial cable to adminster router with a terminal emulator. Some of these things are of questionable usefulness for some people, but it is possible all the same.

I've heard way too many people go on and on about how their Linux PDAs can do these things as an advantage over WinCE PDAs. Linux PDAs may have their advantages (moral advantage?), but running a handful of useful Unix-ey tools isn't one of them.

Check out Rainer's page for a lot of useful WinCE ports.

I cannot say the same for Palm OS, however. PalmOS is relatively primitive (internally) compared to WinCE and Linux/PDA, which are both full-blown, relatively modern operating systems that run on PDAs. Some of these things work on Palm OS devices, SSH for instance, but X11, Emacs most likely do not.

I'm *really* tempted to buy this Zaurus- seems like a good deal. But the same thing as ever is holding me back- Linux PDAs have no real handwriting recognition system, like the HWR on the Newton OS or CalliGrapher for Windows CE. I use it quite a bit for taking notes- taking bitmap notes doesn't compare in their usefulness to real text notes. The thumboard wouldn't cut it for taking college lecture notes for me, and the character recognition wouldn't either.

Other than HWR, I have still stuck to using WinCE and the Newton OS as my PDA platforms. The available software for WinCE is generally of a higher quality than you can get for Linux PDAs. Like on desktop Windows, there is a lot of trashy software, however, but the good stuff is pretty good, better than most of what you can get for Linux PDAs, commercial or not.

That isn't to say that all Linux PDA software sucks, or that you can't get a decent package here or there- on the contrary. The Hancom Office apps are pretty nice. However, Linux PDA apps are all too often like their desktop Linux apps- messy UI wise. Especially the Free and free apps. The commercial QTopia shops put a bit more thought into their apps, which is good.

If you like what is available enough, and think the moral advantage of Linux instead of WinCE

I've wanted a Linux PDA for quite some time. I did something similar to you, I bought a Helio for running Linux. Similar specs as an Agenda (75 MHz MIPS, 2 MB Flash ROM, 8 MB RAM, serial, 160x160 B&W screen). Linux was ported, so was PicoGUI, but in the end, it does just about as much as an Agenda does. Maybe a little more- the open-source default VT-OS is still pretty useful. After that, I got an iPAQ 3100 for developing Dynapad, and tried running Familiar and then QTopia on it during a couple months in the summer. Went back to WinCE after that,

I also run Squeak on it, and can use it for programming. But generally, it's a toy compared to my Newton 2100 or my Jornada 720.

That said, use whatever you like. I'm not a "WinCE evangelist," but thus far, I've preferred using it over Linux on a PDA. I don't even use Windows on the desktop (or server), but I'm a big proponent of using the best tool for the job.

it's just funny

[g4dget]

that people keep claiming that something like that, a 400MHz RISC processor and 32M of RAM isn't fast enough for running X11 and therefore requires an embedded window system that is incompatible with what we run on our desktops.

Re:Questions for a current Zaurus owner...

[g4dget]

Oh, I should add that you can run gcc both in-device and on your desktop.

If you plug in a 512M CF card, the whole thing is more powerful and has more memory and disk storage than most workstations had less than a decade ago.