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Zaurus SL-5600/SL-5500 Comparison Whitepaper
Bill Kendrick writes "A cool as the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 Linux-based PDA is, there are definitely some quibbles about battery life, software and syncing. Fortunately, it seems the folks at Sharp and TrollTech have been working on it for the new 5600 model.
Sharp just posted a whitepaper (PDF) comparing the two models. (Newer kernel, no more root-privs-for-everything, JFFS2, dropping slow XML for PIM stuff, and USB-IO syncing, to name a few.)"
with its 640x480 super crisp display and its morphing ability. I hope they will sell it outside of Japan. Sharp had a lot of them at CeBIT, not a single SL-5600. They know it's much nicer.
Here are some links:
My Zaurus Info page
Conics Shop for ordering outside of Japan
Sharp's Japanese Zaurus Page
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
> Why wouldn't I just run as root?
Why would you ?
Seriously though, if you're logged in as root, you can do an end-run around lots of the mechanisms that make Linux as stable as it is. If you're a nonprivileged user, AND provided the kernel is doing it's job properly, it shouldn't be possible to make the thing crash.
25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
Just a recomendation on what cf 802.11b card to look at...
I have used both the SMC 802.11b cf card and the Socket Low Power 802.11b cards. The Socket definately draws less power, and my experience is that it has an equal range.
The down side of the Socket is that none of the built in wireless apps, nor any of the wireless apps (other than the text mode wireless tools) know how to communicate with the card, nor do they recognize it as a wireless network card.
The driver for the card is on the http://www.zaurus.com/feed server as spectrum24drivers (link is untested, set up your ipkg installer to get the drivers via your usb connection, or pull them down, get them on a cf or sd card and install from there.)
One of the local Office Depot stores is where I got my Socket card this week, There is a $30 mail in rebate, bringing the price down from 149 to 119 after the rebate.
My experience with the SMC card was I would get about half an hour of live time with the card installed. With the Socket card I am getting much closer to 2 hours, if not 3. Considering that I only get about 4 hours of live time without any network interface, I am fairly impressed.
If you drain the battery with this card, while sitting on the crapper, you really do have more problems than you thought.
-Rusty
You never know...
- Although you can configure multiple SMTP accounts, the mail client only uses the one configured first
- Every now and then the soft eject for a CF card doesn't work and you have to physically take it out
In addition, since Sharp has already worked on a new kernel, PIM, etc., it would be great if existing 5500 owners could benefit from what their software group has done since the latest firmware upgrade came out.The hardware changes on the 5600 are not a radical shift from the 5500 (unless, of course, you buy into the MHz hype). I bet that not many people will ditch their 5500s and invest in 5600s primarily to fix problems that could be resolved through a firmware upgrade.
I dropped Sharp's OS a couple of months ago in favor of OpenZaurus, and found nothing but improvements. (Almost) every complaint I had about the original software was addressed:
1. The calendar app is much more stable. My one remaining issue is with repeating appointments: if you modify a repeating appointment on the Z, it'll duplicate itself and you'll have two appointments in the same spot: one with the old info, and one with the new. If you instead modify the appt. with the Qtopia Desktop software (Linux--I never use the Windows version), you don't have this problem.
2. I used to lose all my to-dos everytime I synced with the Sharp software. Fixed.
3. You can get ipks from the Zaurus Software Index (http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus) to preserve the Jeode environment as well as the Hancom apps and Opera, so you can still use them on OpenZaurus. These utilities will convert them to ipks which you can copy to your machine. When you install OpenZaurus, you can just reinstall these apps as normal. I can testify that the Jeode one works: I don't have a need for the Hancom apps or Opera, so I never reinstalled them.
4. The theme feature is there in OpenZaurus, so if you're using it, you've already got what Sharp gives you in the 5600. I'm using the Liquid theme.
5. There's a nice Today app in OpenZaurus that gives you a snapshot of your day--both to-dos and calendar appointments.
6. I haven't encountered a 3rd party ipk that I used to use in Sharp's rom that doesn't work with the OZ rom.
7. I had to upgrade Sharp's rom to use a 128MB SD card. This also broke my connection to the Linux version (some "security patch" was also included in this upgrade that prevented the Linux Qtopia desktop from connecting, and also disabled ftp). Installing OZ fixed all of these issues.
8. OZ includes OpenSSH by default, so it's much easier to get into the Z and copy files.
9. The Sharp ROM crashed all the time. And I mean ALL THE TIME. I don't have that problem with OZ.
To get to the point, I would recommend to anyone who runs Linux and is purchasing a 5500 right now to save yourself the headaches and replace the default ROM with OpenZaurus. If you back up Jeode, Hancom, and Opera, you won't lose anything by doing it, and you'll have a much more stable PDA.