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."

Comments

Related rant: Updated 200LX? Anyone? Anyone?

[xtal]

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.

Who cares about the OS?

[Mr_Silver]

Really, apart from geeks, who cares about the OS?

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.