This is Royal's second attempt at a Linux PDA. But then again, I suppose a lot of companies promised a Linux PDA and didn't follow through.
Their first attempt had the regular specs- 206 MHz StrongARM, 32-64 MB of RAM, etc etc. One difference is that they were going to use the PIXIL set of apps on top of MicroWindows. There was just a story yesterday about PIXIL going GPL- MicroWindows already was open source.
Anywho, I imagine these events are related- PIXIL being GPL'd because there isn't much interest. Qt/Embedded is very far from perfect, making a pretty crappy platform for PDAs- but it supports very easy porting from Qt-based desktop apps. MicroWindows isn't any better though, as far as a being a very good platform for pen-driven devices. Why is it that these open source guys don't get that? So many of us are spewing "use the right tool for the job!" so often, why not put that phrase to practical application?
Qt/E is a desktop-ish windowing system shrunk down. Folks say this about WindowsCE, but that really hasn't been very true for a while, since WinCE v 2.11. When will the various PDA Linux projects learn the lesson that Microsoft did a long time ago? Apple managed not to make this blunder in the NewtonOS, and the PalmOS did right to borrow a good many things from the Newton.
I know this didn't make it to the front page, but is there really this little interest in embedded Linux, or non-X11 GUI systems?
I for one can't say I've ever really been too excited about MicroWindows or this PIXIL system built on top of it. We've not seen any PDAs that use it, although the Royal Linux PDA was supposed to use PIXIL/MW, it never saw the light of day.
Yet, what does almost everyone use on Linux or Unix? X. Relative to the X11 install base, there is a miniscule minority of folks using Qt/Embedded + Qtopia on their PDAs, but even so it still a crappy solution when you consider how poorly Qt/E is suited to PDAs.
About as many Zaurus users are using Squeak as a windowing system. Perhaps more using Squeak, not sure. They may not use it as a X11 replacement, but they're using it all the same.
PicoGUI is the bomb. Although, it sounds like it may be going dormant for a while. One of the most promising of non-X11 windowing systems out there, but still no one uses it.
When will we have a project like this that really goes somewhere? Anyone have any bets?
I really wouldn't use a PalmOS device- you woukd have to do a lot more work. Most likely you'd end up writing a app in C, not just scripting something. That C app will take a lot longer to write and even longer to test. There are scripting options for POS, but not with all of the extensibility and support as on InCE and Linux.
Also, you'd run into a lot of reliability problems- you'd have to make some external box that would reboot the POS device whenever it wasn't responding, over serial most likely; it'd have to be with the Palm in your 'copter.
However, in addition to a Linux PDA, you should consider a WinCE PDA. A few reasons:
1. Reliability. WinCE (3.0 and 4.0) is a pretty robust OS, although if you automatically associate WinCE with desktop Windows experience you may snicker at that. But really, it is quite stable.
2. Better drivers (often, not always!) than you could get for a Linux PDA, also support for more cards and slots.
3. Depending on size, something like a Dell Axim may be better than an iPAQ (plus a big ass dual-slot sleeve). That is, a lot of WinCE and Linux PDAs are coming with one CF and one SD slot these days- you could put the memory card and wifi card in either. However, if you are hell bent on using a CF card rather than SD for memory, you are left with a SD card slot for the wifi. There are SD wifi cards- but they require SDIO support, support you can't get on Linux PDAs, even when the hardware supports it.
4. Like on a Linux PDA, you have a lot of good options for rapid app development options. Go ahead, write a script in Python, perl, Ruby or lots of other things.
They are being far better than SCO, because they are making a choice based on the facts, not on a bunch of made-up nonsense in order to justify a wacky lawsuit.
Not quite.
What are the facts? SCO's abhorrent actions. And that certainly isn't in question, at least, not around these parts I imagine.
However, what kinds of "facts" do you have on these people leaving SCO to try to find work elsewhere? What do you know about them? How can anyone be so arrogant as to presume that they are some magical judge of character? What if this employee left SCO in June of 2003, thinking that their employer would come to their senses, drop any charges and apologize to the community. Or, what if the family just had a baby in April, perhaps the wife was on unpaid maternity leave and Mr. Schmuck Employee positively couldn't afford to face unemployment. What horrible people!
Why not take it the next step? Should I buy products from a company because they have an asshole employee? I can say for certain that a kid I one knew is a contemptable assohle- and he works at Best Buy now. Should I avoid Best Buy, because they don't have the moral courage to fire him?
Whether or not someone can fit through an airplane door or not doesn't make obesity a disability or not. It means that dangerously fat people also fly. Your post is analogous to saying something like: "Actually,." Yes, in both cases, someone needs some special accomodation; however, that has nothing to do with EO laws or disability in the eyes of the government- which is what is the factor in this case.
Also, the parent said "overweight," not governmentally obese. There is a huge difference. You could be 5 lbs over what the medical establishment has determined to be your "ideal weight," established solely on your sex and height. However, you can still be far from obese, and even farther from being disabled.
Obesity isn't a disability, neccesarily. That is, there is a clinical definition of obesity and a governmental "obesity disaiblity" definition.
The former states that anyone with a BMI over 30 is obese; before BMIs were popular, it was being 30 lbs over one's ideal weight. The latter lists a number of guidelines.
I can be categorized under both words "obese" and "overweight." However, like a lot of fatties, I do not fall under the government's definition of obese.
I totally agree. These guys are worse than SCO in some ways.
But then again, this shop probably thinks that if the employee decided to stick around after May 2003- rather than publically denounce his employer, quit and go unemployed until the economy improved (or alternately, do underemployed and underpaid) and make a lot of posts on Slashdot about how SCO will l00ze!...and if you don't do this, you're advocating SCO's actions. It's like "President" Shrub- "if you're not with us, you're against us," and if you don't leave your job with SCO and cut off any other associations, you're on their side. HA!
I'm sure there are some of us out there who would do that, but the majority would not. We all have ideals, but when it's a matter of putting food on the table, roof over head, etc etc, for yourself and perhaps a family, that luxary fizzles away pretty quickly.
Maybe if it was still 1999- and I was single (or married but without kids), in the midst of plenty of dot-com boomage going on, opportunities aplenty- and SCO pulled a stunt like this- sure, I'd quit, give them a big 'fuck you,' and go get paid a lot to sit in an expensive chair and write open source code, at least for another year until the crash.
The email was rejected? Curious- which account? Sorry for the long response, but anyway-
First, my project does many things. It is not done, so it's not a matter of what it 'did,' but what it is doing and will do. Dynapad is a PDA operating environment written in Squeak Smalltalk. It runs on Linux and WinCE/PocketPC PDAs, no PalmOS support until PalmOS itself is more like a real OS. Some features:
Fully written in Smalltalk, extensions in C if needed
The entire environment is object oriented, from arithmatic, to the windowing system, to high-level APIs
Central object database for data storage
End-user programmability with low temporal, resource, and emotional overhead- no additional hardware required
Integrated scripting system which applies to all applications without investing a lot of time in explicit support (as is the case with PalmOS, WinCE and Linux PDAs)
A really cool GUI toolkit well suited to writing flexible PDA applications; widgets and GUI objects are directly manipulatable
Easy and simple data manipulation and inter-application data exchange facilities
Second, I wasn't a part per se of the "iPAQ initiative" at UMD. I was a sophmore the year they started required incoming freshment in the CS, IS&T and ECE programs to lease one. That went on for three years; they "initiative" was dismantled and dumped this summer.
However, being a pretty vocal opponent of the initiative and generally interested in (mis)use of technology in education and in PDAs in general, I talked to a lot of people, students and professors, about how they were being used, how effective they were, etc.
From my research, the iPAQs were used mostly for:
1. Scheduling, etc. I've not met a single person that got a PDA as a part of this program that actually took class notes on it. I did take my class notes on an iPAQ 3150 for a while though, before going back to my Newton. (and, again, I may be switching back to the Newton for notes- the C760 sucks for taking notes).
2. An app in embedded Visual Basic was written by a couple students hired by the CS department for use by students and their advisors to tell them what classes they had left to take to finish their major. Handy I imagine, but never got used all that much, and there have been web tools which do this for a while.
3. Aside this, the iPAQs didn't go very used. I know of no classes to which they added something that really made the iPAQs worth it.
4. A handful of students actually used their iPAQs, although mostly for games and web browsing sites like Slashdot during class.
5. I've not met one other person in real life who actually hacks on their PDA. I know a handful of people on IRC which do, and about a dozen who hack Smalltalk on their PDAs. Part of the problem is what language people use; doing real C/C++ on a PDA is pretty much impossible for now, unless you've got swap/tmp space on a 2 GB PCMCIA hard drive or via NFS. Languages like Squeak Smalltalk, Perl/Tk, or Pocket Scheme make good environments for PDA hacking, whereas C/C++ or Java are limited by their resource use.
6. In addition to students, a lot of faculty and staff got an iPAQ when this initiative started. I'm not sure if they had to pay for it themselves out of pocket, or if it came as a gift from the dept, encouragement to get them to use them in their classes. Anyway, besides two exceptions (but there are more I imagine), the iPAQs simply sit on a lot of staff and faculty desks now. I could name a dozen UMD employees who got an iPAQ with this program and just have it sitting on their computer, charging, but never used; or in a box, opened and played with but that's it. Really annoyed me for a while, especially before I had a bigger/better/faster PDA than the iPAQ 3650.
It may sound like I'm being overly negative, but I interviewed via email and face-to-face a lot
I generally am pretty wary of new products like this which bank on the hope that most consumers are retarded, and willing yo buy into any new thing if it's sufficiently hyped enough- like the NGage. I don't think we have an example of that here.
You mention buying the lowest-end Palm model and a GBA, costing around $200 for both. Why would skip that and buy this $300 device?
The $100 Palm model is nothing compared to this Tapwave thing. I'll be using specs from the cheaper $300 version rather than the more expensive one. Let's do a comparison, Z denoting the Palm Zire and T the Tapwave, and in the categories pertaining to gaming, G for the GBA:
Screen: Z: Relatively poor 160x160 monochrome (not even greyscale) Z: Big (compared to what most people have on their PDA), sharp color 480x320 screen, backlit G: Decent 240x160 screen, backlit Winner? The Tapwave's screen would be awesome for games of all kinds, and definately a plus for most PDA activities- from web browsing (ever read a page on a 160x160 screen?) to checking the calendar. Call me nuts, but if I can play a pretty higher-res game I'll take that over something much smaller.
Memory Z: 2 MB of RAM, and that's all you ever have. T: 32 or 12 MB built-in depending on model, cheap expansion via SD cards. Winner? Tapwave.
Expansion Z: No expansion slots, at all. T: Two SD card slots which also suppose SDIO. Winner? Tapwave.
Networking Z: Yeah, right... Unless you consider IrDA "networking." SLIP/PPP also a possibility over serial. T: Built-in Bluetooth- great for multi-player games, but also giving you the ability to browse the web, irc, etc etc from the device if you've a bluetooth WAP. 802.11x, ethernet, analog modem via SD. G: Multi-player cable. I've seen a Bluetooth chip embedded into a GBA cart that let's you browse the web, although simply, simple at best. Winner? Tapwave.
Controls Z: Hardware buttons suck for gaming. T: Buttons designed with gaming in mind, G: It's Nintendo, so iot's gotta be good. Winner? I'm guessing Nintendo. I've not played with the Tapwave's, but it's Nintendo, so call it an educated guess.
CPU Speed Z: 16 MHz DragonBall. Wow. T: 200 MHz ARM. G:16 MHz ARM. Winner? Tapwave. A lot of new possbilities in handheld game quality that we never had with the original GameBoy line and the GBA. 3D, advanced AI, etc etc.
Don't get me wrong, I love the GBA. I have one, and it's swell. However, I don't use it anywhere near as much as my PDA. I'd probably use it more if I brought it with me more places, but I'm not going to leave my PDA at home, giving the GBA that valuable pocket space when there are plenty of things besides playing around I use the PDA for. I own a Sharp Zaurus C760, and just recently, a alpha of the GBA emulator was released... As soon as that matures, I may sell my GBA- why keep it when I can do it all on one device?
Of course, a lot of people don't want or need a PDA. I wouldn't buy a $300+ PDA/game deck for a 10 year old when a GBA would do the job admirally. Heck, they could even get a cart to let them do simple PDA stuff if they wanted an addressbook. But for those of us a little older who would want/have a PDA already, this would make a nice device.
I too am a poor college student. However, I'm a poor college student with a cool self-run research project that happened to get the attention of a one of the coolest people in CS today... As a result, I was donated a C760 as encourageent that my project continue. The website is crappy and out of date, but a new release will be coming very soon The C760 is an awesome platform for Dynapad, my project- a new PDA operating environment/system largely in the design spirit of the NewtonOS.
The C760 is $800, at least from Dynamism. That is an assload of dough and more than my iBook is worth. The C760, though, has become my primary computer when at home. I use it for prorgamming, IRC, telnet/ssh/email, and web browsing. I wish the screen was physically larger, but I'm working on a solution to that. But even though I use it so much, it's still a ton of money...
Also, you can buy a C700 in good condition on eBay for $400, and a new C700 for $500 or less. You can get a C750 for around $630 if you order from the right place and get in on a group buy. Still a lot of money, especially considering what Sharp left out.
However, that doesn't actually speed up PDF viewing, simply speeds up launching of the app. It is a matter of rendering speed, not how fast the app launches. Once the app has been loaded on the Zaurus and is running, it makes no difference whether it was launched via QuickLaunch or the regular way.
As far as launching goes, the Zaurus is also mighty slow. QPDF2 takes around 6 secs to launch, not counting all the time it takes to open a PDF.
Keeping the app *always* running is the shittiest excuse for a fix I have seen. Imagine if Microsoft tried a trick like that- people would spot it as a kame hack and point it out, rightfully so.
I too am a scientist and have used a PDA for various science-related things for a while.
I also must concur- the Zaurus kind of sucks for viewing PDFs. Midway through last year, I bought a SL-5500, having come from the Newton and more recently a Jornada uwp. No PDF viewer on the Newton at all, but I had a script which converted them to HTML+PNGs.
Anywho, I had two grad-level biology classes, both of which had no text book- it was all about reading journal articles. My school's library puts up articles for classes like this on electronic reserve in PDF format. Which is great for me, a PDF fiend. While I had no proble reading these PDFs on WinCE, PocketPC or PalmOS, they were entirely unreadable with qpdf on the Zaurus. It would open the PDF, but each page was just a blank, white postage stamp, no text or image on it. It wasn't anything goofy they reserve department was doing- I know the woman who does the PDFing and scanning, and checked her settings, it should have worked fine.
Yeah, I sold that hunk o junk after owning it for only three weeks.
I now have a C760 (for other reasons), and am using a newer version of qpdf that was just released a few weeks back. It can finally read the eletronic reserve articles, although like most PDFs in qpdf2, they look crappy. I should take some screenshots... QPDF has a lot of issues with rendering text backwards or upside down, although I have no idea why.
It's kind of sad- a 33 MHz Palm m130 can open, page through and search PDFs quite a bit faster than my big and beefy 400 MHz Zaurus C760.
In the case of the Zaurus, it is an attempt to make up for the incredible slowness of the Qtopia/Linux combination. Even with the nice and fast 400 MHz XScale in my C760, Qtopia is still quite sluggish.
Actually, the Zaurus can't show Flash animations. Well, I can play some in Squeak Smalltalk, which has a limited player which plays up to about Flash 3, but there isn't a single Flash player for Qtopia out there.
However, the XScale PXA255 isn't hot or powerhungry. While it is a pretty fast CPU, it runs on very little power and does not get warm. i've used my C760 and various StrongARM devices for hours upon hours and they've never gnoe above room temperature. Well, when I'm using the wireless card that can get a little warm, but the PDA and it's CPU itself? Never.
The 400 MHz XScale PXA255 in this Zaurus probably uses about the same amount of power as the older, and a lot slower ARM you can get in a Psion 5mx or eMate. Heck, it uses *less* power than the StrongARMs in the Newton 2x00, Psion netPad, or Psion netBook.
Battery life- worst I've seen on any PDA. I mean, if I thought 1.5 hours of battery life with the screen brightness on only 50% and using wifi was acceptable, I'd buy a old PowerBook or p133.
Not to mention the 5x00's screen- easily the worse screen I've ever seen on a PDA, greyscale or color. At it's brightest, it is still fuzzier and dimmer than the Dell Axim at the lowest setting.
Not to mention the sad excuse for PDA software. Etc, etc.
Although, the C7x0 models have a much better screen, largely because of the 640x480 resolution. It is mostly readable outside, but it was a bit disapointing to find out that it had a non-reflective screen when I got it.
The C700 and C750's battery life is almost as bad, which is really unacceptable in such high end devices. The C760 (which I own) is better- 4 hours doing wireless web browsing, but still a bit of a disapointment after the Jornada 720 I had before this. I got 8 hours while doing wifi browsing and IRCage, 10 or 12 when not doing wifi.
Too true- for some of us, including myself, the original capabilities of a PDA are not enough. However, having the ability to do more than just do my schedule and addressbook doesn't mean that the Zaurus has to fall so painfully short in so many of the traditional PDA areas of experise.
I want/need the functionality of a PDA with a real OS, like WinCE and Linux PDAs provide. However, I do not want to give up the things I want a PDA for. Should I start carrying around three PDAs? A PalmOS device for addressbook and calendar, a Newton for taking notes, and a Zaurus for... well, not sure what the Zaurus does above and beyond. It beats NewtonOS and PalmOS on some things, but not really WinCE. I guess I could carry aroudn a WinCE device, but because Microsoft is a big fat moron, the only real WinCE options these days (without spending an assload on a Nexio S160) are PocketPC devices, which aren't as nice as a vanilla WinCE machine. Even though I don't like windows on my desktop, I would've stuck with WinCE if I only I could get a WinCE PDA with a higher resolution and faster CPU, but the nasty limitations of PocketPC has pushed me to the Zaurus, but not likely for more than the life of my C760.
You can play Doom and Quake on WinCE and have been able to for a long time. I guess that impresses people as well.
What impresses me about PalmOS is that I can open and read a bus schedue in PDF format at least twice as fast on a Palm device than I can on my Zaurus. Mind you, this isn't a new, fast Pallm, but an m130 with its wee 33MHz CPU and 8 MB of RAM, faster than this 400 MHZ XScale and 64 MB of RAM. You can't tell me you honestly think that the Zaurus is good at everything but advanced PIMing and expect the world to believe it.
I use a Zaurus C760 now myself, and the biggest thing I miss from the Newton and Windows CE is some method of real handwriting recognition like Transcriber or CalliGrapher. If I had that, I wouldn't need this built-in keyboard- I could do 40-50 WPM on my Newton, and no way I get even close to that on the Zaurus' built in thumboard.
Better be careful, Goof- you reccomended PocketPC, damn near suicide on slashdot.:) But really, you can do all of that "LUG show off stuff" people do with their Zaurus on WinCE, with a couple minor exceptions...
Actually, the Newton really should be considered the best hacker's PDA. The Zaurus is a OK for a Unix-biased hacker, but for the hacker who actually wants to have a complete view on what is going on with the system- and have the power to play with and modify it- the Newton was really killer. You could open up an object browser and inspect all of the variables and code (code!) of all of your running apps and the system itself. A lot more fun for an old school hacker. I used to inspect my way into the spreadsheet app I would use, and add functions to it. And not just in spreadsheet macro language, but in a real-live, full-blown OO language. Yeah, one could add a scripting language to HancomSheet, but that wouldn't give you that functionality throughout, which you did get with the Newton OS and NewtonScript.
Just one old school hacker's POV... These days though, when you say "hacker" it means you managed to install Linux and look around in/proc. Meh, big deal. heh.:)
Yes, the C760 has a keyboard. However, the keyboard is of a limited usefulness. As a thumboard, it is a ton better than the pretty crappy thumboard on the 5x00, but it is still just a thumboard. But then again, my primary computer and PDA before the C760 I now own was a Jornada J720, which had an actually touch-typable keyboard build-in.
I am writing this (and all posts in this thread) on my C760- but on an external keyboard, the Pocketop. Doing it on the built-in thumboar would take way too long.
Ah, it's that time of the month again where I point this out...:)
You can do pretty much all of that "Personal Mobile Tool" stuff on WinCE, and these days most of it on PalmOS. I've been telnetting and sshing in from my Newton and WinCE boxes since before the Linux-based Zaurus existed. On WinCE, I never had a problem: having a Unixish CLI environent, running apps remotely with VNC, running apps remotely- and a few locally via X11 (yes, there is a XFreeCE), going wardriving, admining via ssh and telnet, admining my work Windows PC via rdesktop.
As a longtime user of Newton, WindowsCE, PalmOS and Linux PDAs, I really believe the whole "PMT" thing is just a bad excuse for not being a good PDA. There is no reason Sharp and Trolltech couldn't provide a software environment that is a good PDA and a good PMT. Running Linux and being able to use ssh and VNC is no excuse for poor software in just about every mobile area.
There are actually a lot more options as far as scripting and writing apps on the PDA itself for PocketPC and vanilla Windows CE than there are for the Zaurus. I must admit, I was a bit disapointed, having used a Windows CE machine pretty much as my main computer for about a year, when I switched to a Zaurus C760.
What "dev environment" do you mean? There are a lot of developent options for WinCE/PPC.
On the Zaurus, there are a lot of options for scripting languages yes, but almost none as far as a scripting language (or any other development environment for that matter) that integrates with the Zaurus's GUI environment,Qtopia. There is Python and PyQt, but to my knowledge, that's the only language on ZSI for which you can get Qt bindings.
Whereas on Windows CE, I had a number of options for creating full-fledged WinCE apps GUI and all- including Python, Perl (w/ Perl/Tk), Ruby, Dialect (a very-nice WinCE and Windows scripting language), OpenLisp (an impl of ISLISP), Scheme, VisualBasic (you can dev for VB for WinCE using NSBasic), and a handful of others. I've done a fair amount of programming for WinCE and I don't own a Windows desktop. I never needed to use a Windows box in the process.
Heck, I had more options on the Newton!
Don't get me wrong, the C760 is great hardware- probably the best out there right now, even considering Sharp's semi-retarded non-inclusion of buit-in wifi or bluetooth, which is a disapointment on such a highend device. However, great hardware only gets you so far when your software is so limited and downright gimpy.
The GP32 isn't anything special, which explains why most people haven't heard of it or bought into it.
For commercial games, I have a GBA. For running emulators and the like, I use my Dreamcast and PDA. I considered buying a GP32 when I was in the market for a GBA. Most people seem to use it for playing emulated games from NES and other systems, but my PDA already does that very well, better than the GP32.
For about the same price as a GP32, someone could buy a PocketPC PDA with the same screen resolution, more RAM/storage, a much faster processor, and more in the way of expansion. Sure, you miss out on the 5 commercial games made specifically for the GP32, but from what I've read, they're nothing special themselves.
The TapWave Helix may be something to watch, but we won't know until it materializes.
But, but... Only little kids use GBAs! To play Pokemon! For everything else the GBA doesn't work! Pokemon = Little kids! Duh! What if you want to play a game while at a busy club- you'll look like a little kid! HAHAHA, what a dork! Solution? Buy an N-Gage- the girls will LICK you at the lame ass club when you pull it out to play some Sonic.
Yeah, right. Fuck Nokia's silly marketing and name-calling.
You can use the keyboard in the windows file selector as well. It is like tab completion, although sometimes you omit the tab (not needed for the action) and in some cases you hit enter. A big leap, but with a bit of training, most people man get by....
It's simply ridiculous to jump to this conclusion -- if anything, you have to assume that Antivirus Software is a DEAD END in computer evolution, as it helps prevent the survival of the fittest.
Not quite. Antivirus software does not stop natural selection, merely changes the rules. There are viruses which can (potentially?) outsmart the AV software. Perhaps not the state of the art, newest version of the newest package sometimes, but what most people have.
What AV software does is impose natural selection on the viruses themselves, rather than simply giving them free reign, without and selection pressures. AV software doesn't stop the evolution of computers, AV software or the viruses themselves- indeed, it encourages it, putting forth an 'evolutionary arms race,' like we often see in the real biological world.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude. What did you expect? Did you look at one of these things before you bought it, or even some photos?
Exhibit A.
This is Royal's second attempt at a Linux PDA. But then again, I suppose a lot of companies promised a Linux PDA and didn't follow through.
Their first attempt had the regular specs- 206 MHz StrongARM, 32-64 MB of RAM, etc etc. One difference is that they were going to use the PIXIL set of apps on top of MicroWindows. There was just a story yesterday about PIXIL going GPL- MicroWindows already was open source.
Anywho, I imagine these events are related- PIXIL being GPL'd because there isn't much interest. Qt/Embedded is very far from perfect, making a pretty crappy platform for PDAs- but it supports very easy porting from Qt-based desktop apps. MicroWindows isn't any better though, as far as a being a very good platform for pen-driven devices. Why is it that these open source guys don't get that? So many of us are spewing "use the right tool for the job!" so often, why not put that phrase to practical application?
Qt/E is a desktop-ish windowing system shrunk down. Folks say this about WindowsCE, but that really hasn't been very true for a while, since WinCE v 2.11. When will the various PDA Linux projects learn the lesson that Microsoft did a long time ago? Apple managed not to make this blunder in the NewtonOS, and the PalmOS did right to borrow a good many things from the Newton.
Oh well, there is always Dynapad and PicoGUI!
I know this didn't make it to the front page, but is there really this little interest in embedded Linux, or non-X11 GUI systems?
I for one can't say I've ever really been too excited about MicroWindows or this PIXIL system built on top of it. We've not seen any PDAs that use it, although the Royal Linux PDA was supposed to use PIXIL/MW, it never saw the light of day.
X11 is entrenched. There have been a number of free alternatives for a long time:PicoGUI, MicroWindows (w/ NanoX [X11 API emulation] or PIXIL apps), Qt/Embedded, DirectFB w/ GTK+, Squeak (and on top of it, Dynapad), W Window System, Berlin/Fresco Window System, MGR and others. Many of these have been around for 10 years or more.
Yet, what does almost everyone use on Linux or Unix? X. Relative to the X11 install base, there is a miniscule minority of folks using Qt/Embedded + Qtopia on their PDAs, but even so it still a crappy solution when you consider how poorly Qt/E is suited to PDAs.
About as many Zaurus users are using Squeak as a windowing system. Perhaps more using Squeak, not sure. They may not use it as a X11 replacement, but they're using it all the same.
PicoGUI is the bomb. Although, it sounds like it may be going dormant for a while. One of the most promising of non-X11 windowing systems out there, but still no one uses it.
When will we have a project like this that really goes somewhere? Anyone have any bets?
I really wouldn't use a PalmOS device- you woukd have to do a lot more work. Most likely you'd end up writing a app in C, not just scripting something. That C app will take a lot longer to write and even longer to test. There are scripting options for POS, but not with all of the extensibility and support as on InCE and Linux.
Also, you'd run into a lot of reliability problems- you'd have to make some external box that would reboot the POS device whenever it wasn't responding, over serial most likely; it'd have to be with the Palm in your 'copter.
However, in addition to a Linux PDA, you should consider a WinCE PDA. A few reasons:
1. Reliability. WinCE (3.0 and 4.0) is a pretty robust OS, although if you automatically associate WinCE with desktop Windows experience you may snicker at that. But really, it is quite stable.
2. Better drivers (often, not always!) than you could get for a Linux PDA, also support for more cards and slots.
3. Depending on size, something like a Dell Axim may be better than an iPAQ (plus a big ass dual-slot sleeve). That is, a lot of WinCE and Linux PDAs are coming with one CF and one SD slot these days- you could put the memory card and wifi card in either. However, if you are hell bent on using a CF card rather than SD for memory, you are left with a SD card slot for the wifi. There are SD wifi cards- but they require SDIO support, support you can't get on Linux PDAs, even when the hardware supports it.
4. Like on a Linux PDA, you have a lot of good options for rapid app development options. Go ahead, write a script in Python, perl, Ruby or lots of other things.
/me is a U of M - Duluth student. Wooo, go UMN, etc etc.
They are being far better than SCO, because they are making a choice based on the facts, not on a bunch of made-up nonsense in order to justify a wacky lawsuit.
Not quite.
What are the facts? SCO's abhorrent actions. And that certainly isn't in question, at least, not around these parts I imagine.
However, what kinds of "facts" do you have on these people leaving SCO to try to find work elsewhere? What do you know about them? How can anyone be so arrogant as to presume that they are some magical judge of character? What if this employee left SCO in June of 2003, thinking that their employer would come to their senses, drop any charges and apologize to the community. Or, what if the family just had a baby in April, perhaps the wife was on unpaid maternity leave and Mr. Schmuck Employee positively couldn't afford to face unemployment. What horrible people!
Why not take it the next step? Should I buy products from a company because they have an asshole employee? I can say for certain that a kid I one knew is a contemptable assohle- and he works at Best Buy now. Should I avoid Best Buy, because they don't have the moral courage to fire him?
Whether or not someone can fit through an airplane door or not doesn't make obesity a disability or not. It means that dangerously fat people also fly. Your post is analogous to saying something like: "Actually, ." Yes, in both cases, someone needs some special accomodation; however, that has nothing to do with EO laws or disability in the eyes of the government- which is what is the factor in this case.
Also, the parent said "overweight," not governmentally obese. There is a huge difference. You could be 5 lbs over what the medical establishment has determined to be your "ideal weight," established solely on your sex and height. However, you can still be far from obese, and even farther from being disabled.
Obesity isn't a disability, neccesarily. That is, there is a clinical definition of obesity and a governmental "obesity disaiblity" definition.
The former states that anyone with a BMI over 30 is obese; before BMIs were popular, it was being 30 lbs over one's ideal weight. The latter lists a number of guidelines.
I can be categorized under both words "obese" and "overweight." However, like a lot of fatties, I do not fall under the government's definition of obese.
I totally agree. These guys are worse than SCO in some ways.
...and if you don't do this, you're advocating SCO's actions. It's like "President" Shrub- "if you're not with us, you're against us," and if you don't leave your job with SCO and cut off any other associations, you're on their side. HA!
But then again, this shop probably thinks that if the employee decided to stick around after May 2003- rather than publically denounce his employer, quit and go unemployed until the economy improved (or alternately, do underemployed and underpaid) and make a lot of posts on Slashdot about how SCO will l00ze!
I'm sure there are some of us out there who would do that, but the majority would not. We all have ideals, but when it's a matter of putting food on the table, roof over head, etc etc, for yourself and perhaps a family, that luxary fizzles away pretty quickly.
Maybe if it was still 1999- and I was single (or married but without kids), in the midst of plenty of dot-com boomage going on, opportunities aplenty- and SCO pulled a stunt like this- sure, I'd quit, give them a big 'fuck you,' and go get paid a lot to sit in an expensive chair and write open source code, at least for another year until the crash.
First, my project does many things. It is not done, so it's not a matter of what it 'did,' but what it is doing and will do. Dynapad is a PDA operating environment written in Squeak Smalltalk. It runs on Linux and WinCE/PocketPC PDAs, no PalmOS support until PalmOS itself is more like a real OS. Some features:
Second, I wasn't a part per se of the "iPAQ initiative" at UMD. I was a sophmore the year they started required incoming freshment in the CS, IS&T and ECE programs to lease one. That went on for three years; they "initiative" was dismantled and dumped this summer.
However, being a pretty vocal opponent of the initiative and generally interested in (mis)use of technology in education and in PDAs in general, I talked to a lot of people, students and professors, about how they were being used, how effective they were, etc.
From my research, the iPAQs were used mostly for:
1. Scheduling, etc. I've not met a single person that got a PDA as a part of this program that actually took class notes on it. I did take my class notes on an iPAQ 3150 for a while though, before going back to my Newton. (and, again, I may be switching back to the Newton for notes- the C760 sucks for taking notes).
2. An app in embedded Visual Basic was written by a couple students hired by the CS department for use by students and their advisors to tell them what classes they had left to take to finish their major. Handy I imagine, but never got used all that much, and there have been web tools which do this for a while.
3. Aside this, the iPAQs didn't go very used. I know of no classes to which they added something that really made the iPAQs worth it.
4. A handful of students actually used their iPAQs, although mostly for games and web browsing sites like Slashdot during class.
5. I've not met one other person in real life who actually hacks on their PDA. I know a handful of people on IRC which do, and about a dozen who hack Smalltalk on their PDAs. Part of the problem is what language people use; doing real C/C++ on a PDA is pretty much impossible for now, unless you've got swap/tmp space on a 2 GB PCMCIA hard drive or via NFS. Languages like Squeak Smalltalk, Perl/Tk, or Pocket Scheme make good environments for PDA hacking, whereas C/C++ or Java are limited by their resource use.
6. In addition to students, a lot of faculty and staff got an iPAQ when this initiative started. I'm not sure if they had to pay for it themselves out of pocket, or if it came as a gift from the dept, encouragement to get them to use them in their classes. Anyway, besides two exceptions (but there are more I imagine), the iPAQs simply sit on a lot of staff and faculty desks now. I could name a dozen UMD employees who got an iPAQ with this program and just have it sitting on their computer, charging, but never used; or in a box, opened and played with but that's it. Really annoyed me for a while, especially before I had a bigger/better/faster PDA than the iPAQ 3650.
It may sound like I'm being overly negative, but I interviewed via email and face-to-face a lot
I generally am pretty wary of new products like this which bank on the hope that most consumers are retarded, and willing yo buy into any new thing if it's sufficiently hyped enough- like the NGage. I don't think we have an example of that here.
You mention buying the lowest-end Palm model and a GBA, costing around $200 for both. Why would skip that and buy this $300 device?
The $100 Palm model is nothing compared to this Tapwave thing. I'll be using specs from the cheaper $300 version rather than the more expensive one. Let's do a comparison, Z denoting the Palm Zire and T the Tapwave, and in the categories pertaining to gaming, G for the GBA:
Screen:
Z: Relatively poor 160x160 monochrome (not even greyscale)
Z: Big (compared to what most people have on their PDA), sharp color 480x320 screen, backlit
G: Decent 240x160 screen, backlit
Winner? The Tapwave's screen would be awesome for games of all kinds, and definately a plus for most PDA activities- from web browsing (ever read a page on a 160x160 screen?) to checking the calendar. Call me nuts, but if I can play a pretty higher-res game I'll take that over something much smaller.
Memory
Z: 2 MB of RAM, and that's all you ever have.
T: 32 or 12 MB built-in depending on model, cheap expansion via SD cards.
Winner? Tapwave.
Expansion
Z: No expansion slots, at all.
T: Two SD card slots which also suppose SDIO.
Winner? Tapwave.
Networking
Z: Yeah, right... Unless you consider IrDA "networking." SLIP/PPP also a possibility over serial.
T: Built-in Bluetooth- great for multi-player games, but also giving you the ability to browse the web, irc, etc etc from the device if you've a bluetooth WAP. 802.11x, ethernet, analog modem via SD.
G: Multi-player cable. I've seen a Bluetooth chip embedded into a GBA cart that let's you browse the web, although simply, simple at best.
Winner? Tapwave.
Controls
Z: Hardware buttons suck for gaming.
T: Buttons designed with gaming in mind,
G: It's Nintendo, so iot's gotta be good.
Winner? I'm guessing Nintendo. I've not played with the Tapwave's, but it's Nintendo, so call it an educated guess.
CPU Speed
Z: 16 MHz DragonBall. Wow.
T: 200 MHz ARM.
G:16 MHz ARM.
Winner? Tapwave. A lot of new possbilities in handheld game quality that we never had with the original GameBoy line and the GBA. 3D, advanced AI, etc etc.
Don't get me wrong, I love the GBA. I have one, and it's swell. However, I don't use it anywhere near as much as my PDA. I'd probably use it more if I brought it with me more places, but I'm not going to leave my PDA at home, giving the GBA that valuable pocket space when there are plenty of things besides playing around I use the PDA for. I own a Sharp Zaurus C760, and just recently, a alpha of the GBA emulator was released... As soon as that matures, I may sell my GBA- why keep it when I can do it all on one device?
Of course, a lot of people don't want or need a PDA. I wouldn't buy a $300+ PDA/game deck for a 10 year old when a GBA would do the job admirally. Heck, they could even get a cart to let them do simple PDA stuff if they wanted an addressbook. But for those of us a little older who would want/have a PDA already, this would make a nice device.
I too am a poor college student. However, I'm a poor college student with a cool self-run research project that happened to get the attention of a one of the coolest people in CS today... As a result, I was donated a C760 as encourageent that my project continue. The website is crappy and out of date, but a new release will be coming very soon The C760 is an awesome platform for Dynapad, my project- a new PDA operating environment/system largely in the design spirit of the NewtonOS.
The C760 is $800, at least from Dynamism. That is an assload of dough and more than my iBook is worth. The C760, though, has become my primary computer when at home. I use it for prorgamming, IRC, telnet/ssh/email, and web browsing. I wish the screen was physically larger, but I'm working on a solution to that. But even though I use it so much, it's still a ton of money...
Also, you can buy a C700 in good condition on eBay for $400, and a new C700 for $500 or less. You can get a C750 for around $630 if you order from the right place and get in on a group buy. Still a lot of money, especially considering what Sharp left out.
However, that doesn't actually speed up PDF viewing, simply speeds up launching of the app. It is a matter of rendering speed, not how fast the app launches. Once the app has been loaded on the Zaurus and is running, it makes no difference whether it was launched via QuickLaunch or the regular way.
As far as launching goes, the Zaurus is also mighty slow. QPDF2 takes around 6 secs to launch, not counting all the time it takes to open a PDF.
Keeping the app *always* running is the shittiest excuse for a fix I have seen. Imagine if Microsoft tried a trick like that- people would spot it as a kame hack and point it out, rightfully so.
I too am a scientist and have used a PDA for various science-related things for a while.
I also must concur- the Zaurus kind of sucks for viewing PDFs. Midway through last year, I bought a SL-5500, having come from the Newton and more recently a Jornada uwp. No PDF viewer on the Newton at all, but I had a script which converted them to HTML+PNGs.
Anywho, I had two grad-level biology classes, both of which had no text book- it was all about reading journal articles. My school's library puts up articles for classes like this on electronic reserve in PDF format. Which is great for me, a PDF fiend. While I had no proble reading these PDFs on WinCE, PocketPC or PalmOS, they were entirely unreadable with qpdf on the Zaurus. It would open the PDF, but each page was just a blank, white postage stamp, no text or image on it. It wasn't anything goofy they reserve department was doing- I know the woman who does the PDFing and scanning, and checked her settings, it should have worked fine.
Yeah, I sold that hunk o junk after owning it for only three weeks.
I now have a C760 (for other reasons), and am using a newer version of qpdf that was just released a few weeks back. It can finally read the eletronic reserve articles, although like most PDFs in qpdf2, they look crappy. I should take some screenshots... QPDF has a lot of issues with rendering text backwards or upside down, although I have no idea why.
It's kind of sad- a 33 MHz Palm m130 can open, page through and search PDFs quite a bit faster than my big and beefy 400 MHz Zaurus C760.
You ask why a PDA needs a 400 MHz CPU?
In the case of the Zaurus, it is an attempt to make up for the incredible slowness of the Qtopia/Linux combination. Even with the nice and fast 400 MHz XScale in my C760, Qtopia is still quite sluggish.
Read this post, it has some app launching benchmarks. comparing my C760 to a 206 MHz iPAQ 3650, whose CPU is about half as fast.
Actually, the Zaurus can't show Flash animations. Well, I can play some in Squeak Smalltalk, which has a limited player which plays up to about Flash 3, but there isn't a single Flash player for Qtopia out there.
However, the XScale PXA255 isn't hot or powerhungry. While it is a pretty fast CPU, it runs on very little power and does not get warm. i've used my C760 and various StrongARM devices for hours upon hours and they've never gnoe above room temperature. Well, when I'm using the wireless card that can get a little warm, but the PDA and it's CPU itself? Never.
The 400 MHz XScale PXA255 in this Zaurus probably uses about the same amount of power as the older, and a lot slower ARM you can get in a Psion 5mx or eMate. Heck, it uses *less* power than the StrongARMs in the Newton 2x00, Psion netPad, or Psion netBook.
Battery life- worst I've seen on any PDA. I mean, if I thought 1.5 hours of battery life with the screen brightness on only 50% and using wifi was acceptable, I'd buy a old PowerBook or p133.
Not to mention the 5x00's screen- easily the worse screen I've ever seen on a PDA, greyscale or color. At it's brightest, it is still fuzzier and dimmer than the Dell Axim at the lowest setting.
Not to mention the sad excuse for PDA software. Etc, etc.
Although, the C7x0 models have a much better screen, largely because of the 640x480 resolution. It is mostly readable outside, but it was a bit disapointing to find out that it had a non-reflective screen when I got it.
The C700 and C750's battery life is almost as bad, which is really unacceptable in such high end devices. The C760 (which I own) is better- 4 hours doing wireless web browsing, but still a bit of a disapointment after the Jornada 720 I had before this. I got 8 hours while doing wifi browsing and IRCage, 10 or 12 when not doing wifi.
Too true- for some of us, including myself, the original capabilities of a PDA are not enough. However, having the ability to do more than just do my schedule and addressbook doesn't mean that the Zaurus has to fall so painfully short in so many of the traditional PDA areas of experise.
... well, not sure what the Zaurus does above and beyond. It beats NewtonOS and PalmOS on some things, but not really WinCE. I guess I could carry aroudn a WinCE device, but because Microsoft is a big fat moron, the only real WinCE options these days (without spending an assload on a Nexio S160) are PocketPC devices, which aren't as nice as a vanilla WinCE machine. Even though I don't like windows on my desktop, I would've stuck with WinCE if I only I could get a WinCE PDA with a higher resolution and faster CPU, but the nasty limitations of PocketPC has pushed me to the Zaurus, but not likely for more than the life of my C760.
I want/need the functionality of a PDA with a real OS, like WinCE and Linux PDAs provide. However, I do not want to give up the things I want a PDA for. Should I start carrying around three PDAs? A PalmOS device for addressbook and calendar, a Newton for taking notes, and a Zaurus for
You can play Doom and Quake on WinCE and have been able to for a long time. I guess that impresses people as well.
What impresses me about PalmOS is that I can open and read a bus schedue in PDF format at least twice as fast on a Palm device than I can on my Zaurus. Mind you, this isn't a new, fast Pallm, but an m130 with its wee 33MHz CPU and 8 MB of RAM, faster than this 400 MHZ XScale and 64 MB of RAM. You can't tell me you honestly think that the Zaurus is good at everything but advanced PIMing and expect the world to believe it.
I use a Zaurus C760 now myself, and the biggest thing I miss from the Newton and Windows CE is some method of real handwriting recognition like Transcriber or CalliGrapher. If I had that, I wouldn't need this built-in keyboard- I could do 40-50 WPM on my Newton, and no way I get even close to that on the Zaurus' built in thumboard.
:) But really, you can do all of that "LUG show off stuff" people do with their Zaurus on WinCE, with a couple minor exceptions...
Better be careful, Goof- you reccomended PocketPC, damn near suicide on slashdot.
Actually, the Newton really should be considered the best hacker's PDA. The Zaurus is a OK for a Unix-biased hacker, but for the hacker who actually wants to have a complete view on what is going on with the system- and have the power to play with and modify it- the Newton was really killer. You could open up an object browser and inspect all of the variables and code (code!) of all of your running apps and the system itself. A lot more fun for an old school hacker. I used to inspect my way into the spreadsheet app I would use, and add functions to it. And not just in spreadsheet macro language, but in a real-live, full-blown OO language. Yeah, one could add a scripting language to HancomSheet, but that wouldn't give you that functionality throughout, which you did get with the Newton OS and NewtonScript.
/proc. Meh, big deal. heh. :)
Just one old school hacker's POV... These days though, when you say "hacker" it means you managed to install Linux and look around in
Yes, the C760 has a keyboard. However, the keyboard is of a limited usefulness. As a thumboard, it is a ton better than the pretty crappy thumboard on the 5x00, but it is still just a thumboard. But then again, my primary computer and PDA before the C760 I now own was a Jornada J720, which had an actually touch-typable keyboard build-in.
I am writing this (and all posts in this thread) on my C760- but on an external keyboard, the Pocketop. Doing it on the built-in thumboar would take way too long.
Ah, it's that time of the month again where I point this out... :)
You can do pretty much all of that "Personal Mobile Tool" stuff on WinCE, and these days most of it on PalmOS. I've been telnetting and sshing in from my Newton and WinCE boxes since before the Linux-based Zaurus existed. On WinCE, I never had a problem: having a Unixish CLI environent, running apps remotely with VNC, running apps remotely- and a few locally via X11 (yes, there is a XFreeCE), going wardriving, admining via ssh and telnet, admining my work Windows PC via rdesktop.
As a longtime user of Newton, WindowsCE, PalmOS and Linux PDAs, I really believe the whole "PMT" thing is just a bad excuse for not being a good PDA. There is no reason Sharp and Trolltech couldn't provide a software environment that is a good PDA and a good PMT. Running Linux and being able to use ssh and VNC is no excuse for poor software in just about every mobile area.
There are actually a lot more options as far as scripting and writing apps on the PDA itself for PocketPC and vanilla Windows CE than there are for the Zaurus. I must admit, I was a bit disapointed, having used a Windows CE machine pretty much as my main computer for about a year, when I switched to a Zaurus C760.
What "dev environment" do you mean? There are a lot of developent options for WinCE/PPC.
On the Zaurus, there are a lot of options for scripting languages yes, but almost none as far as a scripting language (or any other development environment for that matter) that integrates with the Zaurus's GUI environment,Qtopia. There is Python and PyQt, but to my knowledge, that's the only language on ZSI for which you can get Qt bindings.
Whereas on Windows CE, I had a number of options for creating full-fledged WinCE apps GUI and all- including Python, Perl (w/ Perl/Tk), Ruby, Dialect (a very-nice WinCE and Windows scripting language), OpenLisp (an impl of ISLISP), Scheme, VisualBasic (you can dev for VB for WinCE using NSBasic), and a handful of others. I've done a fair amount of programming for WinCE and I don't own a Windows desktop. I never needed to use a Windows box in the process.
Heck, I had more options on the Newton!
Don't get me wrong, the C760 is great hardware- probably the best out there right now, even considering Sharp's semi-retarded non-inclusion of buit-in wifi or bluetooth, which is a disapointment on such a highend device. However, great hardware only gets you so far when your software is so limited and downright gimpy.
The GP32 isn't anything special, which explains why most people haven't heard of it or bought into it.
For commercial games, I have a GBA. For running emulators and the like, I use my Dreamcast and PDA. I considered buying a GP32 when I was in the market for a GBA. Most people seem to use it for playing emulated games from NES and other systems, but my PDA already does that very well, better than the GP32.
For about the same price as a GP32, someone could buy a PocketPC PDA with the same screen resolution, more RAM/storage, a much faster processor, and more in the way of expansion. Sure, you miss out on the 5 commercial games made specifically for the GP32, but from what I've read, they're nothing special themselves.
The TapWave Helix may be something to watch, but we won't know until it materializes.
But, but ... Only little kids use GBAs! To play Pokemon! For everything else the GBA doesn't work! Pokemon = Little kids! Duh! What if you want to play a game while at a busy club- you'll look like a little kid! HAHAHA, what a dork! Solution? Buy an N-Gage- the girls will LICK you at the lame ass club when you pull it out to play some Sonic.
Yeah, right. Fuck Nokia's silly marketing and name-calling.
You can use the keyboard in the windows file selector as well. It is like tab completion, although sometimes you omit the tab (not needed for the action) and in some cases you hit enter. A big leap, but with a bit of training, most people man get by....
It's simply ridiculous to jump to this conclusion -- if anything, you have to assume that Antivirus Software is a DEAD END in computer evolution, as it helps prevent the survival of the fittest.
Not quite. Antivirus software does not stop natural selection, merely changes the rules. There are viruses which can (potentially?) outsmart the AV software. Perhaps not the state of the art, newest version of the newest package sometimes, but what most people have.
What AV software does is impose natural selection on the viruses themselves, rather than simply giving them free reign, without and selection pressures. AV software doesn't stop the evolution of computers, AV software or the viruses themselves- indeed, it encourages it, putting forth an 'evolutionary arms race,' like we often see in the real biological world.