The Thumb Board and other input mechanisms
on
Sharp Readies SL-5000D
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
You may get this PDA just because of the Thumb Board? That's interesting.
I use a Sharp Wizard at the moment, and that has a near full-size keyboard. I'd say I can manage 30wpm on it (it's slightly smaller, and the keys don't have a particularly good feel to them) vs say 60-70 on a regular keyboard.
The Thumb Board would probably get 10wpm if you're lucky. I agree that it's a great thing to have, e.g. asking people to key in their phone numbers / email addresses.
Otherwise, I personally would like faster throughput. I would assume that handwriting recognition would be the primary input mechanism for PDAs like these. What do you think's wrong with that? (This isn't a rhetorical question. You've actually made me curious.)
I believe the Thumb Board isn't in any way designed to be a complete input device, as it were. For starters I would:
- make the delete key at least as big as the space
- add arrow keys
Like you, I really like the concept of the thumb board. It's just raised some questions about what's so wrong with the PDAs that don't have them.
Call me dumb, but I for one just started using Google because everyone was saying how good it was, how clever it was, yada yada yada. Then I just stuck to it.
I think there might be a lot of people like me. I couldn't tell you whether Google's really better; but you must admit it was well-marketed.
I actually have a Inspiron 7500 with a 15" 1400x1050 screen, except that when I bought it, there was no option for a Linux preinstallation.
So I had to do all the "fun" stuff myself. I've installed Linux plenty of times on desktops, by the way, including back when they didn't have nifty user-friendly installation managers like Yast (which I used this time.)
All goes well until the X setup. See that's where the trouble comes in with laptops. Proprietary, unsupported hardware. Couldn't simply type XF86Setup and get this beautiful configuration screen that does everything for you.
xf86config doesn't work either. All because there isn't an XServer that supports this nifty ATI Mobility-P graphics card. (No, XF86_Mach64 does not work.)
Talking with some guys on the Linux on Laptops helpgroups revealed that a lot of people on Inspirons never managed to get beyond 640x480x8bpp. Actually the person I first emailed on the volunteer list had already bailed out and gotten himself a XiG server for $200.
I've been fortunate enough, after a heck of a lot of tweaking I've managed 1280x1024x16bpp, but at an SVGA server performance level.
XFree86 3.3.6 now apparently supports this graphics chip. Support doesn't seem to go above 1024x768 though. Plus, all of a sudden there are RPMs for Linux on the Dell support site, finally supporting the sound card (I've needed to do a Loadlin out of DOS after starting the driver until now.) and the XFree86Config file. I tried that and it doesn't work, presumably because I'm using a model with different modelines than their supported Inspiron 7500 model.
So, conclusion: it is very, very good to have your laptop manufacturer support Linux officially. Plus it probably isn't such a bad idea to get Linux preinstalled and working already.
Industrial systems such as water/sewer systems have two layers:
Accouting, which is the technology that you see when you visit a plant because it is visible -- monitor screens displaying really nifty info on the status of the plant etc.
Control is the layer that actually does all the work. Now these aren't so apparent because usually embedded chips do this sort of work. Totally hardware or at least firmware that has been a fundamental part of the working of the plant since it was built.
That possibly means in the '70s or '80s. Hard to upgrade because of the nature, and to make things worse, most of the people who can fix them are probably not in the business anymore.
Check out http://www.2k-times.com/y2k-a152.htm for more info on embedded chips in general.
Slashdot Mirror
You may get this PDA just because of the Thumb Board? That's interesting.
I use a Sharp Wizard at the moment, and that has a near full-size keyboard. I'd say I can manage 30wpm on it (it's slightly smaller, and the keys don't have a particularly good feel to them) vs say 60-70 on a regular keyboard.
The Thumb Board would probably get 10wpm if you're lucky. I agree that it's a great thing to have, e.g. asking people to key in their phone numbers / email addresses.
Otherwise, I personally would like faster throughput. I would assume that handwriting recognition would be the primary input mechanism for PDAs like these. What do you think's wrong with that? (This isn't a rhetorical question. You've actually made me curious.)
I believe the Thumb Board isn't in any way designed to be a complete input device, as it were. For starters I would:
- make the delete key at least as big as the space
- add arrow keys
Like you, I really like the concept of the thumb board. It's just raised some questions about what's so wrong with the PDAs that don't have them.
--It's not rocket science, just computer science.
Call me dumb, but I for one just started using Google because everyone was saying how good it was, how clever it was, yada yada yada. Then I just stuck to it.
I think there might be a lot of people like me. I couldn't tell you whether Google's really better; but you must admit it was well-marketed.
I can vouch that the 3Com PCMCIA card that I have worked without _any_ setting-up at all, which is more than I can say for Win98.
I actually have a Inspiron 7500 with a 15" 1400x1050 screen, except that when I bought it, there was no option for a Linux preinstallation.
So I had to do all the "fun" stuff myself. I've installed Linux plenty of times on desktops, by the way, including back when they didn't have nifty user-friendly installation managers like Yast (which I used this time.)
All goes well until the X setup. See that's where the trouble comes in with laptops. Proprietary, unsupported hardware. Couldn't simply type XF86Setup and get this beautiful configuration screen that does everything for you.
xf86config doesn't work either. All because there isn't an XServer that supports this nifty ATI Mobility-P graphics card. (No, XF86_Mach64 does not work.)
Talking with some guys on the Linux on Laptops helpgroups revealed that a lot of people on Inspirons never managed to get beyond 640x480x8bpp. Actually the person I first emailed on the volunteer list had already bailed out and gotten himself a XiG server for $200.
I've been fortunate enough, after a heck of a lot of tweaking I've managed 1280x1024x16bpp, but at an SVGA server performance level.
XFree86 3.3.6 now apparently supports this graphics chip. Support doesn't seem to go above 1024x768 though. Plus, all of a sudden there are RPMs for Linux on the Dell support site, finally supporting the sound card (I've needed to do a Loadlin out of DOS after starting the driver until now.) and the XFree86Config file. I tried that and it doesn't work, presumably because I'm using a model with different modelines than their supported Inspiron 7500 model.
So, conclusion: it is very, very good to have your laptop manufacturer support Linux officially. Plus it probably isn't such a bad idea to get Linux preinstalled and working already.
Industrial systems such as water/sewer systems have two layers:
Accouting, which is the technology that you see when you visit a plant because it is visible -- monitor screens displaying really nifty info on the status of the plant etc.
Control is the layer that actually does all the work. Now these aren't so apparent because usually embedded chips do this sort of work. Totally hardware or at least firmware that has been a fundamental part of the working of the plant since it was built.
That possibly means in the '70s or '80s. Hard to upgrade because of the nature, and to make things worse, most of the people who can fix them are probably not in the business anymore.
Check out http://www.2k-times.com/y2k-a152.htm for more info on embedded chips in general.