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New Zaurus Linux PDA Available In the U.S.
pdawerks writes "The Sharp Zaurus SL-6000L handheld, which runs Linux in the Trolltech's Qtopia environment, has finally made it to the U.S. at a pricepoint of $699, according to a PDALive.com article. It has a 4-inch 480 x 640 CG Silicon reflective screen that is much larger than the one in the 5x00 models, and the screen supports rotation on the fly (portrait and landscape modes). Sharp has also incorporated a sliding thumb keyboard into this model."
It's a tad on the pricey side, but I'm gonna buy one just to show up some dude at my company who got a tablet with XP Tablet Edition and thinks it's the cat's meow...
Although he sometimes salivates over my Mandrake desktop....
I wonder if it would be any cheaper if they went with GTK instead of Qtopia? Ah, wtf, it should be cool anyway! Count me in!
bash: rtfm: command not found
For a minute there, I thought that Slashdot had replaced all of its pages with "500 Internal Server Error" as an April Fool's joke...
Can I be on that test team? Just goes to show, there's QA testing and then there's QA testing. "Debug code? Bah! I wanna drop things!"
That is a price of a cheap laptop.
considering that none of that $699 pays for an OS
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
"Sharp has also incorporated a sliding thumb keyboard into this model."
Didnt all the 5x00 series have the same type of keyboard?
This looks like a great geek toy, but aside from that who on earth would buy this thing? It's $699, and huge. If all you need is a PDA, you can get much, much nicer machines from Sony, Palm, or even (dare I mention it) WinCE licensees.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
im trying to decide what the real advantage of a pda that costs 700 dollars is? portability aside where it the payoff? oqo had an intersting idea in full pc power in a sub laptop size but that has seemingly become vaporware.. what is the true advantage to this device other than it being (linux)?
Does anyone else notice that these Sharp PDAs are less-than-beautiful in case design?
:)
I'm not highly impressed with either the case design OR the OS design, but the case in particular.
Look at the Sony Clie NX series modles, the Tungsten E, etc. Those are some nice looking handhelds. The Sony Launcher also LOOKS nice.
Sorry, but when I see pictures of these Sharp PDAs, they just don't excite me. The only upside is the VGA screen.
I'll definitely be looking out for VGA Palm units in the near future though, those should be great
Really, what is the demand for a product like this? The price alone sets this way above what the average consumer should be willing to pay. Sure there are the "power users", the technophites and the "too wealthy to cares" who this is perfect for, but what about the rest of us? Seems like another case of a product with too high a price for the features that will be frequently used.
The hardware is actually free, the $699 is to cover the Linux license.
Score: -1, Cheap SCO gag
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
Funny how I was always on spring break when 4-1 came around!
-- In Soviet Russia, radio listens to YOU!
It's a tad on the pricey side though as an SL-5500 can be had for under $200 and the SL-5600 (which has the 400 MHz xscale proc and 64 MB of RAM) is under $400 last time I checked
How can you not have heard of trolltech before?
The makers of QT, the toolkit behind KDE, and the QTopia environment.
Advanced users are users too!
I recently purchased a Zaurus SL-C860 from Dynamism, and it is truely a device I can't live without. Sure, it was pretty expensive at around $850, but no other pda I've ever used can touch it in terms of speed, style, and overall "coolness." Hell, I'm running an X11-based ROM on it now, and nearly all X apps can be recompiled to run on it.
I think I like the clamshell layout better than the traditional vertical PDA layout of this and the 5X00 series. Being able to quickly convert between mini-laptop mode and PDA mode is more useful than I'd ever imagined it would be. If I were to suggest a PDA to anyone, I'd say the SL-C760 is the better bet, as it costs the same as the 6000 and is nearly identical to the 860 (the 860 has a slightly larger screen, all-silver case and better default software, which is only helpful if you are japanese!).
Sure, the 7XX and 8XX series do not have the built-in wireless, but the coolness factor of the design, and the fact that almost nobody in the US has one, make it the better choice (IMHO).
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
to see 802.11g and USB 2.0 standard jack. Or do those suck too much power?
I'm surprised that the Sharp web site doesn't list this product yet. But this page spells out a few more specs.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
I loved my SL-5500 PDA from sharp for about 2 weeks, and then tossed it in a drawer along with my Palm IIIx and Newton. I am sure that there are many out there that love PDAs, but my cell phone has done everything I have ever needed out of a PDA. I'd rather spend the $700 and get the Sony Ericsson P800 phone with the megapixel cam, etc!
Maybe when we have star trek like PDAs that will analyze everything about my surroundings i'd be more receptive.
-------
artlu.net
My Zaurus is not a PDA but a PDT (Person Digital Tool), and anyone who says otherwise is getting a foot in their arse.
A PDA is a glorified address book that plays music and sells for 300$. My Zaurus (SL-5500) costs less than 200, runs a mobile X-11 server, allows for quick coding (802.11b CF card + ssh) when I am off campus and can't log into something heavy, plays movies, serves webpages, and runs Linux. The Zaurus is very hackable and has a high fun value attached to it. $699 is alot to spend for it, but in 6 months you can ebay one for about 300 which would be more inline.
There is nothing wrong with being gay. It's getting caught where the trouble lies.
You could also pick up an older model off eBay for about $50.
That is if you don't mind less RAM.
Anyone know how long the 1500mAH Lithium-polymer battery will last on this thing? I had the SL-5500 and the battery on that thing would only last 8 hours max. Is this one any better?
rsync -ave ssh ~/mypdastuff root@zaurus:/mnt/card/
Is one line to sync from Linux, or Solaris in my case, to the pda really that difficult? The entire point of a Linux pda is that it's just a small computer; what works for a Linux server works for a Linux pda.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
You get the lot in a single package. The best PDA OS and UI in the market, hundreds of third party applications and the phone is integrated right into the system. The cost sans connection is $699. If you get a connection with it, $50. Use the other $650 for something else.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
No FLTK, no Gnome, no Gtk+, no Tcl/Tk, no wxWindows, no Mono/Gtk#, no X11, no Firefox, no R, etc. The thing doesn't run any software that I use or develop for. Sorry, Sharp, until the thing ships with X11, it's no more than a PDA, and as a PDA, Palms are more usable and mature. Not to mention that I can develop commercial and free software for Palm without paying anybody.
I'm a die-hard LInux user, but my PDA is a Palm--Palms even work better with Linux than Zaurus. My Zaurus is gathering dust--it's useful neither as a PDA nor as a Linux handheld.
Sharp could easily fix this without changing their product much: replace Qt/embedded with Qt/X11. That won't make it a better PDA and it won't make Qt less of a resource hog (Qt/X11 is worse than Qt/embedded), but it would make the Zaurus a better Linux handheld.