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Linux PDA Resurfaces in U.S.
An anonymous reader writes "A high-end Linux-based Sharp Zaurus PDA thought to be discontinued in the US is actually available from two sources. The SL-6000L is available from stock from 10East, a seller of vertical market systems for the railroad industry which has established a direct manufacturing relationship with Sharp Japan, it says. The Wi-Fi equipped SL-6000L is also available in single quantities from SDG Systems, which, incidentally, is porting Linux to several PDAs that normally run Windows, including the super-rugged TDS Recon."
I won't buy one -- because it's discontinued. (support is important, or we'd still have TI/994As running Parsec between meetings)
Next story.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
What I'd really like is an updated HP100LX or 200LX. I wore mine out. It was the perfect PDA; 2AA batteries, ran DOS (5? 3? forget), you could get Borland Turbo C++ to run on it no problem. Lotus 1-2-3 was in ROM. Even had a seperate numeric keypad, so it was actually useful as a calculator, too.
One of my favorite memories of this calculator was using the wonderful symbolic math package, Derive! in my engineering classes - While the prof was sketching out crude appoximations, I could fire up and get a really nice picture. Symbolic step-by-step reductions were handy for checking homework too.
Had a real keyboard with the beautiful HP signature tactile response. Grey transflective screen didn't need a backlight. I hacked an LED to run off the serial port on mine for night use.
It would be very interesting to see what could be put in the same forum factor and weight these days. I really miss the clamshell design with a real keyboard.
This was "kinda" the form factor that the first WinCE devices had, but they were much bigger and heavier, and worst of all, they only ran WinCE which made them more or less useless for any real work. None had seperate numeric keypads that would make them useful for engineering and scientific work.
A pox on those short-sighted MBA's at HP who ruined a real gem of engineering and turned it into a fond memory.
Saddest of all; my hp48 is starting to die, and the palm T3 emulation is nice, but not the same.
..don't panic
I'm quite happy with mine. I'm pecking out this post in Opera at 480x640 while listening to MP3s streamed from my server via an SMB share from a different floor in my house.
Got it in Oct 2004 when Amazon had them on deep-discount. I'm still happy with my purchase.
Still, a few gripes:
* no decent RSS reader
* included media player only supports MP3/WAV/AVI/MPG2; no OGG or MOD/S3M/XM/IT or DivX support. It also only reads from hardcoded dir paths (on the CF, SD, and int. flash) -- it won't read from USB drives (with the Z's USB host), mounted SMB shares, etc. I use a Python + ncurses app called "cplay" for this...
* 802.11b radio could be stronger (the Z only draws 5W though, so you expect a tradeoff)
* use these PIM apps instead of Sharp's; they're *MUCH* better
* IIRC, the 2D hardware accel is disabled by default, meaning redraws can be slow (somebody is working on this though); this means video is usually choppy and emulated games - even the NES emu (fceu) - are intolerable
* it's relatively-large for a PDA
* pkg management could be better
Positives include:
* decent Word/Excel apps
* wi-fi works stably and fast overall
* stable OS
* Kismet works very well
* displays PDFs faster than my 2.4GHz laptop
* Opera is awesome on this thing...
Overall, it's great for traveling with as a laptop replacement. Good for light surfing, wardriving, reading books, listening to MP3s, etc.. It's true that if you think of it as "a Linux box in your hands", rather than a mere PDA, you'll understand the 6000L'z usefulness much easier. Despite the above annoyances, I love mine and really do use it every day... I replaced my Handspring Visor because of its very limited functionality and haven't missed it since...
Is Capitalism Good for the Poor?
How about innovative company using available hardware and software to meet customer needs?
I won't buy one -- because it's discontinued. (support is important, or we'd still have TI/994As running Parsec between meetings)
Support for a $250 pocket gadget? What's that? Why do you need it?
I don't get your negative attitude. My personal needs are satisfied by an original handspring visor. A Zaurus 5500 is lots of fun, especially with the release of OZ GPE 3.5.3. It is indeed a near laptop replacement and beats the hell out of any silly Wince or Pocket Peeee Ceeee. A 5600 or 6000 would rock.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Last time I checked people have a definitive list of what they want a PDA to do. As far as they're concerned, it doesn't matter if it's written in Cobol and runs on the same chip as the ZX81 as long as it does what they want. Often this is:
- Syncs nicely with Outlook
- Calendar, contacts, notes and tasks
- Alarms, reminders
- Logical UI
- Ability to see what they have to do soon/today on one screen
- Small, light, good looking, nice screen, long battery life
- Plenty of applications - preferably free (as in at no-cost)
Having Linux on a PDA isn't a big seller to many. We have Linux on phones and people still say "so what?". The magical cost savings that Linux supposidly gives aren't passed onto the customer - at the end of the day, its what runs on top of the OS and what features and functionality it has, not what the OS is.Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
Support is far from extinct. I help run http://www.oesf.org/ and I designed http://www.elsix.org/ . We have plenty of support for these devices right on those sites, including tons of free software.
:)
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- Albert Einstein