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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
That is a price of a cheap laptop.
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
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!
Actually the $699 is all to pay for an OS, it goes straight to SCO, Sharp must be giving these things away for free....
Got soaked, got dried, still works.
Sounds like the last few years of my drinking career...
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
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
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.
Well, let's see, 400 mhz, xscale processor. Not sure off hand how that measures in bogomips, but I am reasonably sure someone will chime in with it's rating, and someone else will chime in with how useless it is as a measure of a processor.
Touch screen. Not absolutely sure, but don't recall any laptops with that, much less at a $700 price. Tablets seem to still be running in the $1600 range, so I suppose you could pay double this for a larger screen, etc.
Instant on, no waiting for the hard drive to power up, spin up, then transfer a memory image to memory, calculate adjustments to date and time, etc.
Fits in your pocket, pretty much any text mode program is a re-compile away, if it was compiled to begin with. You may need to install a python library or two, but you would probably have to do that for your laptop as well.
Acceptable battery life. The only thing that comes close laptop wise to either of my 5500s is my iBook, and even that I generally leave plugged in. Your milage may vary.
Works well as simply a PDA. I like mine as an alternate MP3 player (256Meg of a 512Meg cf card filled with music is a reasonable amount of music.) And it still fits in your pocket.
I happen to think IQNotes is one of the better quick jot applications for keeping track of things. Sketch, write, grab an e-mail address, whatever. Great for those shopping lists that you want to re-use, or those lists of books to consider picking up next time you are at the library. So far as I know it's only available on the Zauraus so far. (pretty sure it will be ported, or copied to other platforms in time.)
But then I'm probably biased. I can't claim it is worth all of $699, in that I only own earlier models, and haven't played with this one.
-Rusty
You never know...
My Zaurus is not a PDA but a PDT (Person Digital Tool), and anyone who says otherwise is getting a foot in their arse.
A PDA is a glorified address book that plays music and sells for 300$. 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.
I dunno, what's more useful? A PDA/micro-notebook you can use to manage your entire business/life,play games, surf the web, use email, run X apps, listen to music etc for $699 or an Ipod that you listen to music on but can cost $500? Somehow everyone here seems to think its worth it for a pleasure item like an Ipod why isn't it useful for something you can do so much more with?
Like Apple users are always telling me, if you have to question the value of something based on price you weren't part of the target market to begin with.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
True, but it doesn't have the screen. I have both an SL-5500 and a SL-C860. The 860's screen is so much better it's really not funny. It has to be seen to be believed. It's an amazingly crisp display, and at 640x480, it's able to give me an 80x24 text console, which the 5500 couldn't manage even with the smallest font size. Sharp are coming so close to making the perfect machine. The only thing lacking from the 860 is builtin bluetooth -- I have to use a separate CF card for that (I'd rather be putting extra storage in that slot). Now the 6000 has all the features, but for reasons that I don't understand, has reverted to the sliding keyboard form factor, rather than the clamshell design of the 860. If they could just put the 6000 in a clamshell case with the larger keyboard, I'd be very happy indeed...
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown