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Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 PDA Review

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the hardware-to-lust-after dept.

An anonymous reader sent us a link to a review of the Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 PDA. This Linux based handheld with a built in qwerty keyboard with decent connectivity. As with most PDAs, there are a lot of tradeoffs that have to be made yet. Read the review to see what they are.

9 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Same tired post..... by mao+che+minh · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I understand the convienence factor of PDAs, but a $499.99 price tag for the type of power and specs that you get with this Zaurus (and similiarly priced PDAs) is still too much. To truly get full functionality out of these PDAs (or at least do everything most people would want to do with them) you still need to purchase extra accessories and expanded memory/storage (considering that even the most expensive PDAs only have 64MB RAM native). In the end $499.99 quickly builds up to about $599.99.

    I know that this comparing apples to oranges, but for $600 you can get a righteous laptop off Ebay or locally from a used reseller. This laptop is a full fledged computer with vast amounts more memory, storage, and room for improvement/expansion.

    Considering that most people buy a new PDA every two to three years, why not just double your money now and buy a 15.4" Widescreen TFT LCD WXGA (1280 x 800 max. resolution) laptop that comes with an Athlon XP 2200+ CPU, 40GB of storage, 512MB DDR PC2100 RAM, CRDW/DVD drive, all the ports except IEEE 1394, and one of the best mobile graphics chipsets around, the ATI RADEON IGP 320M, for $1,250? It takes Mandrake 9.1 without any problems, and only demands slight tweaking from Red Hat 8.

    I would rather have that laptop for four years then burn through two PDAs over the same period of time.

    1. Re:Same tired post..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why do women carry a purse that costs $200 and they change every month instead of just buying a suitcase for $600 that will last several years. Maybe it is because they don't want to carry a suitcase.

      You are paying for the convenience of having a SMALL device. Could you imagine walking down the street trying to schedule a meeting with somebody on a laptop?

    2. Re:Same tired post..... by questionlp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Or if you aren't into eMachine computers, Gateway has something similar (M500 w/ 15.2" widescreen) with a P4, 512MB of RAM, 40GB hard drive, DVD/CD-RW and integrated 802.11b/Modem/Ethernet, dunno about FireWire for a little bit more.

      Of course, a laptop isn't quite as portable as a PDA nor does it have an instant boot up that a Zaurus or any other PDA has. The C700 (IIRC) clamshell Zaurus is a nice cross between a tiny laptop, a clamshell Jornada/Psion, and the regular Zaurus. Too bad it's even more expensive than the 5600 :(

  2. Nice, but... by rekkanoryo · · Score: 2, Insightful
    This is the first PDA I've ever considered as worth the purchase price, but I still think PDAs have a long way to go. I'd prefer to see a PDA with a 640x480 screen capable of at least 65k colors, but preferably capable of the 24-bit "true color" laptop TFT displays are. I'd even settle for 480x640.

    I'll still wait a while before purchasing any PDA.

    1. Re:Nice, but... by Cpt_Kirks · · Score: 2, Insightful

      You are all mising my point. I owned an iPaq right after they came out, with a microdrive.

      If the ipod and nomad have a *LARGE*, *INTERNAL* harddrive, why not put one *INSIDE* a pda?

      How long does the battery last in an ipod? No cart needed there.

      I have a GP32 now. It takes SMC cards up to 128MB. Nice, but too small. I want 20GB+.

  3. Re:Cool by N4m0r · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The 5600 is a great PDA, I really like mine. As far as syncing with Linux though, forget it. The CD comes with software to sync with Outlook, that's it. Apparently the Qtopia-Desktop software for Linux allows you to backup data, no syncing though. I say apparently because I cannot get it to run on my Redhat 9 system. From what people are saying in the Sharp forums, not too many people have had success with it. Also, with the 5600 and the latest ROM update to the 5500 the PIM data format is different so if you were syncing your PIM data in Linux you won't be able to any more. The people who were working on syncing software have had to start over. It appears Sharp is leaving Linux desktop support for the Zaurus up to the community, and they are not being all that cooperative. The Kompany apparently has syncing on their list of features to add to their tkc PIM apps for the Zaurus. Of course they are only worried about making sure it syncs with their product Aethera. Its really too bad, I'm sure if Sharp would just cooperate enough to create some sort of libraries or tools for getting the Zaurus data to and from the desktop people would be writing sync software for every PIM desktop app under the sun.

  4. Re:Cool by dbowden · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Yeah - I've had to tell a number of people not to buy one for that very reason.

    Everyone's impressed when I pull out my 5500 and tell them it's running Linux, (especially since I got a pocketop keyboard), but then I have to tell them that the synchronization bites, and that they're better off with a Palm if they want to keep track of addresses/meetings.

    I'm really hoping someone will come up with a better synchronization option soon.

    --
    Help find a cure for Gidget.
  5. SL-5600 Synchronization Problem by Erwos · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Not sure if anyone brought this up, but Sharp changed the method of storing PIM data from XML to binary for the 5600, which promptly broke all current open-source methods of doing synchronization. For the record, TrollTech didn't seem too happy about the change, either.

    Thus, if you want an open-source synch tool for Linux, you may be out of luck for a while.

    -Erwos

    --
    Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
    1. Re:SL-5600 Synchronization Problem by Minna+Kirai · · Score: 4, Insightful
      1. The storage was never actually XML, just a similar looking arbitrary format. The filename ended in .xml, and XML parsers worked on it, but it wasn't fully compliant. There were no DTDs supplied, for example, and some fields were totally undocumented. However, since the data was all fat ascii, it was trivial to reverse-engineer the important parts.
      2. From a performance perspective, switching away from XML is a big win. You can't really argue it, technically. The pseudo-XML format wasted space and was slow. If they'd just provide documentation on the binary format (and also a prediction as to how long that format will be remaining unchanged), then everything would be fine.

        In fact, since the system is based on Free Software, they should just release the whole source code to their PIM apps and be done with it. A programmer would jump up from the "community" to take care of their Linux synchronization needs- and probably someone else would volunteer to improve the UI on the PIM itself (which needs a lot of work in comparison to the competition from Palm)

        By selling a Linux PDA, but not distributing the code to most of the applications, Sharp is getting the worst of both worlds in terms of user acceptance.


      Some more technical detail:
      Why does pseudo-XML waste space?
      Because more than 50% of the total file is repetitive boilerplate. The addressbook.xml looks like this:
      < Contact FirstName="Bob" MiddleName="Mack" LastName="Dobbs" FileAs="Dobbs, Bob Mack" Company="CoSG" BusinessPhone="866-512-7801" >
      Not only are strings like "FirstName" and "BusinessPhone" repeated for every entry, but each person's name is stored twice! And remember, on a handheld portable, file size is more precious than on desktops or laptops.

      Why is pseudo-XML slow?
      Because XML is a linear file format. If you have 900 entries in the contact list (not at all unrealistic), and you add a new email address to contact #356, then the entire file past that point will have to be re-written. (Unless the programmer was extra-careful and used specialized file-shifting code, which still won't help in all cases). In practice, this meant that Zaurus users with thousands of contacts had to withstand startup or shutdown times of 20+ seconds.