Any Zaurus users here?

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: Jason Shein <jshein-rieW9WUcm8FFJ04o6PK0Fg at public.gmane.org>

| Looking into making the plunge, and puchasing a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 or
| SL-5600.  Anyone have any experiences with these? Is the 5600 really
| worth the extra $$$? 
| 
| But a linux based pda to replace my ailing palm pilot would be sweet ;)

I have a 5500.  They were end-of-lined by Sharp and dumped through
Home Shopping Network and Tiger Direct for US$200 earlier this year.
I bought a couple through tigerdirect.ca; I think that they are all
gone now.

I don't need a PDA so I haven't tried to use it as such.  I bought it
to be an amazingly small and portable LINUX box.

I think of it as a toy (this is not meant as an insult).  I did find
it to be a good laptop replacement for picking up email.  Awkward for
email, but far easier to carry.  I used it this way at OLS.

I would rather have had one of the new Japan-only origami clamshell
models.  Successors to the C700.
- 4 times the screen pixels (640x480)
- better keyboard
- more SDRAM (128M)
- twice the CPU power (maybe)
Apparently OpenZaurus will work on this hardware, so there need not
be a language barrier to using it.

I didn't like the idea of the 5600.  It has half the SDRAM of the 5500
(32M vs 64M).  Flash can be supplied externally, but RAM cannot.

The XScale at 400MHz initially disappointed people.  It wasn't
significantly faster than the StrongArm at 200MHz.  There was
apparently some problem with memory access that may have been fixed in
later steppings (i.e. a chip problem).

I'm not sure that the Zaurus market is healthy.  Fewer US stores carry
it.  It may no longer be available in Europe.  There is talk about
vertical applications.

I think that the 5500 was a steal at the C$300 I paid.  Then I doubled
this buying SD flash, CF flash, and CF 802.11b :-)

I like the fact that it has SD and CF slots and keyboard built in.  I
would like a speaker.  I would like it to be able to be a USB master,
not just slave (not sure the official terminology).  Batteries are
always an issue with PDAs.

Hugh Redelmeier
hugh-pmF8o41NoarQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org  voice: +1 416 482-8253

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