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Zaurus SL-6000 Prototype Revealed
Gudlyf writes "The Zaurus User Group has a short piece (with pictures) on the newly revealed prototype of the Sharp Zaurus SL-6000. Among the many new features are integrated wi-fi, integrated bluetooth, a larger screen and possibly more RAM. Word is that this unit *will* appear in U.S. markets."
We will now transport you to our home planet of NFQ-9882...
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
Simple wireless ssh terminal when combined with my Nokia Bluetooth phone. Oh yes, this is nice.
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Wow, and there's only one comment!
I'll be very interested (as a former Zaurus user) to see how this competes against the Axims of this world. It's amazing how prices have fallen since I got my iPAQ 3630 - you can now get a WiFi-enabled Axim for less than $200 (equivalent prices here). That's crazy!
PocketPCs (largely because of Dell) are swamping the markets at several price points. It will take a very competitive pricing strategy to compete.
I want one.
That was a link to a photo of the unit, Mr. Offtopic Moderator. If you look in the same level of that directory, there are about 15 photos of the unit, showing the nice internal keyboard and even screen shots. You can even load them despite their server being slashdotted and returning a 500. So mod that parent up.
(This is the Zaurus User's Group's terms of service)...
Article 12b. Anyone caught posting a link to our server to the GODDAMN FRONT PAGE of Slashdot will be kidnapped at midnight by large man in grey jackets and locked in a cellar where he will be forced to listen to Bill Gates reading the entire contents of MSDN at maximum volume.
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Zaurus SL-6000
The Zaurus has all the same functionality as the others with regard to PIM applications, but I was sold on some of the unique features of the SL-5500. The integrated keyboard is a godsend when entering large amounts of text at one time. It supports most wireless cards right out of the box. both a SD and CF card slots make it very flexible, and I won't go into the whole "it runs Linux" thing, but we're thinking that anyway. On a sidenote there are a variety of modified ROMs that can be flashed onto the unit (more flexibility).
On the down side, the battery life is somewhat disappointing (something which I'd hope will be vastly improved on the upcoming models). I have to say that my old HP Jornada had an unbelievable battery life, and it's taken some effort to get used to charging my Z so often, but overall I like it better the other PDAs that I've tried.
I own one. I don't use it as a PDA that much, but as a network testing device it's very handy. If I have problems with switches or network points, I can just stick it in my pocket with a CF network card, and off I go. I can use ssh, nmap, tcpdump and all the other linux tools I use on my desktop machine. The screen is a little small, but it's certainly readable, and the built in keyboard is handy too. The only thing that really bugs me is the lack of seperate numeric keys, which is a pain when you're entering ip addresses. Usually I use the on screen keyboard for that.
So is their website *hosted* on a Zaurus? Sad.
I might use it more if I had it integrated to my phone but my old mobile doesn't have the facilites to connect and I don't use that enough to justify a new one really.
I'd prefer the Revo still because of its keyboard.
The question on usefulness can only be answered if you have a clear idea of what you would use it for. The Revo for example with its ace keyboard made writing up ideas, notes, diary comments etc... really quick, easy and pleasant. Once I switched fully from Windows to Linux though connections became an issue.
Summary:
If you have a clear use as useful as any PDA just maybe not as good. But you can have a terminal:-). If you don't have a clear use then save your money.
Golly I ramble.
I own a Zaurus SL-5500: the "original" US market unit (as opposed to the original developer's unit, the SL-5000, which was basically the same thing with half the RAM). I'll say this: you can have it... when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.
Two reasons it rocks:
Some people complain about the PIM apps; the quality varies. The Todo List and Address Book aren't great, but I don't use the former and the latter is sufficient. The Text Pad, however, is pretty handy, and Opera (which even renders slashdot well!) and Hancomsheet (a fully-blown spreadsheet!) are killer apps for me.
The only reason I don't upgrade to a CL-760 is the fact I can't justify the cost: my Z works great as-is. With the work on OpenZaurus and Opie, the PIM issues are being solved, and I have little chance of being left with a "dead" platform.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Would be helpful, as others have noticed.
Here's a related article that gives a little more information while we wait.
I have a SL-5500 for about two months. I also have but no longer use a VR3. I also am a technical support rep for one of the major Palm OS pda manufacturers.
The Zaurus is great. It is reasonably fast. I run the majority of the Apps off the SD card, so that slows things do a bit. If you make use the ram drive, as it is setup in the default Sharp ROM, it is very fast to run off the ram drive.
There is a fair amount of software and one can also make use of Java apps. Besides the PIM apps, I primarily use it as an ebook read and a check book. For those that are interested The Kompany makes several apps for the zaurus including Kapital, a Quicken like program. the Zaurus Software Index should give a good idea of what is available.
The screen is a reflective tft so it is fully usable in Bright light including sunlight. The battery will last a couple of days with normal use, much like any pocket PC device. There is also a NiCAD backup battery, though you will need to suspend the device before you lose total battery. If you do not save to the Ram drive, then everything will be restore if you lose all power as it will be saved to either internal flash, SD, of CF.
The buttons are reconfigurable, and if held for a sec or two have another function. I have sucessfully beamed between a VR3, PEGSJ20, Visor, Ipaq, and a Palm V. I have synced on both Win2k and Mandrake Linux 9.1-9.2.
Oh and the media player works nicely. The sound through the headphones is great. The built in speaker is a crappy piezo though. I personally prefer using the embedded XMMS, but there are several options.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
I have an SL-5500 and I don't find it too useful as-is.
All the stylus-based input methods suck. The region-based letter recognizer is unusable compared to Graffiti. It will also go to the Unicode input table when you hit some key combination, which is very annoying as you can't do anything with that and you have to reset it back to another input method. The upside is that you can write your own input system. I downloaded a version of QwikScript for the Zaurus, but it's more proof-of-concept code and is unusable without some recentering features, like the real QwikScript for PalmOS. If you want to input anything, you have to pull out the keyboard, which is annoying for quick notes. They keyboard is excellent, however.
Applications are often difficult to use. Most applications come with a workstation-like interface, with a title bar, a menu bar and an icon toolbar, which is not a very good idea when screen space is scarce. The good thing is that I've mapped the calendar button to tab, which means I can navigate the menus and most other elements using only the main buttons; sometimes I don't flip up the cover (SL-5500 has a clear cover) or pull down the keyboard to do something. About the only thing you must use the stylus for switching applications.
There are other things wrong with the interface: for instance, most "themes" have various decorations for the scrollbar, which are not active (like Microsoft Windows, the rightmost two or three pixels are a border). When screen space is this scarce, this shouldn't happen. There's also dead space in the menus, the task bar and toolbars.
Lots of applications sometimes get too large for the screen (for instance, when you pop up an input method), which pops up a horizontal scrollbar for scrolling left or right only a few pixels. This leaves almost no room for the application window, so these applications are unusable.
There are plenty of examples of poor design or incorrect behaviour that you'll find yourself working around if you use a Zaurus. You don't find yourself doing this nearly as much with PalmOS.
The thing I use a PDA for the most is keeping track of Todo lists. I usually have from 500 to 1000 Todo items and these are unmanageable with the Zaurus Todo program. The searching, sorting and organizing features suck, so I'm stuck scrolling through all the items and the program is unbearably slow with so many items. Whenever you mark an item finished, it scrolls back to the top of the list and you can't see if you've marked the correct item since there's no visual feedback when you tap the checkbox (so you have to scroll back to where the item was (if you remember its context), which takes a very long time). My previous PDA was a Palm III, and it handled this volume of todos quite well.
Basically, I don't use my Zaurus because the software it comes with sucks. I've been meaning to write an alternative Todo list and add recentering to the QwikScript for Zaurus, but I haven't had the time.
This, however, brings me to the advantages of the Zaurus, the first of which is that lots of software for it (like OPIE) is open source. This means I could easily fix a lot of things if I had the time or motivation, whereas I'll never be able to to fix any bugs in WinCE or PalmOS.
The second advantage is that the APIs for programming the Zaurus are excellent. It has a version of Qt for the interface stuff, and you can use standard Linux/glibc for more low-level stuff. I wrote one application for the Zaurus for internal use and it was very easy, whereas it would have been a real pain in PalmOS or WinCE. Also, you can telnet into the zaurus when it's docked, there's a very good VNC server for the Zaurus and you can install gcc. Put together, this means you can control your Zaurus from the PC it's docked to and do all your development on the Zaurus, but using the PC's keyboard and mouse.
The third advantage i
Don't get me wrong, they are still selling OK (mostly because they're so cheap now). However, I predict PDA usage will die off over the next few years.
They are too bulky, fragile, and often lack functionality (eg. phone). Modern cell phones are much better suited to the role of a PDA. Most are fairly small, very rugged, and you need your phone anyway, perfect match.
I have actually been looking for a PDA watch. Although I won't wear it, but I'll take the band off and keep it in my pocket. This what I really want:
- Something very rugged (like a watch)
- Very small (like 1" across; like a watch). Something I can put in my pocket and not notice it's there.
- Standard PIM applications (including an encrypted password/PIN database)
- Cheap so if I lose it I don't care
Hmmmm... A watch without the band is almost right but often the device is curved and lacks functionality.
Hell, I have a 3 MB smartcard sitting in front of me right now (note the chip is about 1mm thick and 5mm across; small!), you'd think they could make a really tiny PDA using the same technology.
The ratio of people to cake is too big
I think people that compare the Zaurus to the Palm or other PDAs are missing the point. The Zaurus is more of a mini computer than a "digital assistant" (even if Sharp insists in marketing it as a PDA). I say that as an engineer: I would look at the Zaurus to replace my HP48G, not to replace my palm pilot (which has been replaced by my cell phone a long time ago). PDAs like the palm are on their way to extinction, there's nothing they can do a good phone won't do better.
From that perspective, the Zaurus doesn't even have to be too small, I won't carry it around everywhere, just to work or meetings or things like that. It's much more convenient than a laptop, and this model (if it ever really comes out) actually has good connectivity.
I've had two Zaurus models, the SL-5500 and the new and flashy SL-C760. Both have been very disapointing, mostly from the standpoint of software, although the SL-5500 had a lot of problems in the way of hardware.
... well, I'd go so far as to say it's darn near shitty. The PIM apps are a disaster, Linux support for syncing is non-extant (in the newer ROM), and there are few 3rd party apps that are worth using. Oh, you can find a lot of packages listed at the Zaurus Software Index, but most are 2nd rate, worst than what you deal with even on the Linux desktop, and far below what is available for WinCE, PalmOS, or even the Newton.
The SL-5500's hardware was pretty mediocre. It was a good deal when I got it, as it was less than $200. The worst part was the screen, very very dim and not sharp. Worst screen on a PDA in its class (320x240 color). And it's not like Sharp doesn't make good screens- the screen in the Dell Axim X5 is the best screen I've seen in that class, and both screens were made by Sharp.
The keyboard on the SL-5500 was more or less worthless to me. I had to use it for a little while, until I found a better input method for the SL-5500, QwikScript. I was able to enter text quite a bit faster using real HWR on a Newton or CalliGrapher on WinCE/PPC. The character/stroke recognition on the SL-5500 was *really* slow, but in the newer (3.10) ROM, it's speed up a lot, although it is still very innacurate, no matter how much I train it.
A lot of people blab on about the Zaurus because of the things you can do with it- ssh, vnc, etc. All things you can do on Windows CE or PocketPC, so meh. Hell, I've found the Unix-ported/adapted tools for WinCE to be work a lot more on a PDA than what you can get for the Zaurus. It seems to me that people are too lazy to create a proper interface for a PDA, so they just recompile it and put it in an ipk. (Zaurus installer package)
As for the built-in software, it's
Why do I still have a Zaurus C760? Because it's incredible hardware to run my own PDA OE on.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
You said it, brother. Then again, you usually do have pretty good posts about PDA-related stuff.
The linux zealots constantly inflate the miserable usability that most linux things currently have, and it just gets ridiculous when you see something like PDA's that require ten times the user interaction saavy needed for a desktop.
Trolltech in no way did any of their homework regarding PDA UI design, and it shows in the Qtopia widget borders that gobble up vast amounts of valuble screen real-estate, and in the fact that I have to do twice as many taps to accomplish the same task I was doing on a Palm.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I cant speak for the 5600 but my 5500 has FANTASTIC battery life if you turn the damned backlight off.
I use the zaurus in my day to day work, but I rely on it for my travel log/diary when on extended back-country backpacking or biking. I can use the zaurus 5500 about 2 hours a day for 3+ days without needing to recharge it from my solar charger or my modified motorola freecharge hand crank charger.
in semi decent light the zaurus can be used without that backlight, and outside it certianly doesnt need it.
(BTW, the Zaurus makes an awesome tent flashlight at night. but that sucks down the battery super fast.
I've had 3 palms. 2 journadas, and the Zaurus has been the ONLY pda I have ever owned that I can use everywhere for every use i need it for, and easily write software for it.
now if I could find a bike handlebar mount for it I'd be golden... I cant make my palm-pilot handlebar mount work for it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You also run into the problem that Sharp's hardware is half-assed in it's design. Powerful, I'll give it that, but incredibly half-assed. My 5500, which I purchased back in my "I'll give linux a second chance even after I was dumb enough to buy an agenda" phase, has the power button on the outside of the PDA, unprotected by anything. More than once I've pulled my zaurus out of my pocket only to find it's already turned on. You would have thought that at least one engineer at Sharp would have momentarily considered the idea that putting a power button unprotected on an area where it could easily get hit in your pocket was a bad idea. Would it have really been that much work for sharp to have recessed the power button and extended the flip-shield so any accidental pocket presses would be eliminated?
It's ironic that the Zaurus has a hundred times the CPU and memory of the original Palm, yet for all that technological advancement, the Palm is still a far better designed machine.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!