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Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 Today?
TheAdmin writes "A few years ago the first Linux-based Zaurus, the SL-5500, was released for some $600 by Sharp. Today, it only costs $140 in some places online. This article at TuxTops reviews the 5500 from the point of view of trying to figure out how this model fares against today's PDAs and if it's still a good purchase after all these years, especially at this low price. And so I bought one recently because I needed a full-fledged pocket Linux at my workplace where I work as an admin. I just added a $30 Linksys WCF12 WiFi card (works out of the box after upgrading the SL-5500 ROM to version 3.10) which I use with SSH and by utilizing Zaurus' thumb-board. Works great and it's much more portable than a laptop, especially when all you need is some email and SSH on the go."
I can't decide if the Sharp Zaurus is the 3rd or the "4rth" one.
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
Have you hugged your...
Unlike the more popular x86 platforms, this has never been the object of upgrades ;( I would love to hear about what new stuff could be done, to revive my basement-forgotten Zaurusl. Last QT-based upgrade I had done totally killed it, in regards to functionality ...
== With enough Will Power, one could move mountains. With enough Brains, one would just leave them where they are ==
I remember when Sharp released their Zaurus it was not available in the US and I wanted it real bad and it did cost around $500. But then I opted for phone/PDA and have been happily living life ever since.
What does your Credit Report look like?
How great and modular these systems are...I've done "Linux mods" on everything I could from X-Boxen to PDA's and they always turn out for the better. I have to wonder why, besides the obvious pressure from microsoft to be "standard", more companies haven't switched to linux for mobile and embedded systems. I mean besides the obvious legal juggernaut SCO leaning over their shoulders. ;)
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!
Frankly, for remote ssh and email, this does not seem like the best choice. The windows mobile, symbian or even palm-based platforms are definitely just as able (even more so) when it comes to that, while delivering much more bang for your buck. Ofcourse, then you don't get the geek cred for running linux, but, if that is your prime motivator for purchasing decisions, odds are you're throwing a lot of good money down the drain.
May I suggest you get it from the source?
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
But it always was a great little mini linux box, and now is very good value at $140. Pity about the battery life though.
I've had one for years and barely have touched it. So cool, so close, but it's flaws are enough to not make it useful at all to me.
No speaker. That sucks. The one guy I found them who sold them took my money and never shipped. (Should have just build my own)
Horrendous battery life.
Want to attach something serial? Bend over for a zcable or don't type.
It would crash every couple of days requiring a reinstall of everything.
The one time I could have used it, (on a cruise with wireless), turns out the ship's internet needed some java crap to set up the ip access. I had called ahead to the company providing service to the ship to see what I'd need and they told me everything would work. Just need an 802 card.
It has a great form factor though.
Better battery life and integrated wifi and it would have been much more handy.
-William Shatner can be neither created nor destroyed.
Yeah, I paid about that much for a Zaurus, and it was dead after 3 or 4 months. I'm still pissed. On the other hand, it was fun while it worked.
"Let the Spanish keep it, it's a sh*thole," we said, but you had to have your goddamned orange juice.
"Hey baby, I got a Beowulf Cluster of Zauruses in my pocket AND I'm glad to see you!"
I almost clicked on "Add to Cart" until I read the part about adding a WiFi card and getting a mere 30 minutes of battery life.. UGH! I mean shit, thats gotta be the coolest pda there is.. and it sucks all because of that pretty much.. its definitely not Sharp's fault.. unless they can develop a new battery haha.. i would moreso like to start seeing linux developers to lean more towards the portability issues.. it seems like aiming to get your OS to work on something portable, would be the FIRST thing to accomplish instead of it being the LAST thing.. of course when linux was first being developed, it was probably never suspected to be installed on something smaller than a desktop computer.. its hacked all to hell and back..
*plays the Apogee theme song music*
The most honest line (and a funny one, too) I've ever read in a Linux review: "[The OS on the Zaurus] is not all that stable. I had 2-3 full crashes in the last few days. Some of them could possibly be solved if you SSH to your Zaurus and kill/restart QPE, but I don't see the average businessman [doing] anything of the like." The image of an exec SSHing to his handheld is priceless. (Although, if an associate had the same Zaurus with a Terminal app, I guess it could happen... :-) )
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Works great and it's much more portable than a laptop, especially when all you need is some email and SSH on the go."
But when all you need is much more than e-mail than get a Newton.
Go to the w3.org and put Slashdot.org through the validator.
There are several Slashdot accounts that have been posting totally off topic comments in an attempt to get clicks to their shitty blog (OHUK -- im NOT linking to it). Advertise your crappy blog elsewhere, or a least put some effort into your publication.
I actually just sold my Zaurus SL-5500 on eBay. I sold it with my Linksys WCF11 wireless card. I got about $125 for the combination, which is what I set the minimum to on eBay. I got rid of mine for a few reasons:
1. The battery life with the wireless card was horrible, and that was when the battery was new.
2. To have anything new, you had to use OpenZaurus. Not that OZ is bad, but it means that Sharp basically stopped updating anything for it. Trolltech was supposedly going to release an updated QT ROM for the 5500, but I never saw it materialize.
3. Back to the battery, it was a bit old, so it had a harder time holding a charge.
4. Getting it setup to communicate to the PC under Windows or Linux always seemed to a lot harder than it should have been. I always got it working, but it always took a while.
5. This was the big reason. I just stopped using it because of the other 4 reasons and because I almost always have my work laptop with me. I can pop my laptop out of suspend, fire up Outlook, and I have my Calendar, Address Book, e-mail, etc. just as fast. Yes, I would prefer to carry the Zaurus over the laptop, but since I always have the laptop for other work reasons, why do I need a PDA?
"Extremism in the pursuit of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." --Barry Goldwater
But if it is good then the last thing you should have done is post on /. because if there are were a few in stock anywhere they'll have gone by now.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Does anyone know where Sharp tells their customer's about the GNU General Public License? Bash and Linux are licensed under this particular license. I've researched this question quite a bit and still haven't figured it out where.
was this: it was just cool to use the (then hot) PDA with an old fashioned WWII morse key to key things in it :-)
Good thing it was a company gift...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
"Zaurus v3.10 boots in about 65 seconds, which is a bit slower than the OpenZaurus/Opie ROM variant which loads in about 50-55 seconds."
On the other hand, the Pocket PC OS boots from scratch in under six seconds.
PocketGamer.org - For the gamer on the go!
Although when they claim its durable, they obviously didn't account for the fact that the screen fails if you freeze it or run it in environments of 160 degree fahrenheit, curse you Sharp!!! It did pass my 2 year olds drop tests though.
I'm waiting for the wife to discover the $100 I put on the credit card this weekend for the hackable mini-linux box I just bought - an NSLU2. I would have told her but she was already in a mood when I came home...
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
They are okay... I think it is a nice little PDA, and pretty cheap right now. Also big user group behind it who is pretty hardcore into linux.
Pros:
- CF and SD card simultaneously
- Nice screen
- Nice keyboard hiding feature
- Even if the display crashes, you can still SSH into it! And then just restart the display driver
- The linux behind the framebuffer is rock solid (uptimes of > 2 months).
- Very hackable
Cons:
- Only some CF cards work, and only SD memory cards work (not wifi SD for example). Limited support for CF chipsets (depends on manufacturer).
- Battery life tends to be a little on the low side
- Wifi card really sucks the battery dry
- Thumb keyboard is really slow for doing CLI (and painful after a few lines).
- Heavy changes in software base (like structure) right now, so the developers are breaking things almost as fast as old problems are fixed. *should* stabilize soon.
- IR PDA keyboards (like targus) kindof suck on it, I bought one but find it frustrating to type on... Press two keys are the same time and only one shows up on the zaurus, but always a surprise which one!
Wishlist:
- Longer battery
- Built in bluetooth (for external keyboard)
Seriously, any of the old Palm 4.x devices are still a "Good Investment". Unfortunatly I bought a Sony one, GREAT battery life, lousy software support (I had to ditch it since I couldn't actually get ahold of a copy of Palm Desktop that worked with it!)
Also the entire "loses everything in memory upon losing battery power" thing bit me in the butt numerious times (especially without the afore mentioned sync software).
If someone released a good 320x240 Greyscale PDA running a Palm4.x type OS that used Flash memory, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Heck with today's silicon manufacturing processes, I can only imagine how many CENTS the CPU back in those older Palm's would cost to make now days.
Oh and the 16MB of ram wouldn't exactly cost a lot either.
I don't need an MP3 player, I don't need a video player, the e-book applications are cool though (woot!), and I don't need WiFi access. I want something that I can fit in my pocket and use to jot crud down.
Need help treating your acne? Come here!
I use it as a GPS and a music player in my car, and it works as a SIP phone (though the choice of codecs is limited by a slow CPU, and apparently some people have problems with making it work).
And, of course, it's a regular PDA with addressbook/calendar/todo/notes, web browser (konqueror), ssh, etc.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
I wrote some VoIP with pretty pictures stuff for the Zaurus (and the Ipod) last year. I think we used an SL-6500 though.
It's a PDA but I left it plugged in at my office - and sshed to it from home and used X11 forwarding to do GUI development on it from home (it was a python GUI but the libraries were sufficiently different to mean running it on the linux desktop machine wasn't close enough).
It seemed like a good idea at the time...
I even compiled some stuff on it, when I couldn't be bothered jumping through the hoops required to cross compile a python library. Compiling on the little Zaurus while you use your P4 desktop to read email is a strange allocation of resources.
For the people posting, "zOMG, 5500 is horrible", what PDA w/ WiFi + SSH would you recommend instead?
[o]_O
If you had to do a firmware upgrade to make it work, the wireless card did NOT work "out of the box".
"Oh yeah this bolt-on supercharger works right out of the box assuming you're already swapped out the engine in your car."
I got one of these a month ago from http://www.geeks.com from $140. I wanted wireless access so I also bought a Sandisk 802.11b + 128meg CF card because it was so cheap. Since I researched ahead of time I knew that sharp has basically stopped supporting these things or providing update so my new cheap wifi card was only going to work if I replaced Sharp's software with OpenZaurus. OpenZaurus is a little ruff around the edges. If you've messed with Gentoo or ever done a Roll Your Own Distro then OpenZaurus should be a walk in the park but it's not for average Joe consumer.
I was happy to find that the OpenZaurus email app has support for IMAPS and SMTPS w/AUTH. I've about given up reading/writing word, excel, and powerpoint files because even though the Original Sharp ROMs have application to do this you can't really get them to work under OpenZaurus. But how much spreadsheet work would you do on a 320x240 device? OpenZaurus does have lots of software, it's got ipkg which you can think of as a mini-clone of apt-get or yum.
As other have said, battery life could be better(especially with the wifi card). But other then that it's cool that there are SD and CF slots. SDIO is not supported but I've got a 1gig SD card working fine. Other have complained about having to use headphones for sound, personally I don't have a problems with that.
Favorite thing done with my Zaurus so far; Walking around every corner of my apartment and scanning all the wireless networks so see what the best channel would be for my network. I've also managed to cut down alot on post-it notes.
And don't forget http://slashdot.org/palm
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
I loved using my Zaurus to surf the web, play games adn listent to mp3s while at work, nothing like looking at porn on the PDA on the job ;)
I got mine over 2 years ago with the $170 deal posted here.
At first it was mostly for WiFi scanning and SSH, like others had mentioned. Worked great at DefCon for checking my e-mail without having to worry about a laptop. Most games I found were either not good, or just poorly controllable because of the design.
It then became an overpriced USB key, since I bought a 256MB SD card for it. But being able to SCP and SSH to it is still a neat concept.
And now all I really use it for is a password manager. Occasionally still use Kismet now and then, but now I have a laptop with much better range.
I'd like to find a SL-5600, but they've all seemed to have disappeared off the face of the Earth.
What pda is popular now that either runs Linux natively, or through a port??
I just got my SL-5500 a week or two ago and I've had a lot of fun with it. I flashed it with OpenZaurus and bought a SD card and a Linksys CF Wifi card (WCF12) for it. I wanted to put the newest packages on it, but the package manager refused to install to my SD card. After some research, I stumbled upon the Hentges ROM. After installing that, I tried out CardFS. CardFS is a default install containing a lot of very useful programs. It's designed for people with extra storage space on their CF/SD card. It made everything much simpler. Check out the screenshots for it.
Some of the things I've done with it recently:
- Connected to my desktop via VNC
- Used GAIM at work while all of our machines were down because we were moving offices
- Used it to ssh to my machine to monitor my X10 logs while outside of the house to see the range of the X10 motion sensors
works out of the box after upgrading the SL-5500 ROM to version 3.10
Not to be pedantic, but that's not what "works out of the box" means.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The Linux hype has claimed another vicitim. It's really unfortunate because now how many companies are going to ship a handheld with Linux?
The awful truth is.. Linux isn't perfect or the best for everything. The simple truth is the time wasn't ready. The software development needed atleast 2 more years for it to truely be a competitor to the Microsoft PocketPC. The true believers and rabid zealots would never believe Linux isn't ready. They had to pressure and push out an immature product that seriously stink against microsoft. Now what's the future? Linux has no shot. No other companies are going to take such a gamble or spend millions in R&D to get it up to speed.
I hope some of the Linux zealots out there will wake up after this fiasco. We really had the perfect opportunity to shine, but it was just too early. Too many people in the community have blinders on and aren't willing to objectively look at the current state of linux development.
My $400 Sharp is gathering dust in my basement. I will be happy if I can get $75 for it on Ebay.
The hardware was pretty decent at the time. The new disk-based Zaurus handhelds are great (if heavy). The functionality is also nice, as are the open file formats and the Linux underpinnings.
But the problem with all of them is that the user interface on the Zaurus sucks badly. Like PocketPC, it tries to adapt desktop metaphors to handhelds, and that just doesn't work well.
As far as I'm concerned, the only PDAs with acceptable UIs at this point are Palm and Symbian. And since Palm will soon be Linux-based, I won't have to choose anymore between a good UI and a good operating system. For now, I choose a usable UI, which means I continue to use my Zire.
well, it's still not available, but it seems to be one heck of a Linux PDA. 800x480 16bit screen, dual wireless - that's wifi and bluetooth builtin. Oh, and it is supposed to be 802.g, not 802.b, as 110% of the others PDAs that have some kind of wireless access.
I wish it had a snappier CPU (200MHz ARM9) and more memory (64MB RAM). Also, CompactFlash support would be great, but it will sport RS-MMC, for compability with current Symbian Nokia phones. Or so I'm told.
A good review here: http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/06/jko ntherun_gues.html
and the official page: http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,74866,00.html
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
I've owned or used PDAs for years (Palm III, V, M500, Tungsten), and bought the Zaurus for $140 from a friend who never used it. (My Tungsten had a high-pitched whine that made it nearly unusable, and Palm was useless in resolving it.) It was the best hardware purchase I have ever made in its class. I not only have the functionality of all of the palms I ever owned, but the added capabilities like real games, mp3s, watching movies, and especially being able to get online (I'm actually posting this from my 5500 sitting in a Paneras) give me new levels of functionality I never dreamed of with the palm.
I also do security for a living, and used the Z for wireless sniffing, vpn, and so forth. Best of all, since its Linux-based, there is an existing infrastructure of free/opensource software, much of which can be adapted to run on the Zaurus, and an excellent support community.
I'm thinking of buying a secondone in case anything happens to this one.
If you have the chance to get one and are even remotely interested in Linux, jump on it...
--Storm
it seems to me that the real problem with the sl5500's battery life (well, with mine anyway) was that the battery it shipped with was inferior.
.. i don't mind carrying an extra battery if i need to watch something on a plane, it fits right alongside the CF-stack full of media ..
i got a new one from the local camera store, and i get close to 2 hours worth of use out of it. thats enough for me
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I have a Sharp Wizard OZ-730 (http://www.epinions.com/Sharp_OZ_730PC_Electronic _Organizer__PDAs___Handhelds_OZ730PC) and it has a nice size QWERTY keyboard on it. Sadly, it is now outdated, and can not even dream of doing most of the things that this artical speaks of. When the Wizard line went to the stylus pen, I swore it off. Looking again at Sharp's site, I found this product (http://www.sharpusa.com/products/TypeLanding/0,10 56,74,00.html) that looks more like my beloved OZ-730, upgraded to more modern specifications (although it runs damn windows). Its called a Mobilion, and the website makes it seem as if the product is discontinued.
Does anyone have one of these Mobilions, or ever seen/used one? If not, does anyone know of a good replacement for the Wizard OZ-700 series that has some of the features that newer PDAs have? I would like for one that would be able to keep a schedule, take notes or memos, keep birthdays and anniversaries, store telephone and adress information, keep user files (like databasing to keep an index of things like my CD collection), and light web features (e-mail and light web-browsing would be nice, but not a nessesity). If anyone has any information/suggestions, I would really appreciate a reply.
Vol~
Meanwhile, article submitter was glad to unload the Zaurus for a much better price now that slashdot carried the story.
I recently also purchased one. I'm still trying to decide whether it was a good idea, or if I should try ebaying it. It's true, it is cheap. However, you need to count in the fact that you *really* need to get an SD card ($60), and possibly an CF card ($20) if you want to put any other apps on it. At least the instructions I read, said you could only update the ROMs with a CF card, but you want the SD card, because the WIFI card ($35) you will want to put into it will also want to go in the CF slot.
The biggest complaint against these that I read before my purchase is battery life. I wanted something that I easily sync (think rsync or unison) with my computers, and do a limited amount of things (ssh is great, etc.) So I wasn't too worried about battery life. The standard amount of time quoted is about 3hrs, and that is what I found. Until I put the WIFI card in (also Linksys, btw). Then it drops to under an hour. Not that useful anymore. It might make sense to get a PDA with WIFI built in for energy-consumption..
I researched PDAs for a bit before my purchase. After experience with a palm, I swore off all PDAs. It was way too slow for me to enter in data with graffiti, or other such systems. I type fast, and I wanted to be able to enter data quickly into the system. True, they have keyboards for PDAs, but (a) they are expensive, and (b) it's a lot less portable now. With the Zaurus, although it has a small keyboard, I can type fairly quickly for most things. If PDAs are ever going to work, this is certainly the best direction.
My conclusion so far. All PDAs suck. This one sucks the least for its price. I like the look of the ArchOS PMA400, but once again, no keyboard, no purchase.
With all the complaints about the 5500 in this discussion I have to ask has anyone found any decent alternatives. Specifically I would love to know if there's anything with 802.11 and a decent web browser (maybe even one that could run java apps). Really I'm just thinking about something that would let me check gmail in the morning while I eat my fruit loops.
Using Excel, Word, Acrobat, Powerpoint, mplayer, korganizer are cool initially but all get old really fast on a little screen and thumb-board.
But Kismet, Opera, an OTP password generator, ssh, wake-on-lan are very useful tools to have in your pocket.
My biggest gripe with the little box is that it could have been a decent mp3 player (it supports ogg and wma too with plugins). But the UI on all the available media players sucks so bad, I had to buy a separate player. How trivial it could have been to make an ipod-like interface with the thumb cursor control on the Zaurus but instead they require use of the stylus.
For what its worth, I still use the Sharp ROM and find it stable, as well as supporting any software I want (cross-compiled on my desktop).
There is a third party external battery pack available http://store.yahoo.com/semsons-inc/batexwitusb.htm l. It works with the Zaurus when loaded with NIMH rechargables (I was advised in a FAQ, NOT to use alkalines). On the plus side it extends the battery life considerably. On the down side it's $20 with shipping, and four NIMH batteries w. charger were an additional $10. Also, attaching an external battery pack to a PDA is the definition of a 'kludge'.
[Insert pithy quote here]
My SL-5000d has worked well since the beta release. Doing some of the more "advanced" hacks like installing compat libs and updating large portions of the QT would often times bork the install forcing a flash. However, since the flash is just a set of files on a CF card you can keep 4-5 different images on a disk with a little shell script to swap the files around for quick re-purposing.
I had an image for Kismet sniffing, an image for E-Book reading and the stock Sharp image on a CF for quick swapping between. Since the OS is linux I wrote a few quick tar -cvf;gzips and was able to back the system up to my SD card... but the fact that it was pretty much necessary to keep rather simplistic images in order to keep the crashes to a minimum was frustrating.
The battery life is horrendous. I purchased a second battery and charger but it just doesn't help enough to leave the charger behind.
Still, GCC and a ssh environment in a pocket is nice.
ipaq 38xx with a pcmcia sleeve running familiar linux. works like a champ.
I like this one better:
http://amidasimputer.com/
its just too bad the Zaurus (with the latest rom) doesn't have a WPA option. Kinda leaves you "locked out" of some modern WiFi networks.
usb host. this means any keyboard, and many other usb devices. the battery life is great on them, the built in keyboard is pretty good too.
the screen (at least on sl-6000) is much nicer than ive seen on pocketpc/wince/palm devices. the device itself is pretty sturdy too.
unlike any palm app, you can use keys, and even ssh-agent (on bash, but it works nicely) (this might be possible with putty on a windows handheld, never tried)
i got mine just to use as an ssh terminal. ive found it does so much now that i often dont bother with the laptop (external keyboard does nicely) the fact that i dont have to ask anyones permission to make it work however i want is a nice contrast to sony who will keep locking down thier systems or microsoft who will threaten/sue you over it. (and, yes that does influence my purchasing descision)
What I want is a pda and a fold up usb keyboard to take minutes of meetings with. No mp3. wireless nice, but not needed. Just give me good battery life and a one year warranty.
Just cannot find it.
peace, mark
While the Openzaurus project could really do well by returning kppp to the mix so the CF modem and IRDA mobile phone dialer wouldnt be an hour project.
The good upgrades are:
-4xAA battery charger I was able to work all afternoon on WiFi with this hanging out the charge port.
-1Gig or better MMC card I have hours of music as well as all the room I need for programs or video
-Pocketop IRDA keyboard folded is smaller than the Z
-Socket low power wifi card gets about 1.5 hours off of a stock battery.
-CF modem connects where there is no WiFi
I have stopped packing a laptop to school as my commute to Jerusalem involves 1.5 hour bus ride and 6 miles of bike. I try to keep my pack light. BTW the Dahon folder bikes are a great part of my gear avoiding getting charged an extra ticket for putting a full size bike under the bus.
I love my Z
Like this: http://conics.net/shp/pda/zaurus-sl-c700/sl-c3100. html
OpenSSH (the app) runs fine on Linux, and the Zaurus. There's even a .ipk available.
Best Slashdot Co
We've been playing with them here at $BigDefenseCorp for a few months and they are very powerful, stable, and easy to work with.
Best Slashdot Co
would:
>> He used the term 'boxen' !!! Kill him! Killl Him!!!!
get moderated:
(Score:3, Insightful)
Bought one a few weeks ago. Liked the idea of an 'open' pda ..
I dont need a ultrafast 16mil-colors 3dfx .. shell .. :)
installed apache/php/mysql and ofcous' sshd .. :)
Also wifi with iptables and vpn ..
Now i am as happy as a man who thought a cat had done its business on his pie, but it turned out to be an extra large blackberry!
but where oh where can you get them?
I did a lot of fun HW and SW hacky stuff with my Z, but I agree that it is not a reliable PDA.
http://www.tekprosystems.com/zaurus/
That's great, but is there any cell phone module for it? (preferably GSM)
My aging Handspring Visor gives signs that it needs replacement. However, I've been extremely happy with its GSM cell phone module (a.k.a. "Treo before Treo").
I wonder if there's any cell phone module that can be bought to use with the Zaurus. Of course, the software must be compatible.