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Sharp Plans To Pull Zaurus From U.S. Market
Eugenia writes "Facing stiff competition and low sales, a Sharp representative has informed InfoSyncWorld that the company has decided to fully withdraw its Zaurus SL line of Linux-based handhelds from the U.S. market and focus on its home market in Japan. The recent similar withdraws of Sony and Toshiba pretty much left PalmOne and RIM fighting alone HP and Dell in a saturated PDA market inundated with U.S. brands. People don't seem to be willing to pay a premium for gadgets and alternative systems, and primarily in the corporate market customers prefer to buy from the same suppliers as for their corporate hardware."
I don't know ANYONE who uses a pda... personally I don't think they're all that useful.
But you need to be ultra competitive feature wise for a Linux enabled pda to take off. I am a linux nut and I see no need for a PDA that runs linux on it. hell maybe if it had a ethernet jack on it and a full size keyboard, oh wait thats a laptop...
keanmarine.com
As stated, people don't seem to be willing to pay a premium for gadgets and alternative systems.
Moving people from MS to Linux is difficult enough because of the technical differencesalone, and did I mention the OS is free?
So why would people pay more money to try Linux?
If a PDA costs $400 running Windows, people already have the perception that a Linux-based PDA should cost $200 less because the OS is free.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
The Zaurus line is a great one; I've had three models (5000D, 5500, 5600). However, my Treo does everything that the Zaurus can do, and comes with a phone! Since the Treo is a non-MS device, it also satisfies my desire not to support Microsoft. Of course, the Treo 650 will be even better. ;)
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
Great mp3 player with a built-in calendar, addressbook, a console, and 802.11b! You mean for work? No, I don't use a PDA for work anymore.
I was up till recently a SL-5500 owner. It was a great PDA. However Sharp's software support was terrible. They had great hardware with great function but poor software support.
The OSS community took-up the slack the best they could by releasing revised ROMs and even roms built from the ground up like Open Zaurus.
Another issue I had was lake of sync support. The sync feature was flaky at best.
So I really think it's a bad move on sharp's part to discontinue US sales. The zaurus is one of those devices that almost was and still can be the killer device.
On a side note. The Zaurus is the best handheld I have ever used for WiFi site surveys!
What could possibly go wrong?
...it had the features of the $300 model and cost $75.
I just don't feel like buying an old model or paying $300.
I'd rather buy a remanufactured laptop for $300.
I reset my case.
The Zaurus (I've got a 5500) is a cool little device. Stick a CF wifi card in it and you can check your email and surf the web when you're out on the road. It's a lot easier to pack a Zaurus than it is to pack a laptop. Most of the time the Zaurus is just fine for this purpose.
why bother with a big clunky PDA when i can now get the same functionality in my cellphone ?
the PDA has now been surpassed,the clever manufacturers discovered that there is no real need for it anymore, need something bigger than a cellphone, then a tablet PC should fit the bill
iam sorry to see PDA's go but thats progress for you
I've owned 3 PDAs thus far, 2 Pocket PCs and 1 Palm. They always tempt me by the idea but I get them and never ever use them.
I think the ultimately the phone and Smartphones are where the real market lies (not something as large as Pocket PC/Treo phones either)
Somehow this doesn't sound like news to me. In fact, I remember reading about Sharp pulling out of the U.S. PDA market a while back on Slashdot.
It seem to be a trend... Japan get all the cool toys while US (and Canada) markets show 'not enough demand'.... don't we like cool toys? Seen it happen with PDAs, Minidisc players (only some models are sold here, the coolest ones are Japan only), Cellphones...
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To date, I only have known two people who own PDAs - my boss and one of my friends. I don't even see many people at my unversity who own them - but I know a bundle who are married to their laptops. If they can't sell a gadget to college students, good luck selling it to anyone at all. My money is on pda/cellphone combos and blackberries.
Any more, most of the PDA's I see people carrying are also cell phones. I see a lot of people carrying Blackberries, Treos, and PocketPCs with phone capability. What is the advantage of carrying two different devices? From what I can tell the sharp line offered no phone capabilities and the wifi option drained way too much power to make it practical.
I was really looking forward to purchasing the new model with embedded hard drive! Does anyone know if an import is possible, and if it is, will there be an OpenZaurus build that fully supports it?
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
lol
I was just about to say the same thing. Utterly pointless.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
...works better.
No batteries. Inexpensive. High resolution. Withstands 6 foot drops and coffee spills. Easy to see. Integrated stylus drawing surface. No messing around with handwriting recognition that only works 90% of the time. No pokey built in keyboard. No need for an external keyboard. Tabable pages. Can use any stylus: ball point, gel, or graphite.
Paper pad cost: 75 cents
PDA cost: $50 to $400 plus $2.25 for batteries.
I reset my case.
I heard a few weeks ago that this was going to happen, just could find any information about the discontinuation of the line. From my sources, I have been told that there is another linux pda from another company on the way. I do not remember what the company is off hand, but another is coming.
Persoanl rant
I wish sharp would do this, but o well. I love my zaurus, Just wish there was some linux software for syncing....
Whoa you are right. The things people do...
four nine eighteen twenty-7 thirty-nine forty-7 fiftyeight sixty-nine seventy-9 eighty-8 one-hundred-and-nine one-twenty
The Zaurus is a really really bad pda. Especially if you want to develop for it and you don't run linux on your desktop computer, I would think at least someone would have built some .exe file you can get for free and start cranking out software, but nobody has even bothered with that! Even the TI-83 calculator has development tools available for windows.
It has extremely crappy arrow keys, totally unsuited for any type of games, as well as a cramped keyboard that likes to press neighboring keys. The battery life is terrible, and the battery dies completely if the unit is suspended and kept away from a power source for an extended amount of time.
It has a tiny amount of software available for it. Half of the programs for it either fail if you don't use openzaurus, the other half fail if you do.
It's only useful for playing Day of the Tentacle. That's it.
Too bad, the Zaurus was a great development platform, for stuff like inventory tracking, or mobile "cash registers" with bar code reader and credit card swiper, and stuff like that. Expensive, yes, but very flexible due to the rich and creamy Linux+Java center.
:-(
I hope it is still possible to import them with english OS.
Definitely a niche product but not sure what to replace it with that isn't mostly closed-source.
If only Apple made an OS X tablet or handheld.
The zaurus is one of those devices that almost was and still can be the killer device.
Killer? You mean, widely adopted?
For what?
Whats the advantage of the SL 5 series over an ipaq ?
I used to have the SL5000D, it was a cool gadget, but even syncing with Linux/Evolution was a chore/pain.. and was actually done by someone else, there was no support from Sharp directly.
Secondly, the cost/market for a PDA that costs $500 is very little. How many top of the line ipaqs etc are bought ? I've seen a steady decline of models even from Compaq/HP along with Toshiba/Samsung.. maybe the smartphone market is to blame as well ?
I have an AT&T MpX200 this is an awesome phone, which syncs with an exchange server.. period. No tweaking, nothing. MS Smartphone 2003 (I upgraded, I know the default is 2002), is a great OS for a phone.
MS PocketPC Phone Edition on the other hand, sucks. I tested the HP iPAQ 6315 when it was pre-released to T-Mobile customers, for $499 the phone wouldn't even turn off when I pressed the off button. And, I had to do a hard reset on the phone 3 times in 2 days.. Needless to say, the phone was returned immediately.
The operating system alone is not a driving factor for a device to sell, QA and easy to use features are. The Zaurus 5000 was cool, but it was hard to sync, the iPAQ Phone sucks, but has really cool features.. too bad they don't work.
I'm waiting on the Motorola Linux Phones to be released in the US so I can compare them.
But, an OS alone does not sell a device.. most users do not, and should not care what OS the device is, and should not be used to advertise in marketing a brand new device. Wether the OS is free or not should also never be a factor in pricing the product.
just my HO.
Now that Qutopia is likely out of the market, and RIM is now attempting to compete directly with the other PDA developers, we are left with PalmOS, PocketPC, and the blackberry OS as the main PDA operating environments. Which leads me to ask:
What is development like on the blackberry, compared to PalmOS? How nice are the APIs and documentation. How open are they in terms of licencing of the OS and viewing code to base applications? What choices of development environments are there? Is there as vibrant of a developer community surrounding it as with the other platforms. I know some of these questions could be answered by RTFWWW, but it would be nice to hear about experiences that developers have had with the platform.
That would explain why I see so many IBM PDAs in the corporate world.
Not.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Shhh! If this gets out it will ruin the market!
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
I had a Zaurus when they first came out over here (5000d) and it was a great little gadget with great potential, but Sharp hardly pushed it over here at all, and never brought over the much nicer and sleeker Clamshell design. You get what you pay for, and you sell what you push. Bye bye Sharp at least one us will miss you.
Ubuntu- Linux for human beings.
Does this mean that (American) Dell and HP have beaten Sharp, Sony, and Toshiba (Japanese) in selling tiny consumer electronics devices in the US? That market 0wn3rship is being fought out by viciously innovating American competitors? Where are the "American Engineering Extinction" pundits while the new paradigm firmly assumes an American twang?
--
make install -not war
I saw the zaurus and I must admit that I was impressed. Unfortunately the price tag wasn't something I could afford. Anyone know a decent low-cost PDA with built-in keyboard, adequate speed/memory/storage, runs linux and can go wireless? Preferrably something that would sync up with kmail or evolution or something like that, too.
I'm in the demographic that can't quite justify an expensive PDA but if there's a relatively cheap one that has all the "geeky" linux capabilities, I'd probably get one.
I have had a PDA since 6th grade, the Palm m100. I now have the Palm Tungsten T2. I keep everything in it. My entire schedual and everything I have to do is on it, I sometimes take some quick notes, I have a dictionary and a few games to pass the time. I would be really disorganized without it. I too am a big Linux advocate, all I use is Linux. I would of gotten the Zaurus if it wasnt so exspensive and I do think it should be a bit cheaper. The thing I really like about it is all the features it has, and how many Linux programs (gaim xine etc) have been ported to Zaurus. Its too bad Sharp didnt push it more, next PDA I was thinking of getting it.
Well, how much money does your website make in a month? I'm making a lot of extra money, so if that's "fucking retarded", well, I guess it just must be then.
Find out about the Lexus Rx400h Hybrid!
is the ultra usefull device for the 21st century. And my that I mean a universal remote control function and an IR bulb bright enough to work accross a room. Integration (as a remote) with a household pc system would be nice also. Also nice- decent built in memory so it can work as an MP3 player. standard batteries would be nice too. And those cell phone palm like thingies- is there a reason why it costs 500$ with activation? Couldnt they get it down to like a 200$ option????? As it is paying 500 for a PPC (or whatever the linux version is called) is tough to justify considering I can get a new laptop for under 700 with a huge 15 display and a 60 gig hard drive. Now if the Zaurus had a decent hard drive, and a bigger screen and was more of a swiss army knife... then it might be more likely to pique my interest. Personally, I really liked my Sharp Tripad from several years back, NYTImes just did a piece about an OQO in their tech section, looks like its close to what I want, although the price is still crazy..
People don't seem to be willing to pay a premium for gadgets and alternative systems, and primarily in the corporate market customers prefer to buy from the same suppliers as for their corporate hardware.
How is this news? Consumers always choose the path of least resistance. It's basic economics.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
But everytime I show it to someone, the first question I got is : "How much did you pay this thing?". And anything over 100$ they are like "bah... gadgets, don't need those...". But still, they look amazed when I show them I can browse the web "freely" with it.
PDA's are just another gadget that gets outdated after a year. Maybe I'm growing old/less competetive, but I don't want to buy these new thingies all the time.
"How long will it last?" is the first question I ask myself, and the faster it will be outdated, the less money I'm willing to spend on it. My previous computer was a dual PII, it cost me a fortune but that money is gone. My last PC was a cheap AMD homemade, it works fine and with the money I saved I bought a telescope. I've always wanted one, and a telescope can last much longer than a PC that loses it's value instantly.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
(Yes, I know this will be modded offtopic - I can probably handle the hit)
For you maybe. I cannot read my own handwriting 80% of the time. If electronics could get close that would help. And since I can see instantly that it gets it wrong I could correct the mistake then when I still knew what I meant to write. Course I don't trust hand writing recognition to understand my scratching.
I tried a paper organizer once, ended up knowing that something once started between 9:00 and 10:30. Maybe, unless I crossed it out, hard to tell. I wasn't even sure where, 1.5 hours is a long time to spend wondering the halls, examining each conference room to see if someone realized I was wondering if this was the right one, knew I should be there, and told me to join.
Eventually my school tested me. They found that at best I can write like a second grader. That is at best. Don't tell me to practice, that is about as useful as telling someone in a wheelchair to walk. I physically cannot do better.
I'm sure that Dynamism won't let you down.
As far as Sharp pulling out of the western hemisphere, all I see that is news here is that they've bothered to announce it. Sharp made a half-hearted stab at resurrecting their US site and then dumped it.
Nothing has changed, and this "news" won't impact the community whatsoever.
BTW, pdaXrom rocks!
I dream in binary.
What is the advantage of carrying two different devices?
Some people have poor vision and thus need a PDA with a large screen. Some people have small hands and thus need a small mobile phone. One physically can't put a big screen in a small phone. Of course, it'd be possible to put two screens on a PDA, but Nintendo probably has the patent on dual-head PDAs.
Which is of course, why SUV sales are at an all time high, and people are moving into $300,000 homes in suburbia in high quantities.
The problem isn't the price. The problem is the lack of RAM that belongs in a device like the Zaurus. Lots of us want to buy one, but we're waiting for these guys to get it right. DUH.
It's only overpriced because it's underequipped. Add more RAM, and the price won't matter.
The best part is people don't bother to steal it and you don't worry about babysitting it. One less thing to stress over.
The Great White shark of cool stuff is really quiet about this market. Is it possible that Sharp, Et Al, have realized that Steve simply isn't going to let the market exist that Apple created with the Newton, and have zero market share of it now.
It is only logical, from my weird view, that Apple has learned how to give good value for the money you spend on gadgets. Case in point: iPod. Expensive and totally worth it. If the average consumer sees real value for their money, then they find the money to spend. It simply has to work AND be very cool.
The iPod has 92% of the hard drive based handheld music player market, and 65% of the over all handheld music player market.
One small step for Apple, one giant leap for PDAs?
Pure speculation on my part.
Watch out Palm.
I've been dying to get one of these ever since my Ipaq was stolen. Keeping track of meetings and tasks on Post-Its is no way to go through life. I've been hitting eBay regularly but just can't get an auction to close at the right price. Maybe people will be less likely to bid now that Sharp is pulling out. BTW, if you're selling, I'm buying (maybe).
Matthew
/. finds me to be 20% Troll, 80% Funny
Sharp makes an organizer that has a big display, multiple phone books with calendaring, scheduling, contact storage, PC link and a battery that lasts for a YEAR on a single charge. How much for this amazing wonder you may ask? $39.95 Canadian.
Does this have to be posted on nearly every freaking PDA article? We were all quite enlightened about this fact years ago.
My handwriting is probably as bad as yours. I suppose the only difference is that I can read my handwriting later....that doesn't help much as I'm the only one that can do it. I primarily exist as a keyboardist as well. My "PDA" is what I call the Paper Pilot. It's a folded up sheet of paper with certain bits of frequently used info printed on it and I scrawl anything new that has to be added. Every once in a while, it develops excessive sector errors (creases). So I shred the old one and sync a new Paper Pilot from the primary desktop.
It was real simple:
bad license --> no apps --> no one wants to buy it
Zaurus used the Qt widget library which is under the GPL license. You can purchase a proprietary license from Trolltech, so this shouldn't of been a problem but it was.
When the Zaurus beta came out Trolltech stalled and stalled on announcing the licensing details. I remember thinking "would a proprietary license cost $1000 like the desktop license? Or would it be more sensible?" Turns out it was in a more sensible $50 - $100 range but that one year period of indecision and uncertainty made many developers think twice. I know it influenced me to abort all Zaurus development plans. This blunder could of been easily avoided. Stupid Trolltech. Simply stupid.
The second fatal flaw with the Zaurus is that Sharp decided not to pay Trolltech for proprietary Qt licenses. Sharp should of subsidized the Qt costs for all Zaurus development. That is what Palm and Windows CE do. The PDA developer market expects this, actually it requires it. Kind of ironic that the cost to develop for a Free Software PDA is more than the proprietary ones (Palm and CE).
or you can learn to write shorthand.
The point of using Linux was not to add features, but to lower the cost of the PDA: not only could Sharp avoid the Windows tax by using another OS, they could also (theoretically) reduce their specs from those required for a Windows-CE certified PDA.
Unfortunately, where Sharp could have sold an iPaq-equivalent for hundreds less, they chose to use the money saved by using Linux to add extra hardware features to the device. Thus, rather than a $100-$200 device with functionality equivalent to an iPaq, they delivered a $500-$600 device with functionality and raw performance equivalent to an iPaq, with many extra fancy features such as a full VGA display and the built-in keyboard. Nifty, but this may have been the death of them.
Yea, how strange it is that people don't want to pay a premium for a device built with an OS the manufacturer got for free, rather than paying a licensing fee for each unit to Palm or Microsoft. Maybe some of the Linux developers that freely contributed their own work are willing to pay a premium for a device that profits from it, but many consumers seem to figure thay shouldn't be paying a premium for a device that already has saved on development costs and software licensing fees. Go figure!
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
It was my old Zaurus SL-5000D that taught me one novel way to combine quality time with the family and geekery. I'd run kismet on the Z and put it in my pocket while pushing my 3-year-old daughter around my suburban neighborhood in her stroller. Whenever we'd pass a neighbor proudly polishing his car in his driveway, I'd give a cheerful "Hello!" and my Z would give an equally-cheerful "I found an open AP" bleep.
Hopefully my new SL-6000L will last me a long time...
Tim Fraser
"I've always wanted one, and a telescope can last much longer than a PC that loses it's value instantly."
Until the asteroid crashes into the planet.
I have a Dell Axim X3i. It's great. 802.11b, 400 MHz processor, 64 MB of RAM, 64 MB of ROM (32 MB of which can be used for user storage), aluminum stylus included, great looks, and a really cool docking station. Only thing I don't like is the crappy support and the fact that Dell hasn't released a Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition upgrade and doesn't seem to intend to either. Windows Mobile 2003 is fine, but I wish I had the landscape rotation in Internet Explorer.
With my handwriting, I'm lucky to get 80 per cent recognition from paper a month later :)
(I also have a good, legible handwriting, but I tend to use that more when I'm writing because I want to, rather than to get a message across. It's a bit excentric. Because it's fun.)
Look out!
Ah yes, but can a piece of paper:
* Beep at you to remind you of an appointment?
* Keep the same contact list as your desktop email/organiser without you having to copy out the details manually?
* Allow you to play games and access the net away from your PC if you need/want to?
Sure, paper might be OK for some people. But I find a PDA much more versatile, despite the downsides you highlight.
In my company, only the young kid poseurs use the things.
Blar.
People don't seem to be willing to pay a premium for gadgets and alternative systems
Sounds like the same reasons that Apple always provides for why they don't want to get back into the PDA game (much to the chagrin of the Newton crowd, I might add)
Looks like ALL of the sharp PDAs are only coming out in japan, not just the coolest ones. Does anyone know of vendors that are selling import sharps in the U.S. I really wanted the SL-5600 or 6000 but one of those clam shell pocket laptops would be even better!
Let me rephrase this: "Sharp announced today that they are pulling their PDA's from the U.S. market. Citing that something is obviously wrong with U.S. consumers not preferring the more expensive yet cheaply made Zaurus to the plethora of PocketPC-based PDA's for considerably less money!"
See, oddly enough if you hype up the technology arena about how much money Linux saves you then release a Linux PDA that's $100 on average more than an iPAQ, well people just start scratching their heads.
Now Sony I don't understand. They beat Palm feature-per-feature and for less money. When I bought my Clie' T615 for $199 it was easily $50-$100 cheaper than the comparable Palm and I got an expansion slot to boot (not boot but..well, you know).
Now we can look forward to PocketPC's and Palms owning the market...again. This is a step backwards, unfortunately.
My little SL-5600 (which pretty much fixes everything that was wrong with the 5500) is the best PDA I've ever come across. The thumb keyboard is excellent if you don't have fat thumbs, and of course it makes a great portable ogg player.
After adding mplayer, cron and a plucker reader it's tough to beat.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
....and the only games available for it are Tic-Tac-Toe and Hangman.
You can play football if you fold up a page, but you permanently destroy some of it's available storage doing so.
Let me know when a piece of paper can remind me to go to a meeting when I forget about both having the paper and needing to go to a meeting.
Dumbass.
Thas why he shelved the apple pda project and diverted funds from the newton to other divisions. No wonder he has a good insight into the industry;
For those bemoning the lack of an ethernet adapter, have a look at the Hawking Technology H-CF686TX 10/100 Fast Ethernet Network Adapter.
Since it is CF based, I would be really surprised if it could seriously keep up with a 100 mbps saturated network stream, but for just about anything else it should work out fine for you.
I have had one for about a year now, and have found that it works without searching for additional drivers, etc.
If you are attempting to sniff a network that is prone to broadcast storms, you will probably want more than a this, but if you just want to plug in, get an IP address to see what network the jack belongs to, and what capabilities the hub or switch you are connected to supports, this CF device and an old 5500 off of E-bay are going to run you a bit less than $200. (unless the news of Sharp dropping sales in the US bumps prices on the older units up as well.)
-Rusty
You never know...
Off topic I know...
You probably have dyspraxia (if you don't know already).
Well, I for one have been very happy with my 5500, ever since I bought it. The small built-in keypad is really really handy (I just can't get used to any of the stylus-writing options, probably because I've got horrible hand-writing and any attempt at being precise with a stylus ends up taking me twelve times as long as the built-in Zaurus keypad takes to type anything), decent color screen, and enough free software / games / utilities to choke a small furry forest creature with. Toss in a CF WiFi card and I'm surfing away at the any of the free WiFi AP's in town or home. It's come in handy many many times.
One other thing the Zaurus got a lot of, probably because of the slide-out keypad, was "woah, cool! what's that?" from friends and coworkers, and not even technical ones, just people who thought it was a handy looking PDA.
I was looking forward to another model like the 6000 (but a bit more consumer-based) to buy. Looks like that won't be happening. I was really hoping for a 6000-like device with a mini hard drive in it. oh well... hopefully in a while I can pick up a used 6000 for a decent price.
bummer.
-r-
i don't blame them for pulling those units out of the us market. what has always been shocking to me is that they haven't released their good models here. the clamshell models that they make for the japanese market are so much better. I've got a c760 with 512mb sd and a cf wifi card. i use pdaxrom for the os which provides a true x11 enviornment. it's basically a laptop, but pda sized. if sharp were to get behind the pdaxrom guys and make that the basis for the pda's os i think they'd be able to sell a ton of them. philo
If the PDA market is finally dying...maybe Apple will bring back the Newton...after all, they did take it off the market just as the market was becoming ready for the PDA.
Sigh...I wish Apple would release the newton in the form factor of a palm...I'd buy it no matter what the cost.
Everyone manufactures in China. It's so cheap there, it's silly not to.
My other first post is car post.
The U.S. trade deficit just improved!
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The main reason they don't sell well here is they make lowsy PDA's. They could have had real potential if they'd pushed on with the development and offered significant software upgrades. Between QTopia being woefully inadequate, poor interoperability between QTopia apps and finally the very poor power management causing batteries to run dry much faster than competing devices, these Linux based PDA's didn't stand a chance. I would have loved for them to have been up to the task, but they just weren't.
*TheDarb
This sig intentionally left blank.
It is very easy for paper to remind you about both meetings and paper itself.
Ever heard of the terms "scotch tape" and "forehead?"
Dumbass.
I had an SL-5500 about a year and a half ago. It was uber cool to have a LInux box in your pocket but unstable as hell. I went back to Palm because I actually *USE* my PDA. It was constantly crashing and/or trashing my data. I use a Linux desktop at work too.
Do you changes clothes while making the "chee-chee-cha-cha-choh" transformation sound?
I used my Handspring for like a month and never picked it up again. As a planner, it wasn't better than paper. And I found myself missing all the cool/fun features found in PocketPC devices like MP3/AVI playback, and Word and Excel compatibility.
Are you a doctor or engineer now, then?
I envy you.
The best we have in Australia is still the SL-5500, and oh yeah, over here it still has a RRP of AU$1200 (around US$800.)
No sign of the SL-5600, and definitely no sign of the SL-6000.
I was inches away from buying the SL-6000W (the one with both Bluetooth and Wifi, IIRC) from Japan, until I got discouraged by the proposition of getting no customer support.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Can somebody explain to me Sharp's logic? They enter this market (US/Europe) with a beta product (5000), only slightly improve upon it (5500), design a class I product (C370), and tell us it will never be sold here because there's no real future for Sharp PDAs outside of Japan, and then withdraw completely. Is there any logic to that?
This has been a long time coming. It's been obvious for years that Sharp had no intention of becoming a player in the American and European markets. The only thing I can't understand is why did they even bother?
Sharp's message to us for years now has been, My sincerest apologies to the sharp pda owners out there. I am suffering under severe sour grapes; I really wanted one. I just couldn't stand Sharp's message.
I'm making a lot of extra money, so if that's "fucking retarded", well, I guess it just must be then.
How much extra money are you making from your web site?
Interesting, I have never heard of dyspraxia before. Google is my friend though.
Some of it applies, some does not. Typical. Unless there is a treatment that will help (one without side effects, which often are worse), it really doesn't matter that there is a label.
Thank you though. It is worth knowing about even if there is nothing more to do.
This is /. where making money is considered evil and the Slashbot groupthink would have you believe using Linux helps feed poor people in India.
I see no use for a PDA, because there always seem to be better ways to get the same functionality:
Calendaring - People like me who really need the calendaring feature are often so disorganized that they forget to charge the PDA, or forget to take it out of the charger. In either case, a little paper one is a better option.
Contact information - I keep it all in my phone. Due to shitty US cellular companies locking out any phone feature that they don't charge by the minute for, I am unable to sync my phone with, well, anything, and since I use the phone to contact people, it wins over a PDA.
Games - With the exception of Bewjewled, PDA games are shit, mostly because games are hard to play with a stylus. Even cellular phone games are better.
Productivity apps - If I want to do general purpose computing on the go, I'll just take my laptop along.
The only PDA I have ever seen that really does it all well (Excluding games) is the Blackberry. Unfortunately I was burned out on the whole PDA concept by the time Blackberries hit reasonable price points. I traded my last PDA for a nice digicam on via Craigslist, and everything is better now.
I don't like gadgets that consume more of my lifespan. A PDA is one of them. A cell phone is one of them. A pager is one of them. A laptop is one of them.
I would have no life left if I was dicking around with all of these no ROI having POS machine's. I don't need it, don't want it, and would rather make my family or friends a nice supper instead.
Gadgets are for people waiting to interact with the world. It's not the same thing as being part of it.
I was the Developer Liasion at Sharp during 2002-2003 and I wrote a peice in Linux Magazine in May of 2004 about why the Zaurus failed. The short of it? Sharp had no clue about dealing with the Open Source community.
http://www.linux-mag.com/2004-05/hard_01.html
As another person mentioned upthread, there are -other- Linux handhelds in the works, some coming out by major companies. Lets just hope they aren't doomed to repeat the same mistakes.
As a senior software manager, I was responsible for selecting a PDA OS to standardize on at a small university in Boston last year. (I also had the option of deciding that none were good enough yet and examine the market again later.) I looked at the Palm devices and determined they were nice but didn't quite meet requirements. (And, their people didn't return my calls, which does not help form a business relationship.) I was given a WinCE pda/smartphone by the university (free, to keep), winced at how awful the software was, and gave it back. An article here on slashdot mentioned the zaurus, and I found one at a good price, decided that regardless of what would be best for the university, it was what I wanted for me. So, I bought one for me, and used myself as a guinea-pig.
I loved it. It was GREAT! In addition to being plenty fun for me to toy with, it was everything I wanted our students to have, and then some. I figured I'd toy with it a while longer before putting in the order for thousands of units... and then it broke.
Okay, these things happen. It was just a hardware button not working. That's repairable, right? So I sent it in for warranty service. I figured, this is just an opportunity to see how fast their repair service is before placing the order. I guessed the contacts were probably just corroded from the humid salt air of Boston, and this would be a good simple test of their repair department.
They sent it back to me un-fixed. Oh, and they'd wiped my data. (Fortunately nothing important was on it, I was more toying with it than anything.) So, I phoned to complain. They basically told me, in very polite language, that nothing was wrong with it and I'm an idiot who doesn't know how to use a button. But, there it was, in my hand, and the button still didn't work.
Sharp lost an immediate sale of 3500 to 4000 units, plus ongoing sales for incoming students, faculty, and staff, plus an ongoing repair contract with the university.
I took a jeweler's screwdriver and disassembled the relevant parts of the unit. The problem turned out to be corrosion on the contacts for the button. 20 seconds with a pencil eraser and it was fixed. Yet, Sharp repair apparently couldn't find that problem. Oh well, their loss.
And the university? Well, since I'd decided that no PDAs were yet acceptable, they bought some faculty and some staff Windows XP tablet computers... which I didn't like, but which did meet the requirements.
Sharp has some great tech. I'd LOVE to have one of their 3D displays, and a newer model Zaurus... but this is not the first time I've had a nasty run-in with their repair department, so I'm not going to be buying anything from Sharp any time soon. I can't say if I'm a representative customer or not, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if lack of repeat business is a substantial part of why Sharp isn't doing so well in the US computer market.
It wasn't an issue of horsepower or resources.
If a vintage Sun workstation with a 16 MHz Motorola 68020 processor, 4 MB of RAM, and a megapixel display could handle X-Windows then the 200 MHz processor in the Zaurus with it's much smaller screen could of easily handled it.
X11 on the Zaurus could of made a heck of a handy little tool. Porting would of been greatly simplified. Remoting possible. It could of been sweet.
...guess I never will. Don't understand the backward thinking of companies that pull back potentially interesting products rather than finding new ways to promote them.
and nope, I don't want to order on the web. When I buy something I want to take it home with me right away and not wait for a courier to arrive several days later.
Means I'd never buy a Dell either.
But a website that has ABSOLUTELY NO BENEFIT TO ANYBODY that only leeches ad impressions from slashdotters is a bit distressing.
But if your website had CONTENT and ads, and links from slashdot got you traffic, well THE MORE POWER TO YOU.
Duuuuurrr...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
i have a couple of health issues. make sure you check back with "the system" every so often.
one thing i've learned...they won't come find you. you've got to check in once in awhile to see if the state of the issue has changed.
in my case a new treatment popped up about 6 years after the initial diagnosis. i would not have known if i had not kept up the vigil of doing research into the health issue every 6-12 months.
good luck,
flash
While the Open Source community did significantly hurt the user experience of the Zaurus, in all fairness some of that blame also belongs to Sharp. For example, they left the power button exposed and uncovered by the flip-down visor, which often results in the Zaurus getting turned on while it's still in your pocket and the battery being kaput the second you whip it out.
I think that whether future handhelds will be successful depends on whether they are "Linux Handhelds" guided primarily by Unix design values or "Handhelds That Just Happen To Run Linux" that are guided primary by PDA/Ergonomic values.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
I'm one of those people that live on the 'net. I have a nice, Dell, linux laptop. I write software for use on the 'net.
I'm not only one of those people who don't know if "redundant failover" is a standard English term, my wife doesn't know either.
I've never had a PDA. I've played a few times, but they seem like a pain in the rear. I've found that $0.15 at the local Target/Wal-Mart does just fine in the form of a spiral-bound notebook, and I don't have to worry about battteries, either.
I've played with them PDA things. They're neat. But, drop one sometime on the beach, so that the sand gets into them. Or, have a battery go dead.
Sorry, what I write down is more important than that. If I write it on the server, or on my laptop, it gets backed up automatically every night. If I write it on a notebook, it's pretty safe. (I have a running record of $0.25 notebook notes going back almost 4 years)
So, where's the compelling advantage? Why don't they offer a backup service for a few dollars per month?
If my phone dies, I shouldn't have to reload the contact list, and anything saved on the phone should be available on the new phone. Until that happens, I'm going go focus on good reception and not pay much attention to anything else. What's the point?
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The modern phones (at least all smartphones like Nokia 6600) have a speaker and microphone, you know? You can turn on the speaker so you can put the phone on the table and speak as you are cooking dinner, for example.
Can you can poke two holes in a sheet, wear it like glasses and Web browse?
But I call bullshit:
-Most Palms (I don't know about others except the Zaurus, that sucks on this department) can go on a week with one charge only. If you can't remember to once in a while charge your PDA then you are unable to use modern mobile devices, it would ot suprise me if you whistle your own tunes in preference to have a MP# player or usic payphones because your apparently inabiility to plug a device to a cable.
-I have taken my Palm and Zaurus to the beach. Many times. Not only there, but on Safari, skiing, etc. They are so convinient that have been used in the filed to identify tracks of animals in Southafrica by people touching the screen with their fingers (and having myself being on "safari" several times, your hands can be quite dusty, the Palm enver seemed to care).
-Regarding backups, what nonsense. Put the PDA in a craddle, press a button, one minute later your backup is finished. Oh sorry, I forgot you are divorced with complex technology requiring you to ocassionaly plug a device to the power supply. My bad.
-Is there a version of Google to find information in your archive of notebooks? or are you a very sparse writer?
The advantage is simplicity, portability and searchability. You have 4 years of notes which you can't consult unless you are phisically there. Translate that to bytes, check the capacity of modern PDAs and if you don't get it you are beyond redemption.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... if you don't know how to use the gadgets modern technology has to offer.
But no wonder, somebody so patronizing surely could not do any better.
I am a gaget freak, I admit it, but your supositions about people like myslef are ludicrous.
I make plenty of nice suppers for family and friends (heck, my redsnapper Veracruz style is the stuff of which legends are made), I travel, I play a musical instrument (at the same level as a pro) and I do sports (my first triathlon is next year).
And as myself I am pretty sure many "gadget freaks" have very interesting and fulfilling lifes, so your assumptions frankly look pathetic from this side of the gadget divide.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
[ tons of tips and ideas what's possible with a Z follow ]
The 5500 and others are more like little Linux laptops then PDAs. While I am far from a typical PDA user, the absolutely INCREDIBLE stuff I can do with just a 5500 and a wireless card continues to astound me today. To be fair, I never bought a Zaurus with the intention of ever doing typical PDA like stuff, but just wanted an easy familiar environment to hack in.
Years ago I had a USR P1000 (The Palm 1000, before Palm bought it from US Robotics), and while it was a great PDA (for the day), it was underpowered for what I wanted and most importantly LACKED A KEYBOARD, which makes all the difference in the world. One day I worked an ENTIRE day with only my P1000, a ssh client and a (9600 baud) serial link to my cell phone to see just how doable it was. As a unix admin doing security work the P1000 did have SOME uses (serial console to Sun boxes, ssh client for accessing mail via Mutt, etc) but the end result was a less than productive day overall. Trying to edit files on unix boxes with vi using Graffiti was quite painful and I vowed I'd never buy another PDA until it had at least a minimal keyboard to work with.
Fast forward to my (now several years old) 5500. Shortly after getting it I wiped the original Sharp rom and replace it with the actively developed OpenZaurus distribution, and was very happy with the results.
I have a very portable linux box with wireless, nearly all the software I was using on Solaris and Linux, as well as the pretty Qtopia apps and a half-way decent environment. I've been able to get nice tools like nmap, p0f (Passive OS Fingerprinter), Kismet, and other excellent unix based tools working with minimal effort on the Z under OpenZaurus (and the a lesser extent the Sharp ROM). Under OZ I can compile and run MANY common exploit tools like the awesome Metasploit framework, which require perl, and to a less extent Python. Both are no big deal to get going on the Z, especially since the Z is binary compatible with the IPAQ based Familiar distribution, and usually just needs the odd library to get an app working. That's all fine for text based apps, but since OZ (using Opie, at least) is QT and not X based, a variety of GUI based apps don't easily run. There ARE solutions to getting X based apps to run with minimal fuss, including the original x11zaurus package, and more recently the excellent X/QT package, as well as simply running one of the versions of the vncserver for Zaurus which of course allows you to display X not only on your Z, but also on any other VNC compatible device (such such as you cell phone, Linux, Windows, etc).
More recently the GPE environment and projects has become available, and is offers an attractive alternative to Opie, but with X11 compatibility built in.
For me, I joined the Debian religion ~5-6 years ago after experimenting to see what all the fuss on /. was all about. It
didn't take long before I was the typical Debian crack addict
apt-getting any application I wanted to check out on a
whim. After living in Ottawa for years I was very well aware of the
Corel
(and later Rebel.com (who themselves were called Hardware Canada
previously, and were a unix reseller) Netwinder
, which was a cool little ARM based PC, which unfortunately suffered
under the idiocy of Corel's managem
-- I speak only for myself.
Showed my 5500 to a salesman at London Drugs and he was quite impressed. This 3 year old device has features not found in their stock. Took down the information I provided about it, but obviously didn't spark a buying frenzy. Too bad. The price of my next zaurus is going to be significantly higher.
I second this. My old-but-trusty m105 is a lifesaver for me. I can keepy my schedule, contacts and random notes kept up-to-date between the Palm and my home and work computers.
Plus until a piece of paper can bleep at me to remind me of an appointment then it's always going to be second-best.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
...how to market and support the product.
The original Zaurus was a (computing) media attention grabber, and whilst it was released pretty much world-wide, it sold relatively few units because it had no real advantages over the other PDAs already out in the market, except that it ran Linux, and this resulted in little or no benefit for the average consumer. It was one for Linux geeks and those with an appetite for gadgets. So naturally, I bought one.
It's a great piece of kit, but as far as the world outside Japan is concerned, it hasn't evolved since the first "developer only" units were shipped, and so is now destined to be just another piece of computing history.
There has been very little attention from Sharp to the product line at all within europe, and I can only assume it's the same in the US. Even the Zaurus community, despite the enthusiasm, has been unable to make it anything more than an ageing niche market "geek gadget".
There have been a few new models in Japan, and they look marvelous. I know I'd have bought an officially released one, but it's been left to companies like ShirtPocket.com to import and localise (SIC, I'm european) them.
Even the most innovative and desireable new product will generally only have a six month initial sales period in which to make money before it has been eclipsed by newer kit. The only chance Sharp have of making any money from the Zaurus range is to release the products in Europe and the US around the same time as Japan, and it hasn't done so.
Now it's too late for everything but the latest mini-HD based device. Yet again, Sharp have on their hands a ground-breaking product, seemingly well designed and made, and very, very desireable, but unless it is released worldwide "whilst it's still hot" it's simply not going to make them any money elsewhere. The tech industry moves so quickly these days, that consumers in the rest of the world simply won't wait like they did back in the 80s & 90s.
This whole thing is compounded by Dell selling good quality, high spec kit for peanuts, which has completely destroyed the (already pretty low) profit margins to which the PDA manufacturers and retail chain were working. Dell are just doing what they've always done so very well, identifying a market and giving the consumer what they want a a great price, but it means there's no money to be made in PDAs anymore. As a result, even manufacturers like Sony who are generally good at marketting and supporting their products, have pulled out of selling PDAs in europe.
Personally, I haven't bought a Zaurus in the U.S. because I've been waiting for the good ones to come here.
I had the opportunity to use the clam shell design while I was in Japan and found it a lot more capable and versatile than the goofy "tack a keyboard on the bottom of your PDA" models we get here in the states.
I expected that already 4 years ago, but I guess I was too early.
The problems with PDAs is, that it is one gadget too much in the age of cellphones.
The first combined PDA cell phone combinations were a fiasco saleswise (although some of them were quite god). I guess the average joe bloke was not ready for it. But face it the PDA cellphone combo is a combo which basically never should have been separated or separately developed, because they belong together.
I guess Sharp sees the light, although their pdas are the best there is, a single pda and a single cellphone does not have any future.
I guess the future belongs to combined pda smartphones, with handheld consoles being added at a third stage in about 4 years.
You might add that Nokia already has tried this and failed, yes, but most technologies have 2-3 failures until the take off. There have been smartphones existing for years and almost all early models failed to a big degree for various reasons, yet they slowly take over the PDA market.
Let me know when I can get it with built in GPS.
Perhaps Sharp might have had better success if they actually had their product in high street stores.
It's not that nobody wanted a Zaurus - there just seem to be too few customers interested in a full-fledged Linux-system if it is confined to this "Palm-like shape": Instead of pulling their technology altogether, Sharp finally ought to start selling the clamshell models outside Japan as well - let them know what you would buy!
Whether SHARP will bring their Linux PDAs to the U.S. or not, they will be available in Europe by Xtops.DE - Linux, Laptops, PDAs. More vendors around the globe you may find in the international TuxMobil - Linux laptop, notebook and PDA vendor survey.
IMO
Best company for repair and customer service.
They paid full price to buy back my year old 'lemon' laptop and I'm just a 'buy one at a time' customer.
What did I replace it with? ANOTHER FUJITSU! Build quality is not up to IBM 'corporate' models, but it was 1/2 the $ and better than anyone elses consumer models.
PDA as a useful device?
As a PDA and phone, they are nice.
As a GP portable computer, IMO, they are a pain to use. Too small. This P2120 I'm using (Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.8.1 #15 Mon Oct 18 19:04:41 EDT 2004 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
) is 'just right'. 1280x768 display, Radeon mobiluty graphics (1600x1200 on sexternal display and will run dual head mode), 802.11b, CDRW/DVD, good battery life, etc. Keyboard took a few weeks to get used to but I now use the P2120 for 90% of my computer work.
Main linux drawback is Lucent AMR modem. Anyone know of a working driver and config info?
They are some of the best PDA's around, but the manufacturer don't appear to want to sell them to anyone. See the review by a fellow Ukonian, "A Free Software PDA", for more on the latest models features (and scarcity). There are more in-depth reviews around too if you google.
If anyone knows where abouts I might get one...
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
Palm and WinCE are so inferior to busybox Linux.
This is a crying shame.
Palm doesn't multitask at all, and WinCE doesn't do it very well.
PDA/Cellphone combos are an obvious extension, at least if they've got decent screens and don't cost too much more per month than a regular cellphone, and mean you only have to carry one device in your pocket instead of two. Basic PDAs are ~$100 now, but I don't know if any of the cheap ones have MP3 players in them.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks