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Zaurus SL-6000 Review
Bill Kendrick writes "BargainPDA has done a full review of Sharp's Zaurus SL-6000L Linux-based PDA, which was recently released to consumers in the US. There are six pages of review, lots of pretty photos, and comparisons with previous Zaurus models."
The answer would be: "Yes, yes you can." I've used my trusty old SL-5500 (with CF wi-fi) to ssh into my desktop many-a-time.
Click Here
I ran my SL-5500 as a web server for a few days just to test it. There is an apache distribution for it, with php included, but it does tend to run a little slow, probably due to the lack of physical ram on it.
Review of Sharp Zaurus SL-6000
Reviewed for bargainPDA by Ian Giblin.
Thanks to offroadgeek from The Zaurus User Group for input and discussion.
Overview and Introduction
The new Zaurus SL-6000 from Sharp is a versatile, linux-based PDA incorporating an Intel XScale (PXA255) CPU at 400 MHz. In some respects it is a hybrid of the Zaurus SL-5600, which became available in the U.S. in April of 2003, and the SL-C750/760/860 which is only available as a special import and was reviewed here in September of 2003. The main enhancements to the SL-6000 are a better screen, some ruggedisation, built-in Wi-Fi and/or bluetooth, and a degree of expandability. There's also a USB host built into it using a Mini A connector on the bottom of the device. Oh, and a longer stylus.
The device I'm reviewing here is the SL-6000L, which has only Wi-Fi. We spoke to Sharp's representative about the other models - specifically the SL-6000N (Bluetooth only) and the SL-6000W, which was billed as the combo product with both 802.11b Wireless and Bluetooth. The representative told us that the only version which will be made available to the general consumer is the 6000L Wi-Fi variant.
If you put it into Google you can find the SL-6000W but you can't actually buy one yet (May 2004).
The Sharp Zaurus SL-6000 and You
You might wonder - what's the target market for this device? It is large, expensive and ruggedised. If you haven't already guessed, the answer is "Enterprise". Sharp collaborated with IBM on this project, but the only evidence on the consumer device is the link to IBM's page when you open the Opera web browser. A little nosing about on IBM's site yields some other interesting pages like this one on cross-developement. But I digress...
An ongoing aspect of the Enterprise factor is RailDocs, a system "designed to enable users to efficiently design, build, and maintain the fixed transportation infrastructure of a railroad". Not for the average user, obviously, but it speaks volumes for the stability and versatility of the Zaurus product.
It is something of a surprise that Sharp have made the SL-6000 available to the consumer market, particularly after a Sharp marketing representative originally told bargainPDA "Please keep in mind that this product is designed exclusively for the corporate market and will not be sold through the direct to consumer channel. It will be used by businesses for business applications.".
Whether the Sharp Zaurus is right for you depends upon the type of role you see for it. The Zaurus is probably the best linux-based handheld computer available, and the software is almost the same across models. It may not be the best PDA, in fact most Zaurus users wouldn't even call it a PDA. Sharp themselves call the Zaurus a Personal Mobile Tool. If you decide to buy a Zaurus you can find one to fit your budget. The table below summarises the features of key members of the Sharp Zaurus range, plus a very rough indication of their current prices. Links will open the bargainPDA reviews where available.
The C760 and C860 differ only in that the 860 has a Japanese/English dictionary on it, and it has a silver case rather than the white one on the 760. The C750 is like the C760, but has a smaller battery and less memory; reading the SL-C750 review will give you a very good idea of those three Zaurus "clamshell" devices. Some of the software section of this review is just an updated and edited version of the C750 software review.
Anyone looking at the SL-6000 should consider the alternative of buying an imported SL-C860 or C760 plus an 802.11b wireless card. This would give you the same functionality as the SL-6000L model reviewed here (plus an extra 64MB of internal flash memory), but you may have to risk some major inconvenience if the C model Zaurus breaks down - even when you buy through high-end channels such as Dynamism where the C860 costs $849, or ShirtPocket where it is 565. As well as the currency conversion you're doing in your hea
Yes. the Debian Zaurus Project is headed by Debian Developer Matt Zimmerman. From what I know, he pretty much just had to make a custom kernel and build a ROM image, as Debian officially supports the ARM architecture. No massive recompiling necessary. Just hijack someone's WiFi connection and apt-get whatever you want ;D
OS and Basic Screen Navigation
.vcf files. I was hoping that I'd be able to hold the Zaurus near a telephone and have it tone-dial a number for me, but it can't do that.
At the top level, this looks like any PDA OS. The underlying Operating System is OpenPDA from Metrowerks (a company owned by Motorola). The GUI is Qtopia from Trolltech. This is a very well established system and has a good user and developer base. It also benefits from a certain amount of cross-platform portability, meaning that software can easily be translated from other systems to this one.
The main functionality is organised into four Home Pages or "Tabs": Applications, Java, Settings and Files. The Java Tab seems completely pointless, and I was glad to find that it disappears if you reset the flash memory as I have done several times while testing the device (if you want it back, you can reinstall from a package on the CD). I won't bore you with describing the three Java "applications " on the SL-6000. Their only worthy feature is that Java apps run in resizable and movable windows, which is a big deal when you have this much screen real estate. One day all windows will be movable and resizable (imagine that!).
You can add your own Home tabs, including a custom icon from a choice of what looks like hundreds. You cannot edit the system tabs. The pictures below show the four default Home Tabs; clicking on each one will open a new window in your browser showing the actual screenshot. All these screen shots are in portrait mode, but I only did this so they'd fit the review page better. They work just as well with the screen rotated 90 degrees.
You can change the theme of the interface easily using the Appearance tool in the Settings Home Page; the differences are significant but not Earth-shattering. You can also set a graphical backdrop to the Home Tabs (other than the File Manager). This doesn't seem to slow the interface down, and it has the potential to look great on this display.
Zoom Zoom
One feature of the SL-6000 which affects many applications is the "zoom" capability. Using the Qtopia menu items (ZoomIn and ZoomOut you can zoom in and out in most application displays. What this really means is scaling the font and usually some other window furniture (e.g. column markers in a spreadsheet). It is very effective, and only limited by the font you are using. I made an animation of this when I reviewed the C750 last year - click here to see it.
Help System
The Qtopia GUI includes a customised help system which offers help on just about anything with an icon. It looks like a basic web browser and would be very useful to someone just starting out with the PDA. Once you've skimmed the manual I doubt it would be much help, but it does provide a good introduction.
(back to contents)
Personal Information Management (PIM) Tools
PIM Applications: Address Book, Calendar, ToDo List.
The Address book is pretty standard - adding, deleting and editing entries is easy. You can choose which fields appear on the list and their order, as well as the overall sort order. The display uses colour very well.
Contacts can be beamed back and forth between the Zaurus and any other IR-capable PDA easily, although only one at a time from what I could tell, using
The Calendar allows a day, week, month and year view and you can set up reminders, repeating events, and so on. In the month view you can have a text format (which soon gets crowded) or graphical, which uses colour coded stripes to show events. This works well. Having used the application for some time on my 5600, I have found a few things which are annoying. For example, setting an appointment to repeat daily results in an entry in the calendar for every day forever. It would be so much nicer if it just updated each day to indicate the next scheduled event.
The ToDo list, like the Calendar and Adress book, is adequate. It syncs with Outlook or Qtopia Desktop and is fairly useful f
The ASCII code for backspace is 8 which is equivalent of control-H. ^H is shorthand for control-H. Back in the ole BBS days if you didn't have your terminal settings properly configured you'd see ^H instead of backspace.
Some systems would let you intentionally insert backspace characters into your posts. At 300bps you would actually see the word Lindows, then the cursor would move back four spaces in it would recomplete the word as Linspire.
The SL-600 changes that. In theory, you should now be able to connect any USB device that Linux supports to the SL-6000 and use it. So far, unfortunately, I've heard no sucess doing this yet...though the hardware is there.
Anyone have sucess using random devices with the Zaurus?
I'd expect that the following should work without much trouble;
USB splitter
Keyboard
disk drives (including flash)
Some may require software tweaks or added support as the Zaurus is intentionally a minimalist device.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Just don't buy it if you're looking for an organiser, you'll be bitterly disappointed.
As the proud owner of a now obsolete Handspring Visor and having just purchased a "new" Zaurus 5500 on Ebay, I basically agree.
Everything on a Palm is instant. It may not have every feature you want, and until recently, the screens had pretty poor resolution (Sony is the exception). However, the applications worked well, and had reasonable interfaces so they could be used quickly.
I quickly abandoned the Sharp ROM for the Zaurus in favor of OpenZaurus, but I've certainly had my frustrations with bugs and missing features. Some small things, like the ability for the application buttons to turn on the device (like a Palm), and some larger things, like having it not reboot properly the second time if you haven't suspended in between (though there is an unofficial fix).
Why am I rebooting in the first place? Because of the Zaurus' greatest aspect - it's basically a fully-functional Linux system. As such, one can tweak, test, and otherwise poke around (sometimes needing a reboot if something got messed up or you're testing something). Some Zaurus applications I've found I've had no good free Palm equivalent. Zee Cookbook is a great, if somewhat slow (when editing), way to keep a database of recipes on hand. QTJournal is a great way to take notes that are categorized by date and subject. The ability to run just about any console-based Linux software (even the statistical software R) makes it very useful as a sysadmin tool. With a small, cheap wireless card from Ebay, it is often more convenient than lugging around a laptop.
Some of the things I've wanted to use my Zaurus for before I bought it work, and some don't (yet). I got xmms running and it plays OGG files well (but the included mediaplayer with openzaurus doesn't, and the Sharp ROM's media player has a horrendous interface). I can control the Zaurus remotely via ssh (VERY handy for exploring with a real keyboard) and VNC (with the framebuffer vnc package). However, the latter doesn't offer even basic security (and I haven't gotten iptables to work), so I'm reluctant to use it often, mostly out of principle.
I got the xvnc server running, but the vncviewer client to view it simply will not connect to it, or any other vnc server. I've seen a few other reports of this behavior but no fix, and most people seem to have no problem. This combo is supposed to allow the use of any X11 application on the Zaurus itself, and more importantly for me, remote X applications (so I can control xmms on my music server with a wireless connection - the ultimate remote). If anyone has a suggestion about this, I'd be happy to hear it.
My other problem is mail - mailit (included with OpenZaurus) is simplistic, but more importantly doesn't work for one of my domains (not sure why this is). I can telnet manually to port 110 and execute pop commands fine, but this mail client barks about an unknown response from the server. QTmail doesn't work either - it gives host not found or something like that.
For the price I paid, I get far more functionality than I ever did from a Visor, but the Zaurus definitely has its frustrations. The PIM apps are nothing much to speak of, they function, but are slower than their Palm equivalents (this, again is on OpenZaurus). My greatest desire - the ability to have tree-view tasks, is not implemented on either my Handspring or any version of "todo" on the Zaurus that I've used.
So it's not perfect, but you can still pry it from my cold, dead hands.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan