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.

Re:I dont get it

[Falsch Freiheit]

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.

Re:I dont get it

[bstadil]

Just pop in a CF card and use that as the "hard drive"

Use CF for stoarage yes, but you need the SD card for running (most) programs. Installing a program to the CF card will in most cases not work. For Swap you can use SD but there is a speed / number of Writes penalty.

Build in memory vs expansion options almost always comes out favoring expansions. The reason is the volatility and the machanics of the memory market. Most producers can not compete on memory procurement. Reason is the much longer cycle time of finished products (from initial production thru product in users hand) vs memory modules. Plus potential form factor issues, In addition there is the risk factor that the PDA producer rather not take. Risk is expensive even though you win once in a while. That being said I love my Zaurus

Re:I dont get it

[mivok]

From what I've seen, the 5600 is very similar to the 5500, which has both sd/mmc and cf slots. The first thing I bought with my 5500 was a 256MB cf card and 128MB sd, storing programs on the sd card and mp3s (well oggs) on the compact flash, which I could remove and replace with the ethernet card when needed net access.

The real crippling factor is that in the 5500, the memory was all SDRAM which meant that you could flash with a different rom (openzaurus maybe) and have the full 64MB of main memory for loaded program use, and the SD card for storage. With the 5600 its 32MB SDRAM and 32MB flash, which sort of kills this idea. And if you ever want to run more than one app on the pda with 32MB, you quickly run out of memory.

The improvement in battery life is the only reason I would want to upgrade to a 5600, but even then you can get battery packs for the 5500, and its a LOT cheaper. (I paid £300 in january and its gone down to approx £200, probably even less now :( )

When is the C700 coming out

[Bytal]

Heard that the C700 was coming in late 2003 to North America. At least thats what techtv said at some point in January.

Wonderful Tool

[Oriumpor]

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

Re:Wonderful Tool

[IceFox]

Don't forget the Howtos at docs.zaurus.com. I try to get as much up there documentation wise to help everyone.

Media Player

[IceFox]

With this price there is something that I have wanted to do with the Zaurus for a really long time. Turn it into a media player. For $600 or some insane price you can get one of those media players with the 2 line text lcd. Pick up one of these connect it to the network, power, and receiver. Then write a little app to play audio files over the network onto your stereo. You get a COLOR 320x240 lcd TOUCH screen. I don't think that there is any media center that has that for this cheap. With the touch screen there is all sorts of extra goodies that you could put on it to make managing the music easier. Heck you could just run apache on it and browse to it from any computer and all it would do is display the current song and cool swirly plugins. Put some cool visual plugins on it, duck tape it to your stereo rack (or make a nice case, whatever suits you) and enjoy.

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?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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.

CORRECTION: 32MB RAM (SDRAM) and 64MB Flash

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Phone home?

[famebait]

Hmmm.

• Real speaker and mike
• Room for wireless card
• Running linux

Sounds like the open-source VOIPs are finally in for some serious usage.

I guess batterly life (while using wifi) will still be pretty bad compared to a moderm mobile, but for international calls it would still be a godsend; I just spent a fortune calling to Europe from the GDC.

Almost. So close, if only for the screen!

[mcgroarty]

This is very close to being a perfect device. The only complaint I've got is that it's yet another 240x320 screen device. At that size, it's not quite enough to make it easy on the eyes for extended use.

For eBook use, one of the more popular applications for PDAs, you really need something more like the newer Sony Palm devices. This resolution isn't quite enough for crisp fonts (even with subpixel rendering) and it's small enough that most preformatted PDF/Web content still needs to scroll half a screen horizontally to be read at a legible magnification.

Can we please please see a Zaurus with a 360x480 display?

Wrong specs listed up top.

[IceFox]

right specs:
64 flash (that is rw via jff2)
32 RAM

The SL-5600, which is powered by a 400 MHz Intel XScale processor, features a reflective QVGA (240 x 320 pixel) color LCD screen and a unique integrated QWERTY keyboard with sliding cover. It also includes a rechargeable (and replaceable) 1700 mAh battery, 64MB of protected Flash memory, 32MB of SD-RAM, dual expansion via CompactFlash and SecureDigital/MMC card slots, and an integrated speaker and microphone. The software stack is based on Linux along with the Qtopia GUI environment and PIM suite, Opera embedded browser, and the Geode Java virtual machine.

Re:Dare I?

[Oriumpor]

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.

-1, Too US Centric

[yem]

HSN.com don't ship outside USA.

Re:-1, Too US Centric

[fireshipjohn]

Try www.digiuk.com and then Zaurus PDA's in the left hand menu, special offer 199 UKP with free docking station and other accessories available. There both sides of the Atlantic covered. John

Couldn't take it any longer....

[senducemhere]

I see a 50 node Beowulf cluster in a 2u rackspace!

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.

5500 vs 5600 -- strongly consider the 5500

[rjamestaylor]

The 5600 is very nice, but differs from the 5500 mainly in battery and updated applications (like Opera 6 versus 5). The XScale is twice the MHz but not twice the speed, something Apple users understand; I recall other hardware mfg'ers having real problems getting the XScale to work properly. I would expect that the newer applications will be made available for 5500 users, since there is little hardware change to prevent this, but the albatross of poor battery life made the 5500 untenable for applications needing to run a scanner or 802.11b radio.

I'm excited about the 5600 for my use and still recommend the 5500 for general development and use.

Go Sharp!

Questions for a current Zaurus owner...

[PunchMonkey]

Before I whip out my credit card and ask a friend in the U.S. to forward this on to me since hsn doesn't ship to Canada :-(

- How's the battery life? ~4 hours? ~20 hours? How much do you use your s and how often do you have to recharge?

- The OS that comes presinstalled, it's linux based right? Do I get a shell with it? Can I compile and run most linux apps? What's the deal with OpenZaurus?

I did try and get answers from HSN and myzaurus.com (and even openzaurus.com) but these ones weren't answered.

Thanks!

Re:Questions for a current Zaurus owner...

[JCholewa]

> Before I whip out my credit card and ask a friend in the U.S. to forward this on to me since hsn doesn't ship to Canada :-(
> - How's the battery life? ~4 hours? ~20 hours? How much do you
> use your s and how often do you have to recharge?

I have a SL-5000D, which has a much smaller battery than the SL-5600. It gets a little better battery life than the Handspring Visor Prism, if that helps. Actually, it's probably much better in the summertime, since the Prism's screen is unreadable in the daylight, but I could totally turn off the front-light on the Zaurus in daytime (for longer hours and all that). Still, I keep mine plugged in as often as possible, though I do have it set up to have all my data on the Flash ROM, so I don't lose anything (even installed apps, even prefs, whatever) if I do lose power.

> - The OS that comes presinstalled, it's linux based right?

Yeah. Based on Debian's arm-ported binaries, though it's not Debian itself. I think that there is a debian port (with X and all), but that's just insane, man!

> Do I get a shell with it?

Sharp put its terminal program on the CD. It's easy enough to install, but there are better choices. There's a port of Konsole (the tabbed terminal program used in KDE) for the Zaurus that is very popular.

> Can I compile and run most linux apps?

Good question. If you're good at cross compiling, you'll probably have good luck with command-line apps. Graphical apps are a little different. The Zaurus doesn't normally use X. X is huge for a PDA. You could get it, but that's ... well, it's insane. Anyway, programs requiring X libs obviously won't work. Zaurus uses Qtopia, which is a PDA-ish environment based on Trolltech's Qt, a widget set and toolkit for many operating systems. It's neat. I use Qt for my programs (it makes programming a lot easier), and I can easily cross compile gui apps between x86/Linux, x86/win32, ppc/macosx (well, I could if I had the compiler for OS X, and it'd help if I had OS X itself!) and the Zaurus.

> What's the deal with OpenZaurus?

It's mostly just a different ROM with different default applications. It uses Konqueror/Embedded instead of the Opera browser. It's made with ssh in mind instead of the insecure ftp that the Zaurus normally uses. It has better scripting support, though I haven't really looked at that stuff. The launcher configuration is amazing, at least compared to what Sharp offers for the SL-5000D. I can change background images for each category, I can change fonts, I can alter the widget style, I can have transparent menus ... lots of stuff like that. Oh, OZ also lets me use the Flash ROM for storage and the DRAM exclusively for memory access, though Sharp does that now, too.

On the negative side, OZ 3.0 can be a bit crashy and there's a few things that it doesn't work with (Opera, most Hancom Office -- the best office suite for PDAs, bar none -- stuff, and java apps), so if your life depends on that stuff, you might want to stick with Sharp.

-JC

Re:Questions for a current Zaurus owner...

[dagnabit]

I picked up my Zaurus at Linuxworld in San Francisco last fall during Sharp's "half off" sale, and have been using it on a daily basis since then. I also own (and continue to use) a Palm IIIxe.

Battery life for me has been about 2 to 2.5 hours with full backlight on (it's got 5 different settings, including off. The darker you go, the longer it lasts). The screen is very reflective, so if you're outside (or sitting in a window seat on a plane) you can turn the backlight off and get as much as 4-5 hours out of it.

It seems to charge back up completely pretty quickly once you plug it in, though. And I normally leave it sitting in the cradle (a la Palm V) charging when I'm not holding it in my office, etc.

But the short battery life definitely sucks if you're truly mobile with it (I fly quite a bit for business). How I wish it took regular (rechargeable) AAA batteries like my Palm...

It uses embedded Linux as the underlying OS (uname shows "2.4.6-rmk1-np2-embedix").

There are a couple of free terminal apps you can install (including multi-tab Konsole) to get a shell while in GUI mode. Or I suppose you could kill the GUI and run at the command line... but who wants that in a PDA?

There are a couple of howtos for cross-compiling for, and native compiling on, the Z at docs.zaurus.com. I don't any of that myself (yet), though, so I can only say I've glanced at the docs and they seem fairly straightforward.

OpenZaurus is a ROM image replacement that gives you more access to the installed RAM, etc. I haven't run it myself, but I've seen lots of positive comments. One note: some/many commercial Zaurus app providers like theKompany only support official Sharp ROMs. If you load their stuff on OZ and it doesn't work, oh well. But the OZ developers seem to be interested in knowing about problems like that to make OZ better.

BTW, theKompany apps rock (IMO) compared to the built-in ones. Yes, they cost a couple of $$ each, but you get free upgrades for life.

For all it's shortcomings, I haven't found much I can't do with the Z that I do use the Palm IIIxe for. And the "wow" factor of listening to my OGG files while surfing wirelessly or writing something with the keyboard is right up there... I can't count the number of people next to me on flights who have said "what _is_ that thing?" :) The battery life could definitely be a problem though -- can't wait to try a 5600!

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.