First, the two games had a lot more similarities beyond being games where you control a person in the third person in a world, doing stuff. Two, I never said that HPCoS was a rip off of Zelda. HPCoS is very much influenced by Zelda, implementing the same kind of game enjoyable for the same sort of reasons, played in the same way. In a lot of ways, HPCoS is a lot like Zelda. But, HPCoS it was fun, even as a person who isn't a big Harry Potter fan (never read any of the books).
You should learn LaTeX. It is an awesome way to write documents. I've had a number of professors compliment me on my documents. They look really professional,
Why? My reasons: #1) If you've done any HTML coding, or are a programmer in general, it is pretty easy to pick up the basics. You don't need to learn all that much to get the core of what you need to do- lists, bold/italic/underline, centering, paragraphs, tables, and some symbols.
#2) You can use tools like LyX to do the work for you. Even if you never learn a lick of real LaTeX code, you still end up with a beautiful document, and any of the other benefits.
#3) You can use LaTeX without having a GUI. Or a newer computer. Or a "full" word processor on a "full" OS. That is, you can write, compile and print out LaTeX docs on a DOS machine, from the console on a Unix machine, a PDA, etc.
I initially decided to learn LaTeX because there was a simple TeX compiler for the NewtonOS, my PDA platform until recently. There was also NewtonWorks- a good mobile Office suite- but there was no simple way for me to output the document and print it without docking with a Mac or Windows machine. With TeX for the Newton, on the other hand, I could export the text to any machine, compile the TeX on the machine itself or on the university mainframe, and then print.
I had to move on around a year ago from the NewtonOS, at least as my primary platform. On the Jornada 720, a Windows CE micro-laptop Handheld PC 2000 device, I started writing my papers using a real version of LaTeX- the same thing as I was using on my OS X machine. Editing the LaTeX code in emacs no less- all on a PDA! The whole cycle- editing, compiling, viewing (with WinDVI) and printing can all be done on a PDA. There are easy to install WinCE packages. I also had a PocketPC for a while, and the packages all worked very well there as well, but editing wasn't as nice as it was on the J720- it has a real keyboard. I've recently switched to the Zaurus SL-C760, and am a bit disapointed in that there aren't any easy to install ipkgs, along with a decent Qtopia LaTeX editor. Alas, I'll work on it soon enough- I'll need to be able to write up LaTeX docs and compile to PS before school starts.:)
#4) I had another reason, if I remember, I'll put it here!
#5) It's entirely free. Yeah, you could get OpenOffice. Or you could pirate/buy/get bundled MS Office. OO has generally just been a huge hassle for me; MS Office (I'm on OS X) is generally faster, more stable and less of a hassle than OpenOffice, but introduces its own set of problems.
I'm fairly new to gaming. A bunchamonths back, my roomate- who is a big fan of the Harry Potter junk- rented the GCN version of the Chamber of Secrets. I ended up playing the whole game in a weekend- it was a lot of fun.
This was before I ever played Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When we got an n64 a couple months after that, as well as Ocarina, I realized how much the HPCoS game was like Zelda, which is a lot! The game was still fun, but used "plot" devices that were kind of lame at times. It'd sure be nice to be able to go back to play Quiddich and Wizzard Dueling after you'd beat the game, though.
How robust are the sound-data signals for the various old 8-bit machines? Is there redunancy, or if you have a just barely flaky tape, or just a small spec of static while you're taping do you lose that chunk of the program? Or does it repeat the same bit 4 times, then go one, etc, so that yo uare sure to have a good copy?
I think I'd say I agree with the parent- the distiction isn't overly fine, IMHO. That is, that's like saying it's stenography to type out some "hidden text" in plaintext on the cover page of a document, leaving the rest of the document with no information encoded, and doing nothing to really hide the illicit data.
Unless this data in the image header is really hidden, but if its in the header, it's probably in the comment...
Having a direct USB connection could mean you could still do the whole ethernet-over-USB thing that you do with the cradle.
That's what I have with my C760.:) Although with it, I've run into a wholly new problem- NetFront (the browser) won't use the USBnet connection. Although I can easily ping, telnet or web browse (in a non-QPE browser) to any site via my iBook and usbnet, NetFront needs you to "get connected," regardless of the status of the usb-ethernet. hmpf.
I must admit, cradles weren't ever quite my thing. A well designed one is well I suppose, provided the unit slides in nice and easy- like with most PalmOS devices. I went through 2 crappy Linksys WCF12 cards (both broke after a couple weeks- both on the Dell Axim and Zaurus!), and was back to browsing with the cradle, and that was a huge pain in the ass... for that, a non-cradle would be muuuch better. But for $30, one may as well get an ethernet or wifi card.:)
I've unfortunately went over this a dozen times with plenty of other people.
I know it may be hard to come to terms with this, but WinCE is a real OS too. Not just an app launcher.
You can multitask. You can mount NFS and SMB shares. Play MP3s, MPEGs, DivXs, whatever. Unlike on the Zaurus, you can get *real* handwriting recognition- not just *character recognition,* to which you are confined with any Linux PDA (at least for now). You can code in a million languages on the device it self under CE- and unlike on Linux PDAs, it's a lot easier to find a well-adapted port rather than something barely shoehorned in. Apache, FTPd, SSH, telnet, X11 (remote and local), VNC, rdesktop- I've all done it from CE.
It's a failing of the current PDA Linuxes to make you create a swap file to get more RAM rather than an advantage. In WinCE, you just simply adjust the amount allocated to RAM vs Storage via a slider; on current PDA Linux, you have to install a hacked kernel (with hardcoded values) or create a swap space in your storage area.
WinCE is very, *very* far from perfect. But so is Linux, on the PDA and otherwise. Anyone who thinks that WinCE or Linux are perfect is delusional.
I've run bash on CE. Big deal. And, unlike with PDA Linux, I don't have to put up with substandard software. It may come as a shock, but a lot of folks want their PDAs to work well as PDAs and not just show-off toys at LUG meetings.:)
My current main PDA is a Zaurus SL-C760. I'm not some whacky MS zealot. It's a shame so many Zaurus users are just Linux cheerleaders. The Zaurus could be a great platform, but no amount of talking about will make the PDA software available for the Z any better.
I do the same on my own platform, Dynapad, without ever having to waste my time with a lengthy compilation process. If I want to change a font, I simply change it- what kind of customizability involves recompiling sources to change a font?
Just out of curiousity: why would one want to modify the mount/umount process? Anything useful?
Now, a direct USB connection would be way cool for the Zaurus. I know that you can buy a cable for about US$30 that plugs into the bottom of the Zaurus and into a USB port, which means you no longer have to use the cradle to connect it to your PC.
That just allows you to do the connection to the PC without a cradle- it doesn't allow you to use USB devices with your Z. That said, for more than $30, you can get a USB Host CF Card, allowing your Z to use USB devices for which it has drivers. Call me nuts, but I'd rather have CF- getting USB if I really wanted it. Imagine an ugly and slow USB->Wifi adapter taped to the back of your PDA...
USB really isn't meant for a PDA. Who wants cables and other stuff hanging off your PDA? CF works well because it can be integrated well at a small cost in size.
I totally agree. I've a C760, and if it wasn't for my own platform (Dynapad, see below), I'd be wishing that this machine ran CE. (vanilla WinCE, not PocketPC) The machine itself is amazing, but as a PDA (or even a "PMT" *snicker*), the QPE-based Linux PDAs leave a lot to desire as far as software.
It may come as a shock, but there is a difference between SYNCing devices like this and developing for them. Syncing involves... synchronizing your PIM data most often, as well as installing applications. However, had you looked into it, you'd see that development is done with Linux, and there are a number of ways to do data transfers between the Yopy and Linux (as well as OS X, Windows). It's just PIM syncing which requires Windoze, which is still retarded, but you seemed to have confused a couple things.:)
Linux has become the way to go embedded on the cheap. If you don't need an RTOS, what in QNX are you paying for?
Performance. A neat GUI layer. Much smaller memory use.
On my brand new Zaurus SL-C760, there is 64 MB of *RAM* built-in. Why? This isn't "RAM" in the sense as it is on WinCE/PocketPC, where it's split between "program RAM" and stoarage space. It has a hopping 64 MB of dedicated to this, with 128 MB of Flash for storage. I just rebooted my C760 to find out the amount of RAM Linux+QPE takes out of the box: 18 MB! Compare that to 2-3 MB for WinCE, something similar for QNX, and something even smaller for PalmOS. (Granted, PalmOS leaves a lot lacking...)...and you PalmOS folks thought WinCE was bad!:)
If this was a Palm or Pocket PC PDA, I'd say this is close to my perfect PDA. However, because of my lack of Linux Development knowledge, I was extremely limited in what I could do with the Yopy.
This person- who likely didn't get the Yopy just because it runs Linux (like a lot of folks do with the Z) thought that it would've been great had this hardware been running PalmOS or PocketPC. Not only did the reviewer state that he was limited by the Yopy, but because he didn't have the "Linux development knowledge" to make it truly useful. Now, that could mean a number of things, but it ain't a compliment.
It is very true that the underlying OS is irrelevant, but until the Linux PDA developers advance "what runs on top," the stigma that Linux is a PIA to use will remain.
Considering how the Yopy runs X11 as it's display layer, it's a bit of a fudge to say that the Zaurus has a larger developer community than the Yopy. There are more Z-specific developers than there are Yopy-specific, considering how something close to the majority of Zaurus apps are somewhat clumsily adapted from X11/Qt, no reason one can't simply count a clumsily adapted X11 app as a Yopy app.:P
That said, the Yopy will likely fail. It's expensive and it doesn't do that much that anything else does. If you need the occasional remote X session, you can do that already with Windows CE or PocketPC (via XFree86 for CE) or on the Zaurus under a QPE or FB X server.
The 400 MHz XScale (which is a PXA 250) in the 5600 isn't really faster than the 206 MHz in the Yopy or SL-5500. The 5600 probably gets a bit better battery life for it, though. There's been a lot of misinformation about the PXA-250, and the speed of it in comparison to the 206 MHz StrongARM isn't just some retarded move by MS, which a lot of folks seem to think here and elsewhere. Seems stupid Sharp would switch the 5600 to a PXA 255, but they probably have a lot of manufactured and unsold units with the 250 preventing such a switch.
IIRC, Dell did that with their Axims- switched from the PXA 250 to the 255 rather quietly. Granted, they sell a lot more Axims than Sharp does SL-5x00s.
Does this remind anyone when Apple first released the first PowerPC, and only like 10% of the code was optimized for it [?]
Superficially it does. However, there are a lot of differences between the switch from 68k and PPC and that of PPC/32 to PPC/64. There isn't emulation required, nor is a bunch of code rewriting to get your app optimized for the G5. It's a matter of installing the dev tools update, and recompiling. Things weren't that easy in the 68k->PPC transition days...
Note how the dude said "On the PC side:"; perhaps "On the MS/x86 side:" would've made a bit more sense. He didn't claim that the 386 was the first 32-bit CPU ever, just the first 32-bit CPU for the intel architecture. And note how he confined himself to windows- it just might be because the vast majority of people on x86 use some MS OS (Windows or DOS- MS Xenix excluded) on those machines, especially back then.
Read the article- the version of OS X they're talking about will be not just be the plain-old 32 bit version running on the G5, but a 64-bit aware OS that can take advantage of a number of the 64 bit features.
Getting apps to take advantage of this is a matter of a recompile, and Apple released the tools at WWDC to get your apps to suppoer the 64 bit features. I imagine they binaries will ship in the same package- either the OS will discriminate, or there will be two binaries in the package.
While I'm a huge nerd, and only partially a gamer, this is retardedly obvious. At least for my age/status bracket, 20something college student. I know plenty of people who aren't nerds who love video games- jockish type folks, lots of stoners, girl/boyfriends of these people... Hell, I've known plenty of 30 year old un-married women who were totally into gaming, but in a non-nerd and non-obsessive way.
No such luck. The screen is an identical part. 100% the same. I think the keyboard and front-panel buttons are identical too.
Really? I really want to accuse you of lying.:P
The truly ironically hideous thing is that Sharp actually makes good screens. For instance, the screen on the Dell Axim- probably the best 240x320 screens I've ever seen- is made by Sharp. But nooo, Sharp uses the worst screens for their own PDAs- at least the 5x00. I've heard the screen on the C7x0 is quite nice at least.
My long dead Agenda VR3, underpowered as it was, at least had better freehand note-taking software than the Zaurus.
I'd believe it- it's hard to not to beat the notes options on the Z. Heck, with Dynapad and Squeak, I managed to write a notes program that had the feature set of IQNotes, but without a silly one-page drawn note limitation... in about an hour. Outlining and the whole she-bang.
I'm of the mind that part of the poorness of apps on the Z is the GUI API. APIs like the PalmOS', NewtonOS or even WinCE seem to either a) be designed for a pen-based computer in mind or b) be flexible enough to properly accomodate pen computing. Qt/Embedded on the other hand doesn't seem to. While C++/Qt isn't my native tongue, I've found tasks which should be easy for a PDA SDK that were overly difficult.
For example, on #zaurus I've discussed with a couple folks about creating a full-screen character recognizer, using the built-in engine. It turned out that it is very hard to do- Qt/E is very rigid with its event loop.:(
Or, until someone reverse engineers the protocol, which is likely quite simple considering the simple hardware and the means of transmission. There is no reason you couldn't have a little FM transmitter in your house, spitting out IMs and data for your watch to grab once this protocol was laid out.
Then again, something like this- a watch which recieves FM data- is pretty useless without a lot of money and stations backing it. What good would it do if we had an open protocol? As soon as the company providing it stoped doing so, you'd be SOL no matter what. Unless you just wanted to have your own low-wattage FM transmitter in your own house, mentioned above.
It is very unlikely that MS could track the people wearing these. Have you read any of the articles?
The SPOT watches use FM as the method of data transmission. FM. Like FM Radio. The watches are one way. You can get info on weather, IMs, stocks, etc, but you cannot send any data out. Any perception of "asking" for data is faked- the watch simply filters out data that doesn't apply to it.
Unless you think MS will start including 10kW FM radio transmiters in these watches and GPS recieves. MS SPOT watches: now with a big ass generator in every box!
The only thing close to MS having the ability to track is your geographical region. The MSN Direct stuff sends out data depending on your location; the local radio station will send out weather data for that area. There is a chance that if someone wanted to IM your watch, you would have to select the region first- otherwise, the IM would be sent to every MSN Direct station there is. But then again, there's probably just as much of a chance (or perhaps higher) that they will do that.
Frankly, if MS wanted to know what state I was in, they could've figured that out already by a number of means. I would be uncomfortable with MS or any other company tracking my relatively exact position, GPS or even something more coarse.
I gave up on a SL-5500 as well. Granted, unlike most Zaurus users who actually like their Zs, I was (un)fortuante enough to have used good PDAs before I got the Z- A Newton 2100, Jornada 720, and an iPAQ 3150. Even though WinCE is worse than PalmOS in a lot of PIM-ish areas, it resembles a "real OS" far more than PalmOS does. It's the little things that make it better for power users- multitasking, being able to allocate more than 64K of RAM in a chunk...:)
Disclaimer: Contrary to the tone of the rest of this post, I feel the need to clarify, less the less intelligent and more 1337 members of our communtiy get confused.
I am not a fan of WinCE. I've used it because it was the only real option for me for the time being. I do not use Windows on the desktop. Or the server. I use Mac OS X and Linux. But I am not shamed to admit that I use WindowsCE. Perhaps I should be embarassed for the sorry state of PDA Linux software.
so it begins... I've said it on here a 1000 times- I can do just about all of the things Zaurus users boast on any Windows CE PDA. On my Jornada 720 WinCE 3.0 palmtop (aka Handheld PC 2000), I've been able to: browse the web well (IE is much better than PocketIE for PocketPC 2k and 2k2), do my email and admin via a real 80x24 SSH and telnet terminal (in a readable font, even), run apps remotely using XFree86 for CE and VNC Rdesktop/Windows Terminal Server Client, IRC and IM (AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN and Jabber), play MP3s and OGGs, share files with FTP/FTPD and Samba, go wardriving on my bike, write papers in LaTeX (and compiling and viewing w/ WinDVI), serve with Apache, and lots of other stuff I can't remember now.
Especially snazzy is developing on the PDA. Thanks to the really nice keyboard and the big screen, I've written, compiled, debug and ran quite a bit of code on the WinCE Jornada 720 itself. I've done most of my PDA-coding using: Squeak Smalltalk, Dialect, and Perl (w/ Perl/Tk). However, there are a lot of other options- a number of BASIC implementations, Java (compiling supported too), Python, Ruby, Caml, Scheme, OpenLisp/ISLISP, Common Lisp (GCL), PocketC, and plenty of others.
One thing of note that AFAIK you can do on the Z but can't on a WinCE device- compile and run C. While entirely slow and unwieldy, there is a port of GCC to the Z. IIRC, the GCC StrongARM WinCE port was aborted a while back.
And yes, you can do all of that stuff on the keyboard-less and smaller-screened PocketPC too- they're both WinCE 3.0. Some of it isn't as useful with the smaller screen and real keyboard, but it's just as useful as it'd be if done on the Zaurus.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm sick of the pattern these Zaurus discussions take: "Oooh, cool Zaurus review!" -> "Dude, Zaurus sucks- get a Palm or PocketPC and get a usable PDA!" -> "STFU! I can do all these l33t things that you can't on anything else!" In most cases, that's where the discussion ends; the PalmOS or WinCE users just assume that the Zaurus user is right, regardless of the actual utility of the "l33t thing" in question. That isn't to say there aren't things you can do on the Z you can't do elsewhere, but that's the case with all platforms- there are things you can't do with Linux that you can with CP/M.:)
I hope the screen on the SL-5600 is better than that on the SL-5500, which was absolutely horrible. While the Zaurus has *no* real handwriting recognition or decent notetaking apps (no, IQNotes or DrawPad don't do the job), at least the character recognition got less sucky (read: faster, no longer taking.5 seconds+ to recognize a character!) in the new 5500 ROM and on the 5600.
All of that said, I will be getting a C760 soon. Even though I think most of the software for the Z is incredibly immature, I am getting it for the development of a new PDA platform called Dynapad. The C760 is an incredi
I admit, I like the clam-shell style Windows CE devices as well. I have a Jornada 720, and it's awesome- I can do all those fancy things Zaurus users show off about, yet I have a nice big scren and a keyboard on which I can actually touchtype almost as fast as I can on a regular keyboard.
However, I doubt they'll bring them back. PocketPC 2000 and 2002 have specified a smaller screen, fixed at 240x320, portraid orientation. I hope PPC 2003 has added something about scaling/resizing PPC apps, bringing the ability for bigger screened PocketPCs, even if they have to be restricted to the same aspect ratio of 240x320. Also, MS doesn't seem to dig the Handheld PC- they've done a piss-poor job of supporting H/PC 2000, and by all actions, seem like they just want it to go away...
But even some Linux users (including myself) want a PDA that is more useful than the Zaurus. Eventually, the Z may live up to the promise of being more than something to show off at a LUG meeting. Yes, there are some useful things to do with the Z, I would be full of it if I said that. But most of the software for the Z is very rought around the edges, and outright lacking a lot of useful knids of apps. And, you can do most of the k00l stuff on a WinCE PDA- run X11, SSH/telnet, code on the PDA, wardrive, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
First, the two games had a lot more similarities beyond being games where you control a person in the third person in a world, doing stuff. Two, I never said that HPCoS was a rip off of Zelda. HPCoS is very much influenced by Zelda, implementing the same kind of game enjoyable for the same sort of reasons, played in the same way. In a lot of ways, HPCoS is a lot like Zelda. But, HPCoS it was fun, even as a person who isn't a big Harry Potter fan (never read any of the books).
You should learn LaTeX. It is an awesome way to write documents. I've had a number of professors compliment me on my documents. They look really professional,
:)
Why? My reasons:
#1) If you've done any HTML coding, or are a programmer in general, it is pretty easy to pick up the basics. You don't need to learn all that much to get the core of what you need to do- lists, bold/italic/underline, centering, paragraphs, tables, and some symbols.
#2) You can use tools like LyX to do the work for you. Even if you never learn a lick of real LaTeX code, you still end up with a beautiful document, and any of the other benefits.
#3) You can use LaTeX without having a GUI. Or a newer computer. Or a "full" word processor on a "full" OS. That is, you can write, compile and print out LaTeX docs on a DOS machine, from the console on a Unix machine, a PDA, etc.
I initially decided to learn LaTeX because there was a simple TeX compiler for the NewtonOS, my PDA platform until recently. There was also NewtonWorks- a good mobile Office suite- but there was no simple way for me to output the document and print it without docking with a Mac or Windows machine. With TeX for the Newton, on the other hand, I could export the text to any machine, compile the TeX on the machine itself or on the university mainframe, and then print.
I had to move on around a year ago from the NewtonOS, at least as my primary platform. On the Jornada 720, a Windows CE micro-laptop Handheld PC 2000 device, I started writing my papers using a real version of LaTeX- the same thing as I was using on my OS X machine. Editing the LaTeX code in emacs no less- all on a PDA! The whole cycle- editing, compiling, viewing (with WinDVI) and printing can all be done on a PDA. There are easy to install WinCE packages. I also had a PocketPC for a while, and the packages all worked very well there as well, but editing wasn't as nice as it was on the J720- it has a real keyboard. I've recently switched to the Zaurus SL-C760, and am a bit disapointed in that there aren't any easy to install ipkgs, along with a decent Qtopia LaTeX editor. Alas, I'll work on it soon enough- I'll need to be able to write up LaTeX docs and compile to PS before school starts.
#4) I had another reason, if I remember, I'll put it here!
#5) It's entirely free. Yeah, you could get OpenOffice. Or you could pirate/buy/get bundled MS Office. OO has generally just been a huge hassle for me; MS Office (I'm on OS X) is generally faster, more stable and less of a hassle than OpenOffice, but introduces its own set of problems.
I'm fairly new to gaming. A bunchamonths back, my roomate- who is a big fan of the Harry Potter junk- rented the GCN version of the Chamber of Secrets. I ended up playing the whole game in a weekend- it was a lot of fun.
This was before I ever played Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. When we got an n64 a couple months after that, as well as Ocarina, I realized how much the HPCoS game was like Zelda, which is a lot! The game was still fun, but used "plot" devices that were kind of lame at times. It'd sure be nice to be able to go back to play Quiddich and Wizzard Dueling after you'd beat the game, though.
How robust are the sound-data signals for the various old 8-bit machines? Is there redunancy, or if you have a just barely flaky tape, or just a small spec of static while you're taping do you lose that chunk of the program? Or does it repeat the same bit 4 times, then go one, etc, so that yo uare sure to have a good copy?
I think I'd say I agree with the parent- the distiction isn't overly fine, IMHO. That is, that's like saying it's stenography to type out some "hidden text" in plaintext on the cover page of a document, leaving the rest of the document with no information encoded, and doing nothing to really hide the illicit data.
Unless this data in the image header is really hidden, but if its in the header, it's probably in the comment...
Having a direct USB connection could mean you could still do the whole ethernet-over-USB thing that you do with the cradle.
:) Although with it, I've run into a wholly new problem- NetFront (the browser) won't use the USBnet connection. Although I can easily ping, telnet or web browse (in a non-QPE browser) to any site via my iBook and usbnet, NetFront needs you to "get connected," regardless of the status of the usb-ethernet. hmpf.
:)
That's what I have with my C760.
I must admit, cradles weren't ever quite my thing. A well designed one is well I suppose, provided the unit slides in nice and easy- like with most PalmOS devices. I went through 2 crappy Linksys WCF12 cards (both broke after a couple weeks- both on the Dell Axim and Zaurus!), and was back to browsing with the cradle, and that was a huge pain in the ass... for that, a non-cradle would be muuuch better. But for $30, one may as well get an ethernet or wifi card.
I've unfortunately went over this a dozen times with plenty of other people.
I know it may be hard to come to terms with this, but WinCE is a real OS too. Not just an app launcher.
You can multitask. You can mount NFS and SMB shares. Play MP3s, MPEGs, DivXs, whatever. Unlike on the Zaurus, you can get *real* handwriting recognition- not just *character recognition,* to which you are confined with any Linux PDA (at least for now). You can code in a million languages on the device it self under CE- and unlike on Linux PDAs, it's a lot easier to find a well-adapted port rather than something barely shoehorned in. Apache, FTPd, SSH, telnet, X11 (remote and local), VNC, rdesktop- I've all done it from CE.
It's a failing of the current PDA Linuxes to make you create a swap file to get more RAM rather than an advantage. In WinCE, you just simply adjust the amount allocated to RAM vs Storage via a slider; on current PDA Linux, you have to install a hacked kernel (with hardcoded values) or create a swap space in your storage area.
WinCE is very, *very* far from perfect. But so is Linux, on the PDA and otherwise. Anyone who thinks that WinCE or Linux are perfect is delusional.
I've run bash on CE. Big deal. And, unlike with PDA Linux, I don't have to put up with substandard software. It may come as a shock, but a lot of folks want their PDAs to work well as PDAs and not just show-off toys at LUG meetings.
My current main PDA is a Zaurus SL-C760. I'm not some whacky MS zealot. It's a shame so many Zaurus users are just Linux cheerleaders. The Zaurus could be a great platform, but no amount of talking about will make the PDA software available for the Z any better.
I do the same on my own platform, Dynapad, without ever having to waste my time with a lengthy compilation process. If I want to change a font, I simply change it- what kind of customizability involves recompiling sources to change a font?
Just out of curiousity: why would one want to modify the mount/umount process? Anything useful?
Now, a direct USB connection would be way cool for the Zaurus. I know that you can buy a cable for about US$30 that plugs into the bottom of the Zaurus and into a USB port, which means you no longer have to use the cradle to connect it to your PC.
That just allows you to do the connection to the PC without a cradle- it doesn't allow you to use USB devices with your Z. That said, for more than $30, you can get a USB Host CF Card, allowing your Z to use USB devices for which it has drivers. Call me nuts, but I'd rather have CF- getting USB if I really wanted it. Imagine an ugly and slow USB->Wifi adapter taped to the back of your PDA...
USB really isn't meant for a PDA. Who wants cables and other stuff hanging off your PDA? CF works well because it can be integrated well at a small cost in size.
I totally agree. I've a C760, and if it wasn't for my own platform (Dynapad, see below), I'd be wishing that this machine ran CE. (vanilla WinCE, not PocketPC) The machine itself is amazing, but as a PDA (or even a "PMT" *snicker*), the QPE-based Linux PDAs leave a lot to desire as far as software.
It may come as a shock, but there is a difference between SYNCing devices like this and developing for them. Syncing involves ... synchronizing your PIM data most often, as well as installing applications. However, had you looked into it, you'd see that development is done with Linux, and there are a number of ways to do data transfers between the Yopy and Linux (as well as OS X, Windows). It's just PIM syncing which requires Windoze, which is still retarded, but you seemed to have confused a couple things. :)
Linux has become the way to go embedded on the cheap. If you don't need an RTOS, what in QNX are you paying for?
...and you PalmOS folks thought WinCE was bad! :)
Performance. A neat GUI layer. Much smaller memory use.
On my brand new Zaurus SL-C760, there is 64 MB of *RAM* built-in. Why? This isn't "RAM" in the sense as it is on WinCE/PocketPC, where it's split between "program RAM" and stoarage space. It has a hopping 64 MB of dedicated to this, with 128 MB of Flash for storage. I just rebooted my C760 to find out the amount of RAM Linux+QPE takes out of the box: 18 MB! Compare that to 2-3 MB for WinCE, something similar for QNX, and something even smaller for PalmOS. (Granted, PalmOS leaves a lot lacking...)
Did you read the article? I quote:
If this was a Palm or Pocket PC PDA, I'd say this is close to my perfect PDA. However, because of my lack of Linux Development knowledge, I was extremely limited in what I could do with the Yopy.
This person- who likely didn't get the Yopy just because it runs Linux (like a lot of folks do with the Z) thought that it would've been great had this hardware been running PalmOS or PocketPC. Not only did the reviewer state that he was limited by the Yopy, but because he didn't have the "Linux development knowledge" to make it truly useful. Now, that could mean a number of things, but it ain't a compliment.
It is very true that the underlying OS is irrelevant, but until the Linux PDA developers advance "what runs on top," the stigma that Linux is a PIA to use will remain.
Considering how the Yopy runs X11 as it's display layer, it's a bit of a fudge to say that the Zaurus has a larger developer community than the Yopy. There are more Z-specific developers than there are Yopy-specific, considering how something close to the majority of Zaurus apps are somewhat clumsily adapted from X11/Qt, no reason one can't simply count a clumsily adapted X11 app as a Yopy app. :P
:D
That said, the Yopy will likely fail. It's expensive and it doesn't do that much that anything else does. If you need the occasional remote X session, you can do that already with Windows CE or PocketPC (via XFree86 for CE) or on the Zaurus under a QPE or FB X server.
The 400 MHz XScale (which is a PXA 250) in the 5600 isn't really faster than the 206 MHz in the Yopy or SL-5500. The 5600 probably gets a bit better battery life for it, though. There's been a lot of misinformation about the PXA-250, and the speed of it in comparison to the 206 MHz StrongARM isn't just some retarded move by MS, which a lot of folks seem to think here and elsewhere. Seems stupid Sharp would switch the 5600 to a PXA 255, but they probably have a lot of manufactured and unsold units with the 250 preventing such a switch.
IIRC, Dell did that with their Axims- switched from the PXA 250 to the 255 rather quietly. Granted, they sell a lot more Axims than Sharp does SL-5x00s.
as for me, I just got a SL-C760...
Does this remind anyone when Apple first released the first PowerPC, and only like 10% of the code was optimized for it [?]
Superficially it does. However, there are a lot of differences between the switch from 68k and PPC and that of PPC/32 to PPC/64. There isn't emulation required, nor is a bunch of code rewriting to get your app optimized for the G5. It's a matter of installing the dev tools update, and recompiling. Things weren't that easy in the 68k->PPC transition days...
Note how the dude said "On the PC side:"; perhaps "On the MS/x86 side:" would've made a bit more sense. He didn't claim that the 386 was the first 32-bit CPU ever, just the first 32-bit CPU for the intel architecture. And note how he confined himself to windows- it just might be because the vast majority of people on x86 use some MS OS (Windows or DOS- MS Xenix excluded) on those machines, especially back then.
Read the article- the version of OS X they're talking about will be not just be the plain-old 32 bit version running on the G5, but a 64-bit aware OS that can take advantage of a number of the 64 bit features.
Getting apps to take advantage of this is a matter of a recompile, and Apple released the tools at WWDC to get your apps to suppoer the 64 bit features. I imagine they binaries will ship in the same package- either the OS will discriminate, or there will be two binaries in the package.
While I'm a huge nerd, and only partially a gamer, this is retardedly obvious. At least for my age/status bracket, 20something college student. I know plenty of people who aren't nerds who love video games- jockish type folks, lots of stoners, girl/boyfriends of these people... Hell, I've known plenty of 30 year old un-married women who were totally into gaming, but in a non-nerd and non-obsessive way.
old news... next!
It may be hard to imagine, but sometimes things happen for different reasons.
I'm not saying the Xbox is the reason for ATI's support for Linux, but it's not like your argument decimates the conclusion stephenry came to.
No such luck. The screen is an identical part. 100% the same. I think the keyboard and front-panel buttons are identical too.
:P
:(
Really? I really want to accuse you of lying.
The truly ironically hideous thing is that Sharp actually makes good screens. For instance, the screen on the Dell Axim- probably the best 240x320 screens I've ever seen- is made by Sharp. But nooo, Sharp uses the worst screens for their own PDAs- at least the 5x00. I've heard the screen on the C7x0 is quite nice at least.
My long dead Agenda VR3, underpowered as it was, at least had better freehand note-taking software than the Zaurus.
I'd believe it- it's hard to not to beat the notes options on the Z. Heck, with Dynapad and Squeak, I managed to write a notes program that had the feature set of IQNotes, but without a silly one-page drawn note limitation... in about an hour. Outlining and the whole she-bang.
I'm of the mind that part of the poorness of apps on the Z is the GUI API. APIs like the PalmOS', NewtonOS or even WinCE seem to either a) be designed for a pen-based computer in mind or b) be flexible enough to properly accomodate pen computing. Qt/Embedded on the other hand doesn't seem to. While C++/Qt isn't my native tongue, I've found tasks which should be easy for a PDA SDK that were overly difficult.
For example, on #zaurus I've discussed with a couple folks about creating a full-screen character recognizer, using the built-in engine. It turned out that it is very hard to do- Qt/E is very rigid with its event loop.
Or, until someone reverse engineers the protocol, which is likely quite simple considering the simple hardware and the means of transmission. There is no reason you couldn't have a little FM transmitter in your house, spitting out IMs and data for your watch to grab once this protocol was laid out.
Then again, something like this- a watch which recieves FM data- is pretty useless without a lot of money and stations backing it. What good would it do if we had an open protocol? As soon as the company providing it stoped doing so, you'd be SOL no matter what. Unless you just wanted to have your own low-wattage FM transmitter in your own house, mentioned above.
It is very unlikely that MS could track the people wearing these. Have you read any of the articles?
The SPOT watches use FM as the method of data transmission. FM. Like FM Radio. The watches are one way. You can get info on weather, IMs, stocks, etc, but you cannot send any data out. Any perception of "asking" for data is faked- the watch simply filters out data that doesn't apply to it.
Unless you think MS will start including 10kW FM radio transmiters in these watches and GPS recieves. MS SPOT watches: now with a big ass generator in every box!
The only thing close to MS having the ability to track is your geographical region. The MSN Direct stuff sends out data depending on your location; the local radio station will send out weather data for that area. There is a chance that if someone wanted to IM your watch, you would have to select the region first- otherwise, the IM would be sent to every MSN Direct station there is. But then again, there's probably just as much of a chance (or perhaps higher) that they will do that.
Frankly, if MS wanted to know what state I was in, they could've figured that out already by a number of means. I would be uncomfortable with MS or any other company tracking my relatively exact position, GPS or even something more coarse.
I gave up on a SL-5500 as well. Granted, unlike most Zaurus users who actually like their Zs, I was (un)fortuante enough to have used good PDAs before I got the Z- A Newton 2100, Jornada 720, and an iPAQ 3150. Even though WinCE is worse than PalmOS in a lot of PIM-ish areas, it resembles a "real OS" far more than PalmOS does. It's the little things that make it better for power users- multitasking, being able to allocate more than 64K of RAM in a chunk... :)
:)
.5 seconds+ to recognize a character!) in the new 5500 ROM and on the 5600.
Disclaimer: Contrary to the tone of the rest of this post, I feel the need to clarify, less the less intelligent and more 1337 members of our communtiy get confused.
I am not a fan of WinCE. I've used it because it was the only real option for me for the time being. I do not use Windows on the desktop. Or the server. I use Mac OS X and Linux. But I am not shamed to admit that I use WindowsCE. Perhaps I should be embarassed for the sorry state of PDA Linux software.
so it begins...
I've said it on here a 1000 times- I can do just about all of the things Zaurus users boast on any Windows CE PDA. On my Jornada 720 WinCE 3.0 palmtop (aka Handheld PC 2000), I've been able to:
browse the web well (IE is much better than PocketIE for PocketPC 2k and 2k2), do my email and admin via a real 80x24 SSH and telnet terminal (in a readable font, even), run apps remotely using XFree86 for CE and VNC Rdesktop/Windows Terminal Server Client, IRC and IM (AIM, Yahoo, ICQ, MSN and Jabber), play MP3s and OGGs, share files with FTP/FTPD and Samba, go wardriving on my bike, write papers in LaTeX (and compiling and viewing w/ WinDVI), serve with Apache, and lots of other stuff I can't remember now.
Especially snazzy is developing on the PDA. Thanks to the really nice keyboard and the big screen, I've written, compiled, debug and ran quite a bit of code on the WinCE Jornada 720 itself. I've done most of my PDA-coding using: Squeak Smalltalk, Dialect, and Perl (w/ Perl/Tk). However, there are a lot of other options- a number of BASIC implementations, Java (compiling supported too), Python, Ruby, Caml, Scheme, OpenLisp/ISLISP, Common Lisp (GCL), PocketC, and plenty of others.
One thing of note that AFAIK you can do on the Z but can't on a WinCE device- compile and run C. While entirely slow and unwieldy, there is a port of GCC to the Z. IIRC, the GCC StrongARM WinCE port was aborted a while back.
And yes, you can do all of that stuff on the keyboard-less and smaller-screened PocketPC too- they're both WinCE 3.0. Some of it isn't as useful with the smaller screen and real keyboard, but it's just as useful as it'd be if done on the Zaurus.
Sorry for the rant, but I'm sick of the pattern these Zaurus discussions take: "Oooh, cool Zaurus review!" -> "Dude, Zaurus sucks- get a Palm or PocketPC and get a usable PDA!" -> "STFU! I can do all these l33t things that you can't on anything else!" In most cases, that's where the discussion ends; the PalmOS or WinCE users just assume that the Zaurus user is right, regardless of the actual utility of the "l33t thing" in question. That isn't to say there aren't things you can do on the Z you can't do elsewhere, but that's the case with all platforms- there are things you can't do with Linux that you can with CP/M.
I hope the screen on the SL-5600 is better than that on the SL-5500, which was absolutely horrible. While the Zaurus has *no* real handwriting recognition or decent notetaking apps (no, IQNotes or DrawPad don't do the job), at least the character recognition got less sucky (read: faster, no longer taking
All of that said, I will be getting a C760 soon. Even though I think most of the software for the Z is incredibly immature, I am getting it for the development of a new PDA platform called Dynapad. The C760 is an incredi
I admit, I like the clam-shell style Windows CE devices as well. I have a Jornada 720, and it's awesome- I can do all those fancy things Zaurus users show off about, yet I have a nice big scren and a keyboard on which I can actually touchtype almost as fast as I can on a regular keyboard.
However, I doubt they'll bring them back. PocketPC 2000 and 2002 have specified a smaller screen, fixed at 240x320, portraid orientation. I hope PPC 2003 has added something about scaling/resizing PPC apps, bringing the ability for bigger screened PocketPCs, even if they have to be restricted to the same aspect ratio of 240x320. Also, MS doesn't seem to dig the Handheld PC- they've done a piss-poor job of supporting H/PC 2000, and by all actions, seem like they just want it to go away...
But even some Linux users (including myself) want a PDA that is more useful than the Zaurus. Eventually, the Z may live up to the promise of being more than something to show off at a LUG meeting. Yes, there are some useful things to do with the Z, I would be full of it if I said that. But most of the software for the Z is very rought around the edges, and outright lacking a lot of useful knids of apps. And, you can do most of the k00l stuff on a WinCE PDA- run X11, SSH/telnet, code on the PDA, wardrive, etc.