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.

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.

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.