Careful son- you're not allowed to actually like PocketPC or Windows CE in this area. If they can't have a decent Linux PDA, most folks on here would rather use a PalmOS PDA that does less than a PocketPC.
But I agree with you. Especially in terms of OS, PocketPC is pretty powerful. There are lof of useful Unix-ey programs that run on it if you need them. (apache, perl, perl/tk, emacs, vim, gnuplot, etc) I like it a lot more than any desktop windows I've used- more stable, faster, and uses up very little RAM. And this is coming from someone who doesn't use windows or ms software on any of his machines, other than the Axim (only $200) and Jornada 720.
Actually, a lot of PDAs now a days don't have much of a range in their IRDA. I imagine this PDA which is supposed to be a remote has a more decent range. Various companies, at least for WinCE, sell CF cards that provide a new IR port with a much higher range. the IR on PDAs is meant to span 10 feet or so max in most cases, sometimes less. They are thinking of users will be beaming a business card or calendar date rather than using it as a remote control.
The battery is internal (but so are AAs in a Psion), but it is removable. That is, if you're willing to spend $50 on a new battery, you can have more than one- but the point about buying AAs still holds. I use rechargables in anything like this that uses AAs- why can't someone release a PDA that has AA batteries which are rechargable in the unit?
The only thing the C7x0 really does better is that is has a higher res screen- the keyboard on the C7x0 isn't really that special. It is a little bigger than that of a SL-5x00, but it isn't anything you can touch type on, which leaves you really no better off than you were with a SL-5x00. But then again, the A300 doesn't have any keyboard. If Qtopia ever gets character recognition that isn't so shitty, the A300 may get away with not having a keyboard.
Heck, I'd say that WinCE is even a bit more than an attempt at a functional OS- it achieves that goal pretty well. If for some reason I was forced to use a MS OS on my desktop, I would easily choose running WinCE 4 for x86 over 9x, 2k, XP, etc. On my Jornada 720, I've actually found it to take up a lot less RAM, perform a lot better, and have found it quite a bit more stable than any desktop Windows revision I've used.
And on the PDA, if I can't use Newton OS, WinCE seems to be the only usable option. PDA Linux is less robust, takes up more RAM, has a lot less software, and the existing software is a lot worse than what you can get for WinCE. I know slashdot isn't known for pragmatic people, but that is enough for me to suck up any pride over admitting to LUG members that I use WinCE and just reap the benefits of an environment and software that actually works.
All the reviews I've seen for the Zaurus machines focus primarily on the hardware, which is nice, but it's telling.
Yup, it is. It also doesn't help that most of the people buying Zaurii in the US are already used to Linux cheerleading and the distorted reality that is second only to MacWorld.;)
And even then, the hardware isn't all that great in the SL-5x00. The bus speed is extraordinarily fast- 100 MHz as opposed to the 30-50 MHz often seen in most PDAs with the same 206 MHz SA-1100. The keyboard is cute, but if the Zaurus had real handwriting recognition (ala CalliGrapher for WinCE or EPOC32, Newton OS 2.x HWR) or even semi-decent character recognition, the keyboard would irrelevant. The thumboard on a SL-5500 allows you to type, although very slow. I can write up an email, irc, or admin via SSH a lot faster using the built-in PocketPC character recognizer than I can using the SL-5x00 thumboard.
Telling because the stock applications are shite. The wordprocessor is shite, the spreadsheet is shite, the power point presenter is shite, the agenda is shite, the media player is shite and the todo list is shite.
Actually, the Hancom apps aren't that bad- in some ways, they are better than comes with PocketPC. But then again, those suck too, especially compared to what you'd think Microsoft could do with their own file formats, their own applications on their own platform.
One thing you gotta admit is good about the Zaurus are the browsers- Opera 5 (and the newly released Opera 6 with the 3.10 ROM) and Konq are the fastest browsers I've used on any PDA. But then again, when you only get a piddly-ass single hour of battery life when browsing the web usign a Zaurus and low-power Socket Wifi card, what the hell good does a decent web browser do you?
There isn't one half-usable notetaking app on the Zaurus. It's sad really- when I've told fellow Zaurus users this, most reply that you shouldn't use the Zaurus for taking notes, you should use a pencil and paper. Evidentally, the Z is only good for silly demos at LUG meetings, and folks who ned to do silly stuff like "real work" should stick with their Newton, WinCE, or Psion PDA...
Yes, the PIM apps all suck. tkcPlayer is OK, uses a lot less CPU than the inbuilt media player.
Another huge thing that sucks about Zaurus software is that it seems Qt/Embedded really wasn't made for pen-based applications. It is damned near impossible to do anything outside of the very confined model for event-gathering- and that event-model is really built for mice and not for stylii. There is a reason you can't get any full-screen character recognition ala Graffiti 2 or xstroke for the Z...
Oh, I have an SL-5500, and a Psion, so I know what could have been done with the hardware spec of the Zaurus and some half decent developers.
It gets a low D from me. Could have done a fuck of a lot better.
I'd give it a C-. Since I don't think it is worth owning or putting up with any PDA that scores so low, I sold it after only 5 weeks of owning it.
Yup, same deal... hopefully. It's too bad Sharp doesn't release them here. Perhaps down the line, when they work out all the bugs that seem to come with the current territory of running Linux on a PDA- the Japanese market seems to be a little bit more forgiving with these things.
Graphic card (this is the one I mentioned above; I think it's the first CF-slot video card I've heard of)
It may have just been the first CF-slot video card you've heard of for Linux PDAs rather than any and all platforms... But in any case, WinCE PDAs/PocketPCs have supported a number of VGA out CF cards for quite a while, some proving some pretty badass resolutions.
According to the page, the SL-C760 gets 8.5 hours use on battery. The SL-C750 gets 5 hours.
Damn, it's about time. Boy was it a shock when I made an attempt to switch from using my Newton 2100 and Jornada 720 to the Zaurus SL-5500. I'm used to being able to do hours and hours of work on my PDA in a day without having to recharge... The SL-5500 gets 3-4 hours when you have *no* backlight, no network card, and are just doing a low-CPU activity like reading an ebook... but when you want to be browsing the web using konq or opera using a wifi card, esp if you have the backlight on- even at its lowest- it pushes that battery life down to like 1.25 hours. disgusting. good to see that more power efficient CPU and a biger battery!
Isn't the Linux Journal article a review of the C700, not either of these newer models? Granted, the C700 isn't all that much different from the C760 or C750, excepting the much faster processor in the latter. Although, given the slowness of stuff on the previous Sharp Linux PDAs (SL-5x00, C700, A300) compared to a WinCE or PalmOS PDA with the same CPU, that faster CPU and faster bus surely makes a big difference.
The screen is nice? Was it bright, and crisp? The resolution is definately a plus.
I owned a SL-5500... for about 5 weeks. Sold it last week. I have never seen a shittier screen on a PDA before, I'd be embarassed if I were Sharp.
Oddly enough, one week after buying the Zaurus SL-5500, I won a Dell Axim X5 at a conference I was presenting Dynapad. After doing various research after getting the Axim, I was surprised to find out that Sharp makes the both the screens in the Zaurus as well that in the Axim... The Axim screen is probably the best color PDA screen I've ever seen- very, very bright and incredibly crisp. The Axim screen at the *lowest* brightness settign was a little brighter than the 5500 or 5600s at the highest. Seems ironic that Sharp makes the best and the worst- when that happens, you usually see the company keeping the best for their own products, but not sharp!
Umm... There isn't a need for an emulation package for the C7x0 to run 5500 apps. The XScale is a CPU which runs the same ARM instruction as the StrongARM SA-1100 in the 5500, with some additions.
CeBit? Are you sure that you didn't play with a SL-C700, not a SL-C750 or C760? The SL-750/60 have *just* been announced, whereas the C700 has been around for at least 6 months. The C700 also has the problem you mention about speed- the XScale PXA250 processor at 400 MHz runs everything about the same speed as a 206 MHz StrongARM SA-1100, under both Linux and WindowsCE. However, these new models, the C750 and C760, both use the XScale PXA255, which runs almost twice as fast as the PXA250 at 400 MHz and the SA-1100 at 206 MHz. I think you saw the C700 at CeBit, which looks the same, has all the same features (the 760 has 128 rather than 64 MB of storage tho), excepting the crappier processor.
You know, it's kind of always been my dream to be an Emperor. I want to have power over a bunch of people that will do my bidding, but at the same time, I don't know anything about how to cultivate, develop, or consolodate power. I've never had any sort of public service job, and I'm really not sure how government works. Oh, and I'm not charasmatic and I'm afraid of speaking to crowds. I hope that's not a problem. Anywho, anyone have any tips on how I could become the Emperor of the Known Universe? After all, it shouldn't be that hard- everyone should be able to just look at me and realize that I'm their best option for benevolent ruler.
You can fold and rotate them into iPaq-style format, they keyboard however is essential for SSH. The Z also has a decent stylus control system, great handriting recognition and an ok on screen keyboard.
The Zaurus has no handwriting recognition, let alone great handwriting recognition. It does have character recognition, although it is quite sucky. On the SL-5500 with the stock sharp v2.38 ROM, it takes a good 500-750 ms for it to recognize a letter. <shudder> If you've never used real HWR (e.g. Newton OS HWR or CalliGrapher or Trasncriber for WinCE) or even a semi-decent character recognizer, it may seem cool, but half a second is not acceptable for almost any sort of data entry. And yes, that is with the multi-stroke delay turned down to 250 ms, as far as it can go, and without any new training strokes. People often point to the Z's CR system as being cool because you can train it. Training the CR system is probably the worst thing to do- it takes even longer if you've got one stroke for most of the letters!
It recognizes numbers and symbols much faster, which leads me to believe that it is slow with letters because there are more characters/stroke dictionaries to iterate through looking for a match...
I have heard that CR in the new Sharp 3.10 ROM is faster, and I hope to god it is. I sold my Zaurus SL-5500 last week and didn't get the chance to try it out, unfortunately. For the sake of all current and future Zaurus users, I really hope it has improved.
If you don't use SSH on a regular basis, then a Zaurus may not be for you anyway.
I certainly hope no one out there is buying a Zaurus just because of SSH. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if using SSH was a driving factor behind buying something with a decent keyboard like a Psion, but I don't think I'd even want to do anything but trivial SSHing on a C7x0 and especially not on a SL-5500. It seems to be a pretty commonly held myth that you can't do telnet or ssh on anything but a Linux handheld. Heck, I sit here now, typing this message on my WinCE-based Jornada 720 with a SSH session open to my email also open. Unlike the C7x0 it has a real, touch-typable keyboard. It is no wider or thicker than a C7x0, but 1.5" longer and with a better designed keyboard. Same with a Psion.
WinCE has been able to do SSH for a really long time, contrary to popular slashdot ignorance. Now, you didn't say anything about WinCE not being able to do SSH, but inevitably in this article, people will reccomend getting a Zaurus- C7x0 or 5x00 alike- if you need to do SSH on the go.
The SL-C7x00 Zaurii are very small. Not much bigger than a Zaurus SL-5500... A little thicker and a little wider perhaps.
As someone who uses a keyboarded PDA, the Jornada 720, as a real computer, I had some high hopes for the SL-C7x00 series of Zaurus. But then I finally saw one- the keyboard isn't really all that useful. I mean, it isn't something you can touch type on, like with a Psion keyboard or that on the Jornada 720 (...as I type even this post), but more of a slightly-bigger thumboard. Not a cramped home row, just hunt and peckage with your thumbs or perhaps two index fingers. Kind of disapointing- I almost dropped some serious cash on one, hoping for it to replace my J720 and Newton 2100 with one device.
Re:BBSes were ages from Minitel network!
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I wasn't saying that multi-user BBSes were better than Minitel, just asking about Minitel while informing others about the existance of BBSes.
A shame only France had this-could've been useful just about anywhere!
We had some terminals like that at the Twin Cities Freenet (Mpls, Minnesota) that we gave to those who couldn't afford a computer. I used to volunteer for the TCFN, doing support stuff, mostly answering voicemails. Can't remember the particular brand anymore... Some phoen company gave us oodles of 'em.:)
Re:BBSes were ages from Minitel network!
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Quite the contrary- a lot of BBSes were multi-user and networked. The boards I used to call and the one I ran were all single-user, single-modem, but that was a matter of preference. (the BBS software I very much preferred- Citadel 86 represent! - only supported one user at a time) A lot of these big, multi-line boards were popular, supporting live chat and a lot of file transfers.
Question for anyone: does Minitel support user forums, message boards and/or live chats ala irc?
I'm not doing anything as absurd as saying that America had a system which was functionally equivalent to Minitel, simply drawing a comparison and mentioning it.
The article seems to imply that prior to the internet, none but the Frenchies had this kind of information service available to them. I dunno about anyone else here, but for me, the functional forerunner of the internet, and what I used well into 1999 (even though I started using the internet around 1991) were BBSes. There were also paid information services like PC-Link, Apple's eWorld, CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL... some being around since the early 80s, other latercomers.
Of course, the percentage of American households calling up these BBSes and commercial ISes was probably lower than households which use their Minitel box with any sort of regularity, but I just felt the need to point out another thing that served as a functionally proto-internet.
Re:Business Models or "Developers, developers!"
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Yes, it was a dumb mistake on the author's part, exposed to all the ravenous non-believers. He is talking about the internet as we know it now, a functional forerunner of the internet as far as the position it takes in a lot of people's daily lives. 20 years ago, regular Frenchies turned to Minitel for various information like everyone else does with the internet today. If you think ARPAnet was something any schmuck could dial-in to with his modem and get the weather and news- especially 30 years ago- you've got another thing coming to you...:P
Perhaps that (bad code available everywhere) is part of it... but a big part, perhaps more important, is the environment. Most programmers think an IDE is something that gets in the way, or simply gives you a hotkey for running make. With Smalltalk (or Lisp, Dylan and other languages with a badass IDE), the IDE very much contributes to this self-documenting aspect. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that a well-done IDE is 50% responsible for making a language self-documenting. Most of the rest if a simple language with sensical stylistic traditions.
But yeah, it certainly doesn't help when people simply download packages written by others which are poorly done. Especially when both the the interface/API is bad and the code is messy, no good.
Perhaps not a substantial body of code, I agree on that being bad form. However, with functions like sort, mapcar, lambdas are neccesary and handy. And functions that aren't sort or mapcar as well. Granted, most lambdas I write are fairly short- but I'm of the mind that if you're have a lambda that is more than the equivalent of a line or two, you should put it all into a function, let's say #'fn, and then (lambda (n) (fn n)), but I guess that goes without saying.:)
It may be hard to believe for some slashkiddies, but MS isn't the only company which can muscle its way around, or have business practices which do not benefit the consumer. No reason to not have more than one bad guy, at least on occasion...
Smalltalk is quite self-documenting. I'm sure most C/C++/java/Perl/Python programmers think you're joking when you talk about a "self-documenting language," but they're real.
A simple langauge plus a decent code browser can equal a self-documenting language. Methods are organized into logical groups (e.g. "accessing" "initialization" etc), and clicking on a category will tell you the methods there. Especially when there is a tradition for short (7 lines or less is the rule) methods, as in Smalltalk- you can usually see what the entire method is doing just by looking at it, if you cannot guess at what is is for by looking at the name.
People may think this is an exageration, especially if they're used to systems that require various man pages, books, and on-line class lib references just to write some code. Other than one book on Smalltalk style, I've not read any books on Smalltalk. I read some tutorials when I began, but after you learn the basic syntax [1], the very basic ideas [2], and especially, how to browse classes, you learn as you go, finding out classes to use as you need them.
[1] All of Smalltalk's syntax can be summarized as- a:= 1. ":= is assignment" obj + 2. "a binary message" obj methodName. "a unary messsage" obj methodName: argument. "a keyword message, unlim keywords" [:a:b | a + b ] "block creation- a block closure, aka anonymous subroutine"
[2] You don't even need to know anything about OOP or OOA/D- simpyl the rudiments of *object-based* programming... simply understand that an object is a chunk of data that can do certain things.
Umm... what is the point of moving your code to Python if it isn't in production? I can see not moving *all* of your important code fo Python, especially if you've just picked up on it, but around these parts, anything that is used for anything real counts as production.:P
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Careful son- you're not allowed to actually like PocketPC or Windows CE in this area. If they can't have a decent Linux PDA, most folks on here would rather use a PalmOS PDA that does less than a PocketPC.
But I agree with you. Especially in terms of OS, PocketPC is pretty powerful. There are lof of useful Unix-ey programs that run on it if you need them. (apache, perl, perl/tk, emacs, vim, gnuplot, etc) I like it a lot more than any desktop windows I've used- more stable, faster, and uses up very little RAM. And this is coming from someone who doesn't use windows or ms software on any of his machines, other than the Axim (only $200) and Jornada 720.
Actually, a lot of PDAs now a days don't have much of a range in their IRDA. I imagine this PDA which is supposed to be a remote has a more decent range. Various companies, at least for WinCE, sell CF cards that provide a new IR port with a much higher range. the IR on PDAs is meant to span 10 feet or so max in most cases, sometimes less. They are thinking of users will be beaming a business card or calendar date rather than using it as a remote control.
The battery is internal (but so are AAs in a Psion), but it is removable. That is, if you're willing to spend $50 on a new battery, you can have more than one- but the point about buying AAs still holds. I use rechargables in anything like this that uses AAs- why can't someone release a PDA that has AA batteries which are rechargable in the unit?
The only thing the C7x0 really does better is that is has a higher res screen- the keyboard on the C7x0 isn't really that special. It is a little bigger than that of a SL-5x00, but it isn't anything you can touch type on, which leaves you really no better off than you were with a SL-5x00. But then again, the A300 doesn't have any keyboard. If Qtopia ever gets character recognition that isn't so shitty, the A300 may get away with not having a keyboard.
Heck, I'd say that WinCE is even a bit more than an attempt at a functional OS- it achieves that goal pretty well. If for some reason I was forced to use a MS OS on my desktop, I would easily choose running WinCE 4 for x86 over 9x, 2k, XP, etc. On my Jornada 720, I've actually found it to take up a lot less RAM, perform a lot better, and have found it quite a bit more stable than any desktop Windows revision I've used.
And on the PDA, if I can't use Newton OS, WinCE seems to be the only usable option. PDA Linux is less robust, takes up more RAM, has a lot less software, and the existing software is a lot worse than what you can get for WinCE. I know slashdot isn't known for pragmatic people, but that is enough for me to suck up any pride over admitting to LUG members that I use WinCE and just reap the benefits of an environment and software that actually works.
Call me crazy!
All the reviews I've seen for the Zaurus machines focus primarily on the hardware, which is nice, but it's telling.
;)
Yup, it is. It also doesn't help that most of the people buying Zaurii in the US are already used to Linux cheerleading and the distorted reality that is second only to MacWorld.
And even then, the hardware isn't all that great in the SL-5x00. The bus speed is extraordinarily fast- 100 MHz as opposed to the 30-50 MHz often seen in most PDAs with the same 206 MHz SA-1100. The keyboard is cute, but if the Zaurus had real handwriting recognition (ala CalliGrapher for WinCE or EPOC32, Newton OS 2.x HWR) or even semi-decent character recognition, the keyboard would irrelevant. The thumboard on a SL-5500 allows you to type, although very slow. I can write up an email, irc, or admin via SSH a lot faster using the built-in PocketPC character recognizer than I can using the SL-5x00 thumboard.
Telling because the stock applications are shite. The wordprocessor is shite, the spreadsheet is shite, the power point presenter is shite, the agenda is shite, the media player is shite and the todo list is shite.
Actually, the Hancom apps aren't that bad- in some ways, they are better than comes with PocketPC. But then again, those suck too, especially compared to what you'd think Microsoft could do with their own file formats, their own applications on their own platform.
One thing you gotta admit is good about the Zaurus are the browsers- Opera 5 (and the newly released Opera 6 with the 3.10 ROM) and Konq are the fastest browsers I've used on any PDA. But then again, when you only get a piddly-ass single hour of battery life when browsing the web usign a Zaurus and low-power Socket Wifi card, what the
hell good does a decent web browser do you?
There isn't one half-usable notetaking app on the Zaurus. It's sad really- when I've told fellow Zaurus users this, most reply that you shouldn't use the Zaurus for taking notes, you should use a pencil and paper. Evidentally, the Z is only good for silly demos at LUG meetings, and folks who ned to do silly stuff like "real work" should stick with their Newton, WinCE, or Psion PDA...
Yes, the PIM apps all suck. tkcPlayer is OK, uses a lot less CPU than the inbuilt media player.
Another huge thing that sucks about Zaurus software is that it seems Qt/Embedded really wasn't made for pen-based applications. It is damned near impossible to do anything outside of the very confined model for event-gathering- and that event-model is really built for mice and not for stylii. There is a reason you can't get any full-screen character recognition ala Graffiti 2 or xstroke for the Z...
Oh, I have an SL-5500, and a Psion, so I know what could have been done with the hardware spec of the Zaurus and some half decent developers.
It gets a low D from me. Could have done a fuck of a lot better.
I'd give it a C-. Since I don't think it is worth owning or putting up with any PDA that scores so low, I sold it after only 5 weeks of owning it.
Yup, same deal... hopefully. It's too bad Sharp doesn't release them here. Perhaps down the line, when they work out all the bugs that seem to come with the current territory of running Linux on a PDA- the Japanese market seems to be a little bit more forgiving with these things.
Graphic card (this is the one I mentioned above; I think it's the first CF-slot video card I've heard of)
It may have just been the first CF-slot video card you've heard of for Linux PDAs rather than any and all platforms... But in any case, WinCE PDAs/PocketPCs have supported a number of VGA out CF cards for quite a while, some proving some pretty badass resolutions.
According to the page, the SL-C760 gets 8.5 hours use on battery. The SL-C750 gets 5 hours.
Damn, it's about time. Boy was it a shock when I made an attempt to switch from using my Newton 2100 and Jornada 720 to the Zaurus SL-5500. I'm used to being able to do hours and hours of work on my PDA in a day without having to recharge... The SL-5500 gets 3-4 hours when you have *no* backlight, no network card, and are just doing a low-CPU activity like reading an ebook... but when you want to be browsing the web using konq or opera using a wifi card, esp if you have the backlight on- even at its lowest- it pushes that battery life down to like 1.25 hours. disgusting. good to see that more power efficient CPU and a biger battery!
Isn't the Linux Journal article a review of the C700, not either of these newer models? Granted, the C700 isn't all that much different from the C760 or C750, excepting the much faster processor in the latter. Although, given the slowness of stuff on the previous Sharp Linux PDAs (SL-5x00, C700, A300) compared to a WinCE or PalmOS PDA with the same CPU, that faster CPU and faster bus surely makes a big difference.
The screen is nice? Was it bright, and crisp? The resolution is definately a plus.
I owned a SL-5500... for about 5 weeks. Sold it last week. I have never seen a shittier screen on a PDA before, I'd be embarassed if I were Sharp.
Oddly enough, one week after buying the Zaurus SL-5500, I won a Dell Axim X5 at a conference I was presenting Dynapad. After doing various research after getting the Axim, I was surprised to find out that Sharp makes the both the screens in the Zaurus as well that in the Axim... The Axim screen is probably the best color PDA screen I've ever seen- very, very bright and incredibly crisp. The Axim screen at the *lowest* brightness settign was a little brighter than the 5500 or 5600s at the highest. Seems ironic that Sharp makes the best and the worst- when that happens, you usually see the company keeping the best for their own products, but not sharp!
Umm... There isn't a need for an emulation package for the C7x0 to run 5500 apps. The XScale is a CPU which runs the same ARM instruction as the StrongARM SA-1100 in the 5500, with some additions.
CeBit? Are you sure that you didn't play with a SL-C700, not a SL-C750 or C760? The SL-750/60 have *just* been announced, whereas the C700 has been around for at least 6 months. The C700 also has the problem you mention about speed- the XScale PXA250 processor at 400 MHz runs everything about the same speed as a 206 MHz StrongARM SA-1100, under both Linux and WindowsCE. However, these new models, the C750 and C760, both use the XScale PXA255, which runs almost twice as fast as the PXA250 at 400 MHz and the SA-1100 at 206 MHz. I think you saw the C700 at CeBit, which looks the same, has all the same features (the 760 has 128 rather than 64 MB of storage tho), excepting the crappier processor.
You know, it's kind of always been my dream to be an Emperor. I want to have power over a bunch of people that will do my bidding, but at the same time, I don't know anything about how to cultivate, develop, or consolodate power. I've never had any sort of public service job, and I'm really not sure how government works. Oh, and I'm not charasmatic and I'm afraid of speaking to crowds. I hope that's not a problem. Anywho, anyone have any tips on how I could become the Emperor of the Known Universe? After all, it shouldn't be that hard- everyone should be able to just look at me and realize that I'm their best option for benevolent ruler.
You can fold and rotate them into iPaq-style format, they keyboard however is essential for SSH. The Z also has a decent stylus control system, great handriting recognition and an ok on screen keyboard.
The Zaurus has no handwriting recognition, let alone great handwriting recognition. It does have character recognition, although it is quite sucky. On the SL-5500 with the stock sharp v2.38 ROM, it takes a good 500-750 ms for it to recognize a letter. <shudder> If you've never used real HWR (e.g. Newton OS HWR or CalliGrapher or Trasncriber for WinCE) or even a semi-decent character recognizer, it may seem cool, but half a second is not acceptable for almost any sort of data entry. And yes, that is with the multi-stroke delay turned down to 250 ms, as far as it can go, and without any new training strokes. People often point to the Z's CR system as being cool because you can train it. Training the CR system is probably the worst thing to do- it takes even longer if you've got one stroke for most of the letters!
It recognizes numbers and symbols much faster, which leads me to believe that it is slow with letters because there are more characters/stroke dictionaries to iterate through looking for a match...
I have heard that CR in the new Sharp 3.10 ROM is faster, and I hope to god it is. I sold my Zaurus SL-5500 last week and didn't get the chance to try it out, unfortunately. For the sake of all current and future Zaurus users, I really hope it has improved.
If you don't use SSH on a regular basis, then a Zaurus may not be for you anyway.
I certainly hope no one out there is buying a Zaurus just because of SSH. I guess it wouldn't be so bad if using SSH was a driving factor behind buying something with a decent keyboard like a Psion, but I don't think I'd even want to do anything but trivial SSHing on a C7x0 and especially not on a SL-5500. It seems to be a pretty commonly held myth that you can't do telnet or ssh on anything but a Linux handheld. Heck, I sit here now, typing this message on my WinCE-based Jornada 720 with a SSH session open to my email also open. Unlike the C7x0 it has a real, touch-typable keyboard. It is no wider or thicker than a C7x0, but 1.5" longer and with a better designed keyboard. Same with a Psion.
WinCE has been able to do SSH for a really long time, contrary to popular slashdot ignorance. Now, you didn't say anything about WinCE not being able to do SSH, but inevitably in this article, people will reccomend getting a Zaurus- C7x0 or 5x00 alike- if you need to do SSH on the go.
The SL-C7x00 Zaurii are very small. Not much bigger than a Zaurus SL-5500... A little thicker and a little wider perhaps.
As someone who uses a keyboarded PDA, the Jornada 720, as a real computer, I had some high hopes for the SL-C7x00 series of Zaurus. But then I finally saw one- the keyboard isn't really all that useful. I mean, it isn't something you can touch type on, like with a Psion keyboard or that on the Jornada 720 (...as I type even this post), but more of a slightly-bigger thumboard. Not a cramped home row, just hunt and peckage with your thumbs or perhaps two index fingers. Kind of disapointing- I almost dropped some serious cash on one, hoping for it to replace my J720 and Newton 2100 with one device.
I wasn't saying that multi-user BBSes were better than Minitel, just asking about Minitel while informing others about the existance of BBSes.
A shame only France had this-could've been useful just about anywhere!
mmmm Fidonet.
:)
We had some terminals like that at the Twin Cities Freenet (Mpls, Minnesota) that we gave to those who couldn't afford a computer. I used to volunteer for the TCFN, doing support stuff, mostly answering voicemails. Can't remember the particular brand anymore... Some phoen company gave us oodles of 'em.
Quite the contrary- a lot of BBSes were multi-user and networked. The boards I used to call and the one I ran were all single-user, single-modem, but that was a matter of preference. (the BBS software I very much preferred- Citadel 86 represent! - only supported one user at a time) A lot of these big, multi-line boards were popular, supporting live chat and a lot of file transfers.
Question for anyone: does Minitel support user forums, message boards and/or live chats ala irc?
I'm not doing anything as absurd as saying that America had a system which was functionally equivalent to Minitel, simply drawing a comparison and mentioning it.
The article seems to imply that prior to the internet, none but the Frenchies had this kind of information service available to them. I dunno about anyone else here, but for me, the functional forerunner of the internet, and what I used well into 1999 (even though I started using the internet around 1991) were BBSes. There were also paid information services like PC-Link, Apple's eWorld, CompuServe, Prodigy, AOL... some being around since the early 80s, other latercomers.
Of course, the percentage of American households calling up these BBSes and commercial ISes was probably lower than households which use their Minitel box with any sort of regularity, but I just felt the need to point out another thing that served as a functionally proto-internet.
Yes, it was a dumb mistake on the author's part, exposed to all the ravenous non-believers. He is talking about the internet as we know it now, a functional forerunner of the internet as far as the position it takes in a lot of people's daily lives. 20 years ago, regular Frenchies turned to Minitel for various information like everyone else does with the internet today. If you think ARPAnet was something any schmuck could dial-in to with his modem and get the weather and news- especially 30 years ago- you've got another thing coming to you... :P
Perhaps that (bad code available everywhere) is part of it... but a big part, perhaps more important, is the environment. Most programmers think an IDE is something that gets in the way, or simply gives you a hotkey for running make. With Smalltalk (or Lisp, Dylan and other languages with a badass IDE), the IDE very much contributes to this self-documenting aspect. Hell, I'd go so far as to say that a well-done IDE is 50% responsible for making a language self-documenting. Most of the rest if a simple language with sensical stylistic traditions.
But yeah, it certainly doesn't help when people simply download packages written by others which are poorly done. Especially when both the the interface/API is bad and the code is messy, no good.
Perhaps not a substantial body of code, I agree on that being bad form. However, with functions like sort, mapcar, lambdas are neccesary and handy. And functions that aren't sort or mapcar as well. Granted, most lambdas I write are fairly short- but I'm of the mind that if you're have a lambda that is more than the equivalent of a line or two, you should put it all into a function, let's say #'fn, and then (lambda (n) (fn n)), but I guess that goes without saying. :)
Nope, it's optical.
Think of what a solid-state 1.8 GB cart would cost per unit... EGADS!
...shoulda bought a GameCube... :)
It may be hard to believe for some slashkiddies, but MS isn't the only company which can muscle its way around, or have business practices which do not benefit the consumer. No reason to not have more than one bad guy, at least on occasion...
Smalltalk is quite self-documenting. I'm sure most C/C++/java/Perl/Python programmers think you're joking when you talk about a "self-documenting language," but they're real.
:= 1. ":= is assignment" :a :b | a + b ] "block creation- a block closure, aka anonymous subroutine"
A simple langauge plus a decent code browser can equal a self-documenting language. Methods are organized into logical groups (e.g. "accessing" "initialization" etc), and clicking on a category will tell you the methods there. Especially when there is a tradition for short (7 lines or less is the rule) methods, as in Smalltalk- you can usually see what the entire method is doing just by looking at it, if you cannot guess at what is is for by looking at the name.
People may think this is an exageration, especially if they're used to systems that require various man pages, books, and on-line class lib references just to write some code. Other than one book on Smalltalk style, I've not read any books on Smalltalk. I read some tutorials when I began, but after you learn the basic syntax [1], the very basic ideas [2], and especially, how to browse classes, you learn as you go, finding out classes to use as you need them.
[1] All of Smalltalk's syntax can be summarized as-
a
obj + 2. "a binary message"
obj methodName. "a unary messsage"
obj methodName: argument. "a keyword message, unlim keywords"
[
[2] You don't even need to know anything about OOP or OOA/D- simpyl the rudiments of *object-based* programming... simply understand that an object is a chunk of data that can do certain things.
Umm... what is the point of moving your code to Python if it isn't in production? I can see not moving *all* of your important code fo Python, especially if you've just picked up on it, but around these parts, anything that is used for anything real counts as production. :P