The reason is that we (hackers, geeks) aren't the intended market. The "Average Joe" is, and KISS is very important, and they have a limited storage space. (64MB (compressed)) Openssh on a SL-5500 Zaurus takes up 3MB (uncompressed)
"special" package requiring cash, nope.
PS. I own one, heck I was the person to first get mplayer ported to it. We also have the battle of the media players xmms-embedded/mplayer vs opieplayer2/xine (right now, x/m is much much better), but your average person DOESN'T care. They just use the lousy built-in player for the most part.
Re:Will This be Linux's first killer app?
on
AMD's 64-bit Plot
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· Score: 2
32-bit version (essentially the top 32-bits got chopped off)
It wasn't bad, A HELL of a lot more stable than ANY x86 windows I have worked with. (As in about as stable as linux on alpha)
Not much is true, my Zaurus plays full screen (320x240) divx files with mp3 just fine thank you, and it only has 32MB usable RAM type memory (the other 32MB of ram is dedicated ((by default) to storage)
You don't need it.
on
Review: EyeTV
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· Score: 3, Offtopic
if you are building a linux box for PVR, use mencoder to capture DIRECTLY TO DIVX/MPEG4. Last night I captured an episode of smallville directly from cable, and it looks great.
CPU usage was about 50% on one cpu (800 MHz P3 (box is dual) filesize is 374.5MB (using default VBR mp3 and a vbitrate of 800 (default)) it can be reencoded to a lower bitrate and nearly the same quality if you turn vhq on (Very High Quality) in mencoder (note this is without commercials taken out (57 minutes, most shows are about 43 mins with them out so: about 280 MB with commercials edited out.
Box used:
dual P3 800
256MB RAM
ATI TV Wonder VE (~$30 when I got it)
mplayer/encoder 0.90pre10
redhat 7.3
Command line used (or one that has been used, not sure this is the EXACT one I used for smallville):
mencoder -tv on:driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:input=0:norm=NT SC:outfmt=rgb32:freq=83.250 -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -o test6.avi
This comes with a disclaimer though, there isn't a nice frontend to recording to mplayer. freevo (freevo.sourceforge.net) is working on easy recording though.
No, all of the current palms are based on dragonball cpus (m68k) and are at best 66MHz.
It might be theoretically possible (though not good quality) to have decent video on the m68k palms, if someone hand coded the player. Heck they can't even play mp3s*.
The ARM based palms that are supposed to be coming out (for quite a while now) will be capable of it.
Nope, at least long enough for an hour-long episode of most anything. (divx/mpeg4 off cf card) I have previously watched a whole episode of babylon 5 (mpeg1 I believe) over the internet via wireless (802.11b)
This is using mplayer-0.90pre5 for the b5 and mplayer-0.90pre8 for the divx (pre5 could have/can, but I just didn't play a long divx on it.)
Re:Lots of pretty doctored pictures
on
Zaurus 5600 Announced
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· Score: 2, Informative
What that appears to be is screenshots captured from a VNC viewer (specifically for zaurus) running on a pc, connected to a VNC server on a Zaurus.
There isn't (in fact most public utilities are government-sanctioned monopolies) HOWEVER, it is illegal to use one monopoly to attempt to force the creation of another (bad wording, let me try again) You can't leverage one monopoly to create another. (For example: if the Xbox wipes out Sony, Nintendo, et al Their US divisions could probably sue the crap out of Microsoft, because Microsoft used the profits from it's Windows monopoly to subsidize the Xbox, and are trying to force people who develop for windows and console to develop on Xbox (though not in those terms)(see EA's reaction to Xbox's licencing, for a much better explanation)(Though I seriously doubt Xbox will)
Basically a monopoly is not illegal. A monopoly that is used to create others is illegal (see so called 'anti-trust' acts (example of Windows creating monopolies or at the least attempted monopolies of IE, MS Office (though they may not be legally declared monopolies, and I think their percent is lower than reported, but they are very high.)
SGI and their 'tempature monitoring system' (or something like that)
SGI supposedly (never have seen it on SGI's site (nor looked) or seen one in person) on some of their higher end machines put basically a lcd on the side that was modified by tempature, or some such. it was said to be for the above, but everyone who looked at it or designed it knew the reason: if it is real expensive and supposed to be high tech, it should look that way.
I can see that. The Zaurus with it's screen protector on is almost as protected, and it is easier (in my opinion) to have a pressure bread on something through the back of an lcd (how most laptop LCDs I know the cause of breaking are-too much pressure (aside from chairs) by books, or other things that shouldn't damage it (or would seem like they shouldn't, anyway.Not knocking your decision, because the Zaurus with the Protector off is rather fragile, not that folded out a yopi will be any safer. (And the cause of at least 2 Zaurus' screens breaking that I am aware of or at least reported)
As for design, it is a choice. I personally would prefer the 'old' Zaurus, and it's smaller, but qwerty keyboard.
What about voice commands? Can any of them handle that out-of-the-box yet?
Processor-wise and hardware-wise, yes. Any of the StrongARMs should be able to handle one (admittedly not as complex as ViaVoice)
There are people working on getting CMU Sphinx (speech recognizer) to run on Zaurus and do neat things. CMU flite (CMU festival lite, speech sythesis) is working on Zaurus and Ipaq (running linux) and sounds pretty good.
I have heard there is a program to have WinPPC 2002 do it, but it is $40 at a minimum.
One advantage to a larger size would be increased battery life (unless Sharp decides to use all the space for 'new' features). The battery in the current Zaurus (actually SL-5000D and SL-5500) is a Li-Ion 2.7V 950mAh battery. Changing that to Lithium -Polymer and making it bigger would result in a huge improvement in battery life (one of the biggest complaints I have heard. (I personally find the battery life just fine))
No mention of processor (My guess is Xscale), because if they don't no one will be able to play back full screen video (mplayer has to frame drop on the 206MHz SA-1100 in the SL-5500 (current model)) either that or a real video device instead of the memory mapped framebuffer it has.
How much RAM? and if they are putting it in a notebook like design, PCMCIA, CF, SD, internal microdrive?
I personally don't like the idea of a fold out, but it might work.
Don't get me wrong: I love my zaurus, (shameless ego building: I even ported mplayer to it (mostly due to the wonderful other people working on mplayer), but I did it first:) ) This article on the other hand is not really worth actually reading the article (cept to find out where it will be previewed.)
Advantage to Ipaq, of course I can't find the official H38xx battery specs because of Compaq/HP's website being down. (and I am too lazy to look for them other places)
OK, so you can get a Zaurus and an extra battery for $100 less than an Ipaq.
and have the Zaurus users go "NYAHHHH" right back because you have a less capable piece of hardware (excluding the H39xx) for more money.
Rundown H38xx vs Zaurus
Processor: Same (206MHz SA-1100 StrongArm)
RAM: Same (64MB)
ROM: 32MB (Ipaq) 16MB (Zaurus) (Slight advantage to Ipaq)
Expansion: SD (Ipaq) SD and CF (Zaurus)*
Software: Functionally equivelent
Input: Onscreen (Ipaq) Onscreen and Keyboard (Zaurus)
Price: 550 (w/mail in rebate, compaq, bestbuy) (Ipaq) 400 (Compusa) (Zaurus)
For ~2/3 the price, you get a machine that is more expandable and otherwise nearly identical in feature set.
*Yes, CF and PCMCIA slots can be obtained for Ipaqs but for an extra 30(the absolute cheapest I have seen them for)-100+ USD (Zaurus users can get a CF->PCMCIA adapter for 30-70. USD)
In addition, if running linux the ipaq is limited to mmc cards, because of SD's licencing. This semi-applies to openzaurus, but they can load sharp's module.
I personally perfer mplayer (mostly because I ported it) it plays stuff based on ffmpeg's codec.
Opie player 2 is better in many ways though, because it supports OGG, MP3, MPEG4 (divx), MPEG1, MPEG2, RV10 (early real video codec) (ffpeg's codec) and has a pretty graphical front end.
Some of The Kompany's stuff looks interesting, but their multimedia stuff is just a rip off. (tkcVideo uses ffmpeg as the backend (which is also used by opie player 2 and mplayer, all it provides is a $10 pretty GUI, which opie player 2 does as well now)
Slashdot Mirror
"special" package requiring cash, nope.
PS. I own one, heck I was the person to first get mplayer ported to it. We also have the battle of the media players xmms-embedded/mplayer vs opieplayer2/xine (right now, x/m is much much better), but your average person DOESN'T care. They just use the lousy built-in player for the most part.
It wasn't bad, A HELL of a lot more stable than ANY x86 windows I have worked with. (As in about as stable as linux on alpha)
Not much is true, my Zaurus plays full screen (320x240) divx files with mp3 just fine thank you, and it only has 32MB usable RAM type memory (the other 32MB of ram is dedicated ((by default) to storage)
CPU usage was about 50% on one cpu (800 MHz P3 (box is dual) filesize is 374.5MB (using default VBR mp3 and a vbitrate of 800 (default)) it can be reencoded to a lower bitrate and nearly the same quality if you turn vhq on (Very High Quality) in mencoder (note this is without commercials taken out (57 minutes, most shows are about 43 mins with them out so: about 280 MB with commercials edited out.
Box used: dual P3 800
256MB RAM
ATI TV Wonder VE (~$30 when I got it)
mplayer/encoder 0.90pre10
redhat 7.3
Command line used (or one that has been used, not sure this is the EXACT one I used for smallville):T SC:outfmt=rgb32:freq=83.250 -oac mp3lame -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4 -o test6.avi
mencoder -tv on:driver=v4l:width=320:height=240:input=0:norm=N
This comes with a disclaimer though, there isn't a nice frontend to recording to mplayer. freevo (freevo.sourceforge.net) is working on easy recording though.
It might be theoretically possible (though not good quality) to have decent video on the m68k palms, if someone hand coded the player. Heck they can't even play mp3s*.
The ARM based palms that are supposed to be coming out (for quite a while now) will be capable of it.
*excluding addons of course.
This is using mplayer-0.90pre5 for the b5 and mplayer-0.90pre8 for the divx (pre5 could have/can, but I just didn't play a long divx on it.)
What that appears to be is screenshots captured from a VNC viewer (specifically for zaurus) running on a pc, connected to a VNC server on a Zaurus.
Basically a monopoly is not illegal. A monopoly that is used to create others is illegal (see so called 'anti-trust' acts (example of Windows creating monopolies or at the least attempted monopolies of IE, MS Office (though they may not be legally declared monopolies, and I think their percent is lower than reported, but they are very high.)
Stereo out -> stereo in
problem solved.
SGI supposedly (never have seen it on SGI's site (nor looked) or seen one in person) on some of their higher end machines put basically a lcd on the side that was modified by tempature, or some such. it was said to be for the above, but everyone who looked at it or designed it knew the reason: if it is real expensive and supposed to be high tech, it should look that way.
As for design, it is a choice. I personally would prefer the 'old' Zaurus, and it's smaller, but qwerty keyboard.
oops, meant to say that there is a SYNTHESIS program for PPC 2002. I don't know of a recognizer for PPC 2002, comercial or otherwise.
Processor-wise and hardware-wise, yes. Any of the StrongARMs should be able to handle one (admittedly not as complex as ViaVoice)
There are people working on getting CMU Sphinx (speech recognizer) to run on Zaurus and do neat things. CMU flite (CMU festival lite, speech sythesis) is working on Zaurus and Ipaq (running linux) and sounds pretty good.
I have heard there is a program to have WinPPC 2002 do it, but it is $40 at a minimum.
One advantage to a larger size would be increased battery life (unless Sharp decides to use all the space for 'new' features). The battery in the current Zaurus (actually SL-5000D and SL-5500) is a Li-Ion 2.7V 950mAh battery. Changing that to Lithium -Polymer and making it bigger would result in a huge improvement in battery life (one of the biggest complaints I have heard. (I personally find the battery life just fine))
No mention of processor (My guess is Xscale), because if they don't no one will be able to play back full screen video (mplayer has to frame drop on the 206MHz SA-1100 in the SL-5500 (current model)) either that or a real video device instead of the memory mapped framebuffer it has.
How much RAM? and if they are putting it in a notebook like design, PCMCIA, CF, SD, internal microdrive?
I personally don't like the idea of a fold out, but it might work.
Don't get me wrong: I love my zaurus, (shameless ego building: I even ported mplayer to it (mostly due to the wonderful other people working on mplayer), but I did it first :) ) This article on the other hand is not really worth actually reading the article (cept to find out where it will be previewed.)
GPL = GPL Public Licence.
Now what does GPL stand for?
Stack overflow. :)
with partner=google workie
after google, parner= workie sorry about the workie, I just feel strange right now.
battery: Ipaq-H38xx unknown, H39xx 1400mAh unknown voltage. Zaurus-3.7V 950 mAh
Advantage to Ipaq, of course I can't find the official H38xx battery specs because of Compaq/HP's website being down. (and I am too lazy to look for them other places)
OK, so you can get a Zaurus and an extra battery for $100 less than an Ipaq.
http://people.inf.elte.hu/isten/xmms/
Rundown H38xx vs Zaurus
Processor: Same (206MHz SA-1100 StrongArm)
RAM: Same (64MB)
ROM: 32MB (Ipaq) 16MB (Zaurus) (Slight advantage to Ipaq)
Expansion: SD (Ipaq) SD and CF (Zaurus)*
Software: Functionally equivelent
Input: Onscreen (Ipaq) Onscreen and Keyboard (Zaurus)
Price: 550 (w/mail in rebate, compaq, bestbuy) (Ipaq) 400 (Compusa) (Zaurus)
For ~2/3 the price, you get a machine that is more expandable and otherwise nearly identical in feature set.
*Yes, CF and PCMCIA slots can be obtained for Ipaqs but for an extra 30(the absolute cheapest I have seen them for)-100+ USD (Zaurus users can get a CF->PCMCIA adapter for 30-70. USD)
In addition, if running linux the ipaq is limited to mmc cards, because of SD's licencing. This semi-applies to openzaurus, but they can load sharp's module.
When you power on the machine hit (/ ?) when it says "waiting ... " then chose a (linux console)
oops, I was thinking of a different player (bbplay which is for Ipaq)
Though I suppose it should be called QMMS now because it isn't in X anymore
Opie player 2 is better in many ways though, because it supports OGG, MP3, MPEG4 (divx), MPEG1, MPEG2, RV10 (early real video codec) (ffpeg's codec) and has a pretty graphical front end.
Some of The Kompany's stuff looks interesting, but their multimedia stuff is just a rip off. (tkcVideo uses ffmpeg as the backend (which is also used by opie player 2 and mplayer, all it provides is a $10 pretty GUI, which opie player 2 does as well now)
OK, if you are going to express it, express it this way:
DEC Alpha Geek Compaq/HP/Intel Hater.:)