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Zaurus SL-6000 Review

Posted by timothy on from the bit-pricey-though dept.

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."

20 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. The screen! by Mr.+Darl+McBride · · Score: 5, Interesting
    640x480 (480x640) LCD.

    That is ALL that I needed to see. This is finally a PDA I want!

    1. Re:The screen! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

      OT: Sorry to be a weenbag, but why does this happen?: "with Lindows^H^H^H^Hspire!!!"

  2. "Bargain"PDA by jargoone · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I know running Linux is cool and all, but does anyone really spend $650-700 on a PDA? I'm not being sarcastic, I'm really curious.

    1. Re:"Bargain"PDA by stratjakt · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Sure, people who want a PDA and for whom 650 bucks doesnt mean anything.

      Dont you know that to status seekers, ultra-consumerists, whatever you want to call them, more expensive = higher quality = you are a better person for owning it.

      --
      I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
    2. Re:"Bargain"PDA by foidulus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, I am not so sure there will be a huge market in the US, but in Japan(Where the zaurus debuted), where people(even people with a lot of money) spend a lot of time on trains, and where there is a reasonably reliable wirerless data network, a lot of people like these. You can get a lot of the functionality(but maybe not the horsepower) of a laptop so you can do you work on the train(Japanese trains are notoriously crowded). I guess it all depends on what you want to do with the PDA and to a lesser extent, where you want to do it(versus having a laptop)

    3. Re:"Bargain"PDA by notyou2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Would you ever spend $650-700 on a laptop? Why?

      I'll answer that myself: you'll spend that money if it increases your productivity enough to justify the investment.

      The same goes for an expensive PDA like that. For some, they really make use of it, and they really will/do get $650-700 of value out of it.

      --
      DiscDividers tabbed plastic CD dividers: divider cards f
    4. Re:"Bargain"PDA by sargon · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Actually, yes, they do. I refuse to carry a laptop with me 24 hours a day when on call. But a Zaurus C-860, with a CF WiFi card and CF 10/100 Ethernet card, is another matter. I can carry this equipment in a small camera bag and actually have a life on the weekends instead of sitting at home waiting for the pager to scream. When I get paged, I find a hotspot, ssh into the access server, then connect to the troublesome router, switch, or firewall. Problem (usually) fixed in a few minutes. Wife is happy (we can actually go out during "on-call" weekends), which makes me happy.

      Yes, they are worth every penny.

    5. Re:"Bargain"PDA by LilMikey · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm looking into an 860 as a replacement for my aging laptop. The one the the SL-6000 has over the 860 that's swaying my decision is a built in USB-host.

      --
      LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
  3. Free Zaurus by amitofu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I hope that OpenZaurus/OpenEmbedded get their act together soon and release a new version that supports the SL-5600/SL-6000. The current version of OpenZaurus is unstable on my SL-5600 and the Sharp ROM is crap. I am thinking about trying Gentoo for Zaurus.

    Are there any other free Zaurus distros out there?

  4. it ain't no pda by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    i use my sl-6000l in ways i could never use a pda: actually computing while standing, in some cases while walking; no bothering with pda-friendly websites

    the transflective screen alone makes it useful in many situations where my laptop will fail: outdoors in different lighting; the ruggedness (survives much droppage) is another reason i can take it outdoors ... i just hang it around my neck like a japanese tourist with a camera (and the japanese usually bow in deference to my techno-bob aura)

    just local.google.com makes it worthwhile at my new home at carnegie mellon, where there is wifi everywhere and i can find all essential services on a map quite easily

  5. I do not agree. by DAldredge · · Score: 2, Interesting

    As I type this I am looking at the useless Agenda, one of the first Linux based PDA's.

    It is next to useless because no one supports it.

    1. Re:I do not agree. by MarkWPiper · · Score: 4, Interesting
      The Zaurus both has superior hardware to the Agenda, and a superior community has been built around it (partly due to the fact that they keep evolving by putting out improved models). In some sense, the Agenda fails the 'useful hardware' test that I stated above.

      Agenda, IIRC, was released in 2001, and the company making it soon after went out of business. The fact is, if it weren't for open-source, there wouldn't be anything new you'd be doing with your PDA. The fact that you can still find software for it after 4 years says something.

  6. Lack of decent up to date software. by Sadiq · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'll probably get some flak for this but what the hell.

    I own both a Palm PDA and a Zaurus (Treo 90 and SL-5000), the former is a perfect organiser whereas I hardly consider the latter to be. My Zaurus is let down by many things, firstly the fact that there exists relatively little up to date organiser software for it that even comes anything close to many of the free Palm apps out there.

    Secondly, installing some of the more interesting applications on the Zaurus requires you to jump through herculian hoops to get things working.

    Lastly, people'll probably point to webpages chocked full of Zaurus applications (http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/ being one) but one closer inspection you'll find that many of the more useful applications are either in a half finished state or haven't been maintained in several years and lack features needed to work with newer desktop versions.

    Don't get me wrong, I love my Zaurus. There's nothing like pulling it out of your pocket, firing up the WiFi, ssh'ing into your box and synching your local MySQL server. Just don't buy it if you're looking for an organiser, you'll be bitterly disappointed.

    - Sadiq

    --
    SysWear - Geek T-shirts (UK/Europe)
  7. Why is it.. by robpoe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    When the headline says "Check out the article, it provides a great read" the site stays up. When it says anything about "screenshots" or "pretty pictures", the site disappears.

    Does that state something of our mentality (ooooh, prettty!!!) or do we just not RTFA..

    Inquiring minds want to know..

    (and dammit, I wanted to see the pictures, too!)

    --
    = Grow a brain...
  8. If you have a mac... by madsenj37 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    you can now sync zaurus' with ical and mail, etc. I am extremely happy about this. http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=Projects

    --
    Choosing the lesser of two evils is a choice for evil.
  9. Re:Did the full review include... by psbrogna · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I ran PHP, mySQL, Apache on my Zaurus 5500 and it worked ok. Not fast, mind you, but it worked. And the SQL database was on a 1 gb CF flash card. I had a sophisticated production LAMP website that I could rehost to a handheld PDA- novel if nothing else. I just wish one of these PDA's would get some serious RAM- it's always the bottle neck. The most you ever see is 64M, what's holding them back from throwing a 1G stick inside?!

  10. Re:don't buy a pda by greymond · · Score: 3, Interesting

    WOW you can't possible be serious?!

    Note: I have owned a Zaurus 5500 since 2002 and paid $400 for it new.

    1) - Are you like a lead hand when pressing on touch screens? You must be, because I've never had a problem with my screen breaking. But i've also never broken my laptop screen either.

    2) - I've never owned a Palm but my friend has one and he's a pretty big guy, and has never broken his screen.

    PDA's = PDA's...um yeah Personal Data Assistant, sounds right to me.

    As far as it getting pocketed in .03 seconds...uh so would your laptop if you left it on a bench inthe middle of nowhere...in fact if you took your home desktop and left it by itself in some random place it'd get stolen just as quickly...so uh yeah whats the point? Don't leave your shit lieing around.

    Dropping it would definately break it I agree...but so would your laptop unless you got some extra "ruggid" type. As for an mp3 player - uh yeah most of them if you drop them they will break, and if you bust the LCD on an iPod your kinda screwed. Also if you reak it, why replace it? These types of items are NOT meant to be repaired like that, it's usually cheeper and more efficient to just replace the item.

    I have a feeling you must be really clumsy and break a LOT of items. No one I know that has owned a PDA has broken anything on it...but we also have never dropped them, never left them on a park bench, and never flushed them down the toilet...apparently some people do it looks like....

    --
    Ave Molech Setting
  11. Re:don't buy a pda by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Had you bothered to read the article you would have seen this: Also noteworthy: Can be dropped 1m onto concrete!

  12. Re:USB host mode - Add hard drives, other USB devi by LilMikey · · Score: 3, Interesting

    People at Zaurus User Group have claimed some success at hooking up select hard drives and flash readers.

    --
    LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
  13. Desktop vs. laptop vs. Zaurus vs. PDA... by Money+for+Nothin' · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would *love* to own a Zaurus (I'd kill for a 6000 especially) as a powerful, portable complement to a powerful, sit-on-the-floor desktop box, but having owned an 8MB Handspring Visor Deluxe for the last few years and given that I write a lot (both code and regular text messages), I compromised between a PDA's portability and my desktop's power and got a laptop recently for primarily the following 2 reasons:

    1) Can't really develop on a PDA. Got *full* compilers for Java, C++, C#, etc.? Nope. [1]

    2) Keyboard. Do I really want to write code on the Zaurus' small keyboard - or worse, via handwriting recognition or the on-screen software keyboard? No way. Emails, short (less than 1000 words) messages, sure, but code? No. That said, the Zaurus 6000's USB host capability means I could plug in a USB keyboard and use that instead. That would help alleviate the problem quite a bit IMO.

    The above ignores the problem of PDAs having a necessarily-small screen size. My Visor can only display about 10 lines of text at a time, though maybe the Zaurus is better here... But my laptop, at 1024x768 res. can display about 35 lines (the more code on screen without needing to squint, the better of course).

    PDAs are great for what they're designed for - storing and displaying contact info, notes, books, etc., but for serious computing (i.e. that which requires lots of user input, CPU-usage, storage space, etc.), unfortunately we're not quite up to laptop levels yet, even if something like the Zaurus' USB host feature allows connecting to external HDDs...

    I have to admit though, the USB host capability theoretically offers a *lot* of potential for expansion, and I think that's probably a slightly-underplayed advantage of the Zaurus 6000...

    [1] I know GCC has been ported to the Zaurus, and if you have a CF or SD card to run it off of, you can actually do your compiles on the Zaurus. Admittedly, that's pretty close to what I'd like to do. And Perl is available for the Zaurus too, albeit, at a hefty 34MB (again, need a CF or SD card). But again, what about Java? I think the best one could do is to use gcj, which AFAIK is not really a serious alternative to the Sun or Blackdown javac's...

    And then there's the mere 400MHz CPU speed vs. my laptop's 2.4GHz, although, running distcc (if you have network access to distcc-running systems) would help immensely... :)

    My $0.02.

    --

    Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?