I too was on the SharpMobile beta, but as a lot of the posts point out, CDPD is too slow these days. Sharp's modem is a little large (that battery I guess), but coverage in Manhattan is great. However, the Symbol Bluetooth card and an Ericsson T39m (or T68i these days) absolutely rocks. OK, you have to be comfortable with the command line and a little fiddly set-up. Sharp's solution is for the consumer, but never the less - go for Bluetooth and a phone.
Rgds
Adrian
If you have to have tactile feedback, then this wouldn't be for you. I have been using a keyboard/mouse http://www.fingerworks.com/stealth_product.html with no tactile feedback for 2 months now, and love it. Works really well, and is just "different" from a regular keyboard.
However, one huge problem I see with the projected keyboard is finding the home keys. The Stealth has little bumps on all the home keys, and they are VITAL. It allows you to QUICKLY realign the fingers every time you pause. It would be very time consuming if you had to look at the keyboard each time. The realignment is necessary since you don't get to sense hand drift at each key press the way you do with a normak keyboard.
I have to say it looks really cool, but after having used most PDAs since the first Apple Newton, cool doesn't make it a consumer product like the Palm.
IMHO what makes it "consumer" is apps and synchronization. I am sure the apps will come, but I was dissapointed in the article because it talked nothing about synchronisation. What does it work with? At a minimum I would hope it does Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora, (Mac and PC where applicable) and given it's pedigree, I would dearly hope Ximian's Evolution. But it has to do it better than their Palm connection, and people have to write conduits for Linux as well as apps for the Zarius.
Does anyone have any info on the Zarius' connectivity?
I really don't see what archiving has to do with camera storage. History is archived on all sorts of media today (from cave paintings to microfiche to disk). I don't see how digital pictures alter that process much.
If I was concerned about the issue at all, I would worry about the preservation of news that only appears on web sites - Does CNN provide public access to ALL its old articles? I doubt it. I am sure off-line archiving goes on at some point. The question is then, how do historians get at all the off-line data?
Oops, I guess we are back to finding Microfiche in libraries again - so I guess I really don't see the issue here...
Slashdot Mirror
I too was on the SharpMobile beta, but as a lot of the posts point out, CDPD is too slow these days. Sharp's modem is a little large (that battery I guess), but coverage in Manhattan is great. However, the Symbol Bluetooth card and an Ericsson T39m (or T68i these days) absolutely rocks. OK, you have to be comfortable with the command line and a little fiddly set-up. Sharp's solution is for the consumer, but never the less - go for Bluetooth and a phone. Rgds Adrian
If you have to have tactile feedback, then this wouldn't be for you. I have been using a keyboard/mouse http://www.fingerworks.com/stealth_product.html with no tactile feedback for 2 months now, and love it. Works really well, and is just "different" from a regular keyboard.
However, one huge problem I see with the projected keyboard is finding the home keys. The Stealth has little bumps on all the home keys, and they are VITAL. It allows you to QUICKLY realign the fingers every time you pause. It would be very time consuming if you had to look at the keyboard each time. The realignment is necessary since you don't get to sense hand drift at each key press the way you do with a normak keyboard.
Adrian
I have to say it looks really cool, but after having used most PDAs since the first Apple Newton, cool doesn't make it a consumer product like the Palm. IMHO what makes it "consumer" is apps and synchronization. I am sure the apps will come, but I was dissapointed in the article because it talked nothing about synchronisation. What does it work with? At a minimum I would hope it does Outlook, Outlook Express, Netscape, Eudora, (Mac and PC where applicable) and given it's pedigree, I would dearly hope Ximian's Evolution. But it has to do it better than their Palm connection, and people have to write conduits for Linux as well as apps for the Zarius. Does anyone have any info on the Zarius' connectivity?
If I was concerned about the issue at all, I would worry about the preservation of news that only appears on web sites - Does CNN provide public access to ALL its old articles? I doubt it. I am sure off-line archiving goes on at some point. The question is then, how do historians get at all the off-line data?
Oops, I guess we are back to finding Microfiche in libraries again - so I guess I really don't see the issue here...