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YOPY Arrives
Victor Tramp writes "Apparently the fabled Linux based YOPY handheld has been put on the market after all! Not only do they look like cool PDA versions of a Gameboy Advance SP (they fold), they look like they give the Zaurus a real run for the money, featurewise. Though the fastest processor is 206MHz, they include CompactFlash and MMC slots on the 3700 model. Apparently you can download their Linupy distro, too. And finally, they don't seem to be vaporware!"
... and back then, the people at the Sony booth didn't allow me to touch it, because with my 16 years, i didn't look like a valuable customer to them :)
I also remember downloading some developer libraries and eagerly waiting for the YOPY to come out. But with the time, my interest faded.
I'm really surprised it finally got released after all.
The Yopy brings a whole new meaning to 'chiclet keyboard'. Has anyone who's used one comment?
I have been pwned because my
First pic I saw I thought, uh uh another Clie-styled brick. However, the specs put it at only 7oz, much less than the high end clies. Still not as much as my Ipaq 1910 at a little over 4, but just a hair more than my old Palm III, but with a better form factor .
I have to drool over the 2300mAh battery. Ack.
While a Strongarm processor might not have the sex appeal of an Xscale, most of the Xscales are just empty promises for other handhelds. PPC 2002 doesn't support the Xscale's ARMv5 instruction set, and from the look of the upcoming Ipaq (which don't support v5 either but supposedly will have PPC 2003 installed), PPC 2003 won't either.
I haven't touched it in a year, because Gmate never released source for anything but the kernel. Worse, their web site had a place to upload things, but anything they didn't like, (like my cool USB base station mod, evidently [see the serial number?]) they just tossed, without a reply -- the upload would just vanish into the ether. (I uploaded three times just to be sure it was deliberate.)
It appears they wanted people to write applications, but not to fool with the hardware or kernel.
I hope they have got less contemptuous of hackers in days since. At this point I would be a lot more likely to order one of those Japan-only Zauruses.
Well, on my Zaurus, while at home I just NFS-mount my 100+GB's of storage, as well as my /mnt directory for CDROM/DVD access.. not *quite* as good as a USB port in the back, but certainly great for home use!
You can even stream movies this way if you strip them down with mencoder (240x160, 16fps).. I just streamed a whole 2-hour movie over WiFi on my Zaurus last night (plugged in with AC adapter of course). That is some seriously cool shit. But of course it would be much cooler if I could do it on the road.. without a CF card....maybe someday!
Also I'd like to see printer support.........
I don't have any of the supported PDAs, but my ultra-cool, ultra-sexy, uber-geek girlfriend has an iPAQ (not that I'm kissing up so she'll get one, but I do think she is those things... really... its true! bah!). It's $139 though... That hurts and will push it back on my toy buying schedule. Maybe my girlfriend will read the PDF manual and think about it ;)
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
Now if someone had a CF2 sized mobile phone card and the docs to write a driver, I could actually trash my Treo... any hints are appreciated :-))
open (SIG, "</dev/zero"); $sig = <SIG>; close SIG;
The whole PMT vs PDA thing is bullshit. It's something Zaurus users use to help rationalize the fact that they've spent a boatload of money on a PDA that has a very poor screen and even worse battery life and very little software selection.
You, and countless others on Slashdot, have talked about all the fun little LUG and show-the-boss demos you can do on the Zaurus. Guess what? Pretty much all of them work on WinCE and also PocketPC (which is a superset of WinCE).
Yes, on Windows CE you can do SSH. Telnet. X11 (using Xfree86 no less). You can program in Perl (perl/tk even), Python, Ruby, Squeak Smalltalk, and Tcl/Tk, among plenty of others. You can do rdesktop. VNC. You can play oggs and mpegs. War driving and wifi monitoring. Hell, on my Jornada 720, I do all of this stuff. I also use it for writing all of my papers in LaTeX.
Unlike the SL-5x00 or even the SL-C7x0 Zaurii, the J72x's keyboard is actually useful for more than a thumboard. The C700 has a keyboard which looks like something you may be able to touch-type on, but it's not. It's a little larger than the kb on the SL-5x00, but not much better. On the J720, I type almost as fast as I do on the desktop, which is a huge positive. On other PDAs- the Axim or the Newton 2100- I have real handwriting recognition. The Zaurus and its goofy thumboard wouldn't be so bad if you could get some form of HWR or even semi-decent character recognition, but there isn't any to be had.
I've owned a Zaurus. After a month, I sold it. My problem is probably that I've actually used other PDAs before getting the Zaurus. I went in expecting something that didn't suck quite that hard. I wasn't expecting something that was as useful as a NewtonOS, WinCE or PalmOS PDA, but something that wasn't as bad as it as.
The biggest surprise when I tried to switch to the Zaurus is the software. One can find a lot more *adapted* Unix/Linux software for Windows CE than you do for the Zaurus. With the Zaurus, you can compile anything pretty easily out of the box; but what use is that when it's a huge PITA to use? I never once found any nice integrated package for doing LaTeX and a lot of other things on the Zaurus.
If the Zaurus is a "PMT" because it is only good at doing some admin-ney things, and PalmOS devices are "PDAs" because they do the PIM stuff well, what are WinCE devices? PDMT?
The only thing I wish I had on my WinCE Jornada 720 that the Zaurus has is Opera 6. It's a sweet browser. The Jornada 720 has IE and NetFront, which are both pretty good, but Opera on the Zaurus was fast and nice.
And for those with PocketPC experience who are about to reply saying "PocketIE blows!" Don't bother. PIE for PocketPC 2k and 2002 does blow. It (literally) has the feature set of IE 3, with a couple things like SSL added on. Internet Explorer for vanilla-WinCE and Handheld PC 2000 on the other hand has a feature set like IE 4.5 and 5. Except it's not as flaky, spazzy or bloated as its desktop counterpart. (thank "Bob!")
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad