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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!"
They have been on the market for a *long* time.(Ok, well, in South Korea at least) They have gone through at least 3 or 4 versions by now already. Hardly 'fabled'..
Even though it would be nice to have Linux in a small for factor like this, i'm not sure Linux would be the best solution for a platform like this. And one thing the device is lacking... A BACKLIGHT!
I really am enjoying my Palm Tungsten C!!!
Don't mod me, bro'!!!!
Yikes, the CHEAPEST model is $449, without any accesories. I think I'll give it a miss this once...
TODO: Something witty here...
Come on guys. The carcass isn't even cold yet (well, ok, it is cold, but)...
The Yopy brings a whole new meaning to 'chiclet keyboard'. Has anyone who's used one comment?
I have been pwned because my
However, a $449 price tag is rather hard to justify here. I known that it's comparing Apples to Oranges, but, a person can still pick up a used, last generation laptop with vast amounts more computing power for the same price on an auction, or slightly more at a computer show. And yes, I do realize that making these things are not exactly cheap, but $400+ dollars for those specs - from an unproven manufacturer?
I'll stick with my $195 backlit Clie that I got from Circuit City - after my $35 mail in rebate and the $10 mark down from the holiday sale (which can do everything that this can) for now. I'll pick a Yopy up off Ebay in a few months though.
I wouldn't let a 16 year old play with my Yopy either.
It's trouble, I tell you. Trouble!
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
The reason these PDAs will never make it mainstream is due to the HUGE program base that is out for Palms and PocketPC...
You can make an amazing PDA based on Linux, but if it doesn't run the apps that are all ready out there, are the few advantages great enough to outweigh the lack of support?
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.
It's keyboard looks like the exact same dimension as a TG50 Sony Clie (which an office-mate owns). Seems to work for him just fine.
No, it's fully functional.
PDAs are main stream; everyone from the CEO to grandma has one. Which means that the average PDA consumer is like every other average consumer of anything else, and name recognition and marketing pizazz still rules the market (in regards to sells).
Speaking of the gameboy advance SP, can you imagine an iBook like this thing running linux?
A server in your pocket, or maybe two
Even if it's not USB, some kind of mass storage would be quite a boon. Perhaps Apple will just steer the iPod in that direction eventually.
US Democracy:The best person for the job (among These pre-selected choices...)
MAME
A 300 MHz Dell Axim X5, which also has SecureDigital (superset of MMC) and Compact Flash slots, costs about $200.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Based on the content, I suspect the original posters IP address might originate lie within the address space allocated to... Soviet Russia! [1]
YLFI.
[1] Sorry!
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
Good Idea! The real question now is how to fit that computer in your pocket.
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.
How lame. They promote the wireless nature of the beast, but it comes with a wireless lan card that stick out the end. Not only does that make it easy to break (and other brands of lan card might not work with the provided driver), but it wastes the slot, something you might need for other things when connected.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Well, let's see. I love my Zaurus .. the hardware is good (not sexy, but solid and functional), the software is so-so as a PDA, but great for geeks (my Zaurus is hacked and customized and streamlined out the wazoo, plus I got my wireless MP3 streaming, my tkcVideo movie-watching, got my customized SliMP3 server so I can control any MP3 stream in the house from the Z, got my sweet wireless Pocketop keyboard, got my homebrew RSS reader going on, got my WiFi card in full effect, you get the picture).
.......
So let's compare with Yopy:
Yopy: awesome design, keyboard doesn't look as nice as the Z's which is arranged in the perfect way for thumb-typing. Hmm, you can't fold the screen around and hold the Yopy like a PDA unfortunately, and the keyboard is always exposed. I prefer the Z (plus on the Zaurus you can type pretty much any key you need if you know the right combinations, don't know about this guy).
Looks like the Yopy has speaker/mic onboard? My Z doesn't have that, but the new model does, so that's not a big issue.
Battery life: YOW the Yopy has a phat-ass battery. If there's one thing I hate about my Z it's the <1000mA-h battery. The new Z has a bigger battery but the Yopy kicks everybody's butt.
MMC slot: Well, as far as I know, the SD cards are faster (so they can sell you the copyright bullshit feature which is deactivated on the Z anyway). I don't know if this is slower than the Z's SD slot. Why don't these guys just put TWO CF slots?? That's the superior format in my opinion anyway.
CPU speed: the new Z has a 400Mhz Xscale but apparently it doesn't work right and the performance isn't good. The newer japan-only clamshell Zaurii have a full-speed 400MHz. So I guess it's a draw with the Z here, unless you get the very new clamshell Zaurus.
Colorful LEDs? Well the Z has a couple LEDs that blink and an ANNOYING buzzer. I guess I'll call it a draw here too.
Software: don't know much about the software on the Y. It looks like X Windows.. can I get good software for it? We'll see. I'll give the edge to the Z on this one becuase I know where to get good free and commercial Z software, haven't seen any Y software (yeah yeah, port the X apps, but what about when I want something that Just Works(tm)).
Price: Well the Z is available cheap from many places, I got mine from the HSN special for $168, don't think the Y can compete with that. I'll hand this one to the Z.
WiFi: Does the Y have built-in Wifi??? I don't understand when they say "wifi card". If it has it built-in that's a win for Y, I hate having to go off the air to use the CF slot (I HATE SD cards, and all my software is installed on mine so I never take it out anyway).
So based on my cursory glance: The Y *looks* a *little* cooler than the (non-clamshell) Z. The battery life is much much better. Other than that, I don't see much reason to get one.
Looking forward to the reviews/cool hacks/comments
Whats the cost on those? Not the ones in your pants, you can keep those...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I think any kind of Linux based PDA (or PMT in Zaurus-speak) is not going to appeal to the average PDA consumer/user. These are really a lot more than PDAs. Actually, if you look just at the PIM apps, they suck. What these are really good at are connecting to/monitoring/administering networks and machines. For Unix boxes you've got standard ssh/scp/telnet/ftp/nfs/smb/etc. There's also a wonderful app called WinconnectZ for the Zaurus that's basically rdesktop on your Zaurus. My boss flipped when I showed him (in a meeting) a server desktop on my Zaurus. Around the room it went to all the managers. They were sold on that alone. Now all our administrators have one. And I got reimbursed for everything I spent. :-)
Anyway... I wsent off on a tangent, but the long and short of it is I doubt these will appeal to the average user. Admins, definitely!
If you really wanted to push these to ordinary users, I think I'd concentrate on marketing the mp3 music/mpeg movie players on them. And the fact that they have CF card slots (think IBM 1 gig microdrive - they hold a lot of data).
The fact that you could check your email in Starbucks doesn't hurt either.
Says on their page its front lit like the GBA-SP and Afterburner kit, which are perfect ways of lighting that works great indoors and outdoors.
Turns out, you have to make a wire transfer to their bank account in order to get one. When's the last time you went to your bank for a wire transfer (note: there are extra fees involved).
Also, shipping to the US is US$50. So raise the minimum price to US$500.
***
Radio Shack. You've got questions...we've got blank stares(TM).
This looks great. I just ordered one.
I have a Zaurus and it has generally been a disappointment. The built-in applications are not all that good, and its use of Qt/Embedded makes it very difficult to port most Linux GUI software to it--you have to spend time learning Qt/Embedded. I find the Zaurus mostly useful as a little wireless terminal and music player for around the house, not as a PDA.
The Yopy looks like it gets it right: standard Linux with X11. Note that G.MATE also first tried to use some other embedded window system and then saw the light.
Also, the keyboard on the Yopy looks like it's more functional to me than what the Zaurus has. The Zaurus keyboard feels nice, but the sliding mechanism is kind of clunky. On the Yopy, it's right there.
The price seems pretty much in line with the new Zaurus, the PPC, and Palm handhelds, and the Yopy just seems like a nice machine.
I'll stick with my $195 backlit Clie that I got from Circuit City
No question, the Clie is a great deal for a basic PDA with a nice screen. But none of the PalmOS devices are particularly good for developing custom applications for because their OS is so different from everything else (oddball memory management, database as the primary storage model, a GUI toolkit that's different from everything else).
And yes, I do realize that making these things are not exactly cheap, but $400+ dollars for those specs - from an unproven manufacturer?
The Yopy has been on the market for several years and is apparently fairly popular in Korea. But the beauty is, it really doesn't matter whether the manufacturer is obscure or not: the thing runs standard Linux and X11, so you know exactly what you are getting. Furthermore, should G.MATE disappear, your investment in the software isn't lost because you can just run it on an iPaq or some other Linux/X11 handheld.
As for the price, you pay $499 for a Yopy with WiFi, which is pretty much the same you pay for a Tungsten C. For the Tungsten C, I think that's overpriced, because PalmOS really has a hard time taking advantage of the 400MHz ARM, 64Mbytes of memory, and WiFi. In contrast, the Yopy makes sense: there are lots of Linux applications for which its compute power makes sense, and all that needs to be done to run them on the Yopy is to recompile them.
I dunno about all you, but I've had a YOPY 3000 for about a year now. It's in my pocket as we speak.
:). Also lots of tips, tricks, and help.
The 3500 and 3700 models were announced before Christmas too...
The sites have been available since I've gotten it, and they're released new versions of Linupy twice since I've had it.
Check out www.yopydeveloper.org. Many useful opensource downloads for the Yopy. Several of which I contributed (porting ogg123, for example
It's a pretty decent platform.
University - a box of academia nuts.
And with its "Fashionable Slim Size", I could use it to keep my truck from rolling down the driveway. I certainly wouldn't want to wear the thing all day, esp. with the LAN card hanging out to catch on things.
"Never pet a burning dog."