Why I haven't yet bought a Zaurus
Yeechang Lee
exclusively running Linux at home for seven years this month. I've
owned three Palm-based PDAs over the past six years. I love gadgets of
all kinds, and certainly there have been many, many times I've wished
for a command line on my PDA to kill an errant application. Yet I
haven't put the money down for a Zaurus. Why?
Because I don't want to carry two PDAs around, and because I keep
hearing about the weaknesses in the Zaurus' built-in
applications. This is especially sad considering that Palm's
addressbook, datebook, to-do list, and memo pad haven't changed
significantly in almost seven years. They haven't changed because
there was never much wrong with them in the first place.
I like how my current Sony Clié has every appointment and phone
numbers going back to April 1997 when I purchased my first 3Com Palm
Pilot. I like being able to smoothly sync them with jpilot on my Linux
box. Yes, I know Qtopia Desktop is available for Linux, but what's the
point of synching them if the PDA apps aren't up to snuff? Is this too
much to ask?
(I'm also awaiting the release of a factory-localized version of the
C-700 in the US, but that's another story.)
--
Deep Thoughts @ <URL:http://dobie.dynip.com/blog/> PERTH ----> *
1:36pm up 1 day, 2:15, 14 users, load average: 8.58, 8.29, 8.40
177 processes: 170 sleeping, 4 running, 2 zombie, 1 stopped
CPU states: 17.1% user, 10.2% system, 27.0% nice, 0.0% idle
Johnny
well, but I am not hoping for to much it will ease the disappointment
when it gets here, it does look SWEET from the pictures that I have
seen.
Johnny
On 22 Jan 2003 21:45:05 GMT, Yeechang Lee <yl...@pobox.com> hoped
someone was listening and typed into the usenet void:
>At first glance I should be a slam dunk customer for Sharp. I've been
>exclusively running Linux at home for seven years this month. I've
>owned three Palm-based PDAs over the past six years. I love gadgets of
>all kinds, and certainly there have been many, many times I've wished
>for a command line on my PDA to kill an errant application. Yet I
>haven't put the money down for a Zaurus. Why?
>
>Because I don't want to carry two PDAs around, and because I keep
>hearing about the weaknesses in the Zaurus' built-in
>applications. This is especially sad considering that Palm's
>addressbook, datebook, to-do list, and memo pad haven't changed
>significantly in almost seven years. They haven't changed because
>there was never much wrong with them in the first place.
>
>I like how my current Sony Clié has every appointment and phone
>numbers going back to April 1997 when I purchased my first 3Com Palm
>Pilot. I like being able to smoothly sync them with jpilot on my Linux
>box. Yes, I know Qtopia Desktop is available for Linux, but what's the
>point of synching them if the PDA apps aren't up to snuff? Is this too
>much to ask?
>
>(I'm also awaiting the release of a factory-localized version of the
>C-700 in the US, but that's another story.)
____________________________________________________________________________________________
http://www.livingwaters.com/interview/
1 "You shall therefore love the LORD your God, and always keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments." - Deuteronomy 11:1
Daniel James
In article <slrnb2u47...@pobox.com>, Yeechang Lee wrote:
> I keep hearing about the weaknesses in the Zaurus' built-in
> applications.
They are relatively poor applications, certainly. Even the Pocket PC
apps beat them in some (most?) repsects.
> This is especially sad considering that Palm's
> addressbook, datebook, to-do list, and memo pad haven't changed
> significantly in almost seven years. They haven't changed because
> there was never much wrong with them in the first place.
There is nothing *wrong* with them, but they too seem relatively poorly
featured when compared with the applications in the Psion 3a, which
predates the first Palm by about three years.
Why does nobody ever seem to learn from the strengths of their
predecessors? I don't know. Maybe they're just frightened of getting
sued?
Cheers,
Daniel.
David Mitchell
> At first glance I should be a slam dunk customer for Sharp. I've been
> exclusively running Linux at home for seven years this month. I've owned
> three Palm-based PDAs over the past six years. I love gadgets of all
> kinds, and certainly there have been many, many times I've wished for a
> command line on my PDA to kill an errant application. Yet I haven't put
> the money down for a Zaurus. Why?
...
I was in the same position as you a few months back. I had a beat-up old
Parm 3C that I found just great - all my appointments and contacts were in
it, and it hadn't missed a beat since the day I bought it. I'd put a
bunch of other software into it, so I could track stock prices, read Web
pages offline on the train, etc. It was a really good piece of kit, that
had paid for itself 100 times over as far as I was concerned.
However, the battery started to hold its charge for shorter and shorter
periods of time, and the
case was held together with tape. It was time to replace it before it
died on me completely.
I went out looking for new Palms and compatibles. Unfortunately, as far
as I was concerned, the Palm products hadn't really advanced in any useful
manner in the 2-3 years since I bought my 3C. Oh, you could get 16Mb
instead of 8Mb, and card slots were an option, but they weren't deal
clinchers - I knew my 3C and the available software pretty much inside
out, and couldn't think of any way that I'd make use of these extra
capabilities. Also, the price for the new models was hellishly high,
compared to what I paid for the 3C and the lack of useful extra features
(to me, at least).
One of the Clie models came out at the top of my personal list, but I
wasn't convinced that it was going to be that great once I got past the
"new toy" factor.
I then looked at Pocket PCs, but they're still fundamentally tied to a PC
running Windows. One of my workmates is a disciple of Pocket PCs (he
upgrades to the latest and greatest every few months); I got him to run me
through what it does, but it's really not that useful to me. Although
they've got power to burn, they're really limited to what MS will allow
them to do - they're an adjunct to a PC, rather than a useful device in
their own right. I'm really not that interested in storing/playing MP3s
on a PDA, and when you discount the multimedia capabilities there's not
much they can do that my 3C couldn't. Although the WiFi stuff was pretty
interesting, the OS limits you in what you can do with it (e.g. read Web
pages online rather than offline); I couldn't see how the Pocket PC WiFi
stuff was that useful in and of itself, since it didn't offer much that I
couldn't already do on a PC. Then there's the price, which is out of this
world...
I didn't find any compelling feature that would make me spend the sort of
money it takes to get a decent Pocket PC. Again, as far as I was
concerned, the Pocket PCs didn't have that much over and above my beat up
3C.
The Zaurus was an interesting option. The downsides were obvious; the
addressbook and diary were pretty terrible, and it was going to be a
struggle to find suitable replacements for the software on my 3C. On the
other hand, the price was significantly below that for current model
Pocket PCs, and was on a par with the Clie (Palm OS) that I was
considering. I knew enough about Linux to be confident that I could tweak
it to do what I wanted, although I wasn't sure how much effort would be
involved (not that much, in hindsight). I knew I could write software for
it fairly easily, and that's turned out to be the case. I hoped I could
replace my laptop and just use the Zaurus, but figured that was pretty
unlikely - the two form factors are just too different, and the Hancom
software seemed to be pretty flaky going on the online reports I had read.
As it turns out, eventually I made the leap of faith and bought the
Zaurus. It was truly a leap of faith, in that I didn't know anyone else
who had one and had to rely on newsgroup postings for information. It has
replaced the laptop, which I used primarily as a mobile data collector to
grab network traces and performance data from the sites I used to work at
- rather than type full reports on the laptop, I now use it for data
collection and storing notes, and type reports at home on a desktop PC.
Hancom's Word and Excel equivalents work well enough for me, but I don't
think they'd be great for "normal" laptop work like typing documents in
hotel rooms and on planes - luckily I don't need to do that sort of work
any more.
The 3C sits on the charger full time these days; my kids play games on it
from time to time, but that's about it. I use sitescooper on the Zaurus
to replace AvantGo on the 3C; after a bit of fiddling around I got all the
sites that I used to look on the 3C. I'm writing a share portfolio
tracking package for myself; it's pretty easy using mySQL and Apache on
the Z to store and present graphs of the data, so all I have to do is
write code to download the data and produce GIF graphs (not difficult, as
both Perl and Python work great on the Z). I haven't bothered replacing
the diary and addressbook apps, since the commercial products don't seem
that much better - I'm fiddling around with Korganizer, but will probably
write my own replacements when the time comes (I know what features *I*
want, and they probably don't exist in any package out there). Luckily,
the XML file formats for both diary and addressbook are simple to
understand, so there's really not that much to it if you can write code
passably well - just the investment in time.
As time goes by, it seems that replacement software for all the crappy
parts of the Z are being developed and released as open source, which is
GREAT! The replacements themselves might also be crap, but the point is
that the effort's being put in by people interested enough to do so, and
sooner or later good replacements will appear. As most of the apps are
open source, you can take the work of others and build upon it, rather
than start from scratch every time.
Hope this all helps you decide one way or the other
Dave M.
Paul Grunwald
news:pan.2003.01.24...@NOSPAM.optushome.com.au:
>
> As time goes by, it seems that replacement software for all the crappy
> parts of the Z are being developed and released as open source, which
> is GREAT! The replacements themselves might also be crap, but the
> point is that the effort's being put in by people interested enough to
> do so, and sooner or later good replacements will appear. As most of
> the apps are open source, you can take the work of others and build
> upon it, rather than start from scratch every time.
>
> Hope this all helps you decide one way or the other
>
> Dave M.
>
Dave,
Thanks for the great post! If this were on Slashdot I would mod you as
"insightful"! ;-)
I have a IBM Workpad C3 (same as Palm Vx) and facing the exact same
choices. I think a Zaurus SL-C700 would serve me very well but Sharp has
not seen fit to release it here in the US. I'm still trying to decide if
I want to get a Japanese version through a friend and mess with
conversion or wait for Sharp to get their act together. Dynamism has them
but $700 is way too rich for me for a PDA.
I would be interested in more of your Zaurus experiences around
applications, battery life, and day to day use.
Thanks again,
P.
David Mitchell
> Dave,
>
(snip)
>
> I would be interested in more of your Zaurus experiences around
> applications, battery life, and day to day use.
>
>
I know a lot of people have complained about battery life. I don't have a
problem with it, but I charge it every night. I also use a low-power
Ethernet card rather than wireless, which might have something to do with
it - I think the consumption of my card is something like 20mA, which
would probably be considerably less than a normal wireless card. I don't
play MP3s, but I occasionally let my kids watch MPG videos on the Z for
maybe 20 minutes and haven't yet had the battery run out on me.
On this particular issue, my guess is that it's a usage thing. Most
people probably use more of the multimedia capabilities of the Z than I
do, which could explain why they're reporting problems.
As far as applications are concerned, I use the following: - Hancom's
Excel (can't remember the name...) to store some work spreadsheets. I had
to change them slightly to work on the Z, since Hancom didn't have a
TODAY() function, if I recall correctly. Other than that, I haven't had
any problems
- mooview to view JPG photos of kids. Works great - ktrove. This is a
really nice app that lets you move apps from Z RAM to SD or CF memory
card, and run them from there. I figure it's essential, in conjunction
with a memory card of some sort (I'm using a SanDisk 256Mb SD card,
formatted as an ext2 drive and had to upgrade to 1.38 BIOS to get it
working properly. Once I did this, no problems)
- korganizer. Trialling this as a replacement/adjunct for the standard
diary app, but it's got limitations as well...
- openssh, for talking to
Unix PCs
- mysql, which I'm really just fooling around with at this stage
- perl,python, python-html, python-soap, python-webtools, python-xml,
soappy,
ruby for various coding stuff
- tabmanager to reorganize all my programs - unison to sync files with my
PCs
- nmap and ethereal for networky stuff
- various other bits and pieces that are too numerous to mention
sitescooper will ALMOST run on the Z, but I haven't worked out the last
few problems. Until then, I run sitescooper on the PC and use unison to
sync the data files to the Z.
Theodore Heise
[...an excellent, thoughtful summary...]
> Hope this all helps you decide one way or the other
Thanks for the great post!
--
Theodore Heise <th...@heise.nu> West Lafayette, IN, USA
Brian Barcus
Hash: SHA1
In article <Xns930DC2E3A86D3p...@216.166.71.239>, Paul Grunwald wrote:
> I want to get a Japanese version through a friend and mess with
> conversion or wait for Sharp to get their act together. Dynamism has them
> but $700 is way too rich for me for a PDA.
>
I have read several posts in various places that claim Dynamism's
modified C700 is a rip-off. Apparently there is a very simple change in
localization settings that can be made to convert the machine to
English. A little digging through Google and the mailing list for Z
apps at theKompany.com should find more information.
> I would be interested in more of your Zaurus experiences around
> applications, battery life, and day to day use.
>
At first I was unhappy with the battery life of my Z. After a few weeks
I of tinkering I finally had everything configured pretty much the way I
like and was spending fewer long sessions of heavy use. Now I have have
settled into a pattern of using the Z for two or three hours a day total
and the battery has not been a problem. I do recharge every night and I
use the screen light only as much as necessary. When possible I turn
off the light entirely. Last night I left the Z turned on with the
light off for over five hours and the battery still had enough charge to
run for ten or fifteen minutes. I still keep an backup power pack close
by and my cigarette lighter plug in the car but they are rarely used.
As for applications, I use the editor, todo, calendar and address book
from theKompany. There are still several features I'd like to see added
but they do work well. The prices are very easy on the wallet and there
are frequent updates so I consider that money well spent.
I've never carried a PDA before, my Z replaced a Franklin Planner book
I'd used since 1994. So far it has successfully doubled as a PDA and
portable computer which is exactly what I wanted.
- --
- -------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Barcus mailto: br...@barcus.net
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Olivier
> At first glance I should be a slam dunk customer for Sharp. I've been
> exclusively running Linux at home for seven years this month. I've
> owned three Palm-based PDAs over the past six years. I love gadgets of
> all kinds, and certainly there have been many, many times I've wished
> for a command line on my PDA to kill an errant application. Yet I
> haven't put the money down for a Zaurus. Why?
>
> Because I don't want to carry two PDAs around, and because I keep
> hearing about the weaknesses in the Zaurus' built-in
> applications. This is especially sad considering that Palm's
> addressbook, datebook, to-do list, and memo pad haven't changed
> significantly in almost seven years. They haven't changed because
> there was never much wrong with them in the first place.
>
> I like how my current Sony Clié has every appointment and phone
> numbers going back to April 1997 when I purchased my first 3Com Palm
> Pilot. I like being able to smoothly sync them with jpilot on my Linux
> box. Yes, I know Qtopia Desktop is available for Linux, but what's the
> point of synching them if the PDA apps aren't up to snuff? Is this too
> much to ask?
>
> (I'm also awaiting the release of a factory-localized version of the
> C-700 in the US, but that's another story.)
I have bought the Zaurus and I must say I'm a bit disappointed. The great
thing with it is the open source community that provides software and
utilities that the commercial world would make unaffordable. However, the
lack of good soft and the absence of reconciliation with a decent Linux PIM
is a real drag.
The total absence of marketing effort from Sharp is not very encouraging
either, commercial packages and hardware don't see the point of supporting
the zaurus, since Sharp doesn't see the point of pushing it. I'd like a GPS
tool to use in my car but I think I'd better not hope too much.
Don't get me wrong, the hardware is great but like anything linux, the
vendor seems to be scared to really push its product.
I think it was probably kind of a pilot of the real thing that will probably
be the sl5600 and hopefully the c700 (the form factor that I have been
waiting for a long time).
Go for what you feel confortable with.
Daniel James
In article <pan.2003.01.24...@NOSPAM.optushome.com.au>, David
Mitchell wrote:
> As time goes by, it seems that replacement software for all the
> crappy parts of the Z are being developed and released as open
> source, which is GREAT!
That is absolutely true, but ... I should be a lot happier if Sharp
themselves were doing something to get decent PIM software shipped with
the machine OOTB.
I'd like to think that the Z series is going to be around for a while, so
I can replace mine if I stand on it (for example), and for that to happen
it has to be a commercial succes.
First-time PDA customers playing with the device for themselves in the
shop need to see the best of what's available if they're going to choose
the Z over other makes of PDA - and only a fool would prefer the PIM apps
of the standard Z SL-5500 to those of a new Palm (for example).
Cheers,
Daniel.
Pete Nalda
didn't like the idea of using an external mic for the voice recorder on
the SL5500. I was also hoping that the desktop software would become
more robust. All the stuff I've read has sort of scared me away from
the Z.
But I almost took the plunge and got it.
In article <VA.0000016...@nospam.aaisp.org>,
waste...@nospam.aaisp.org says...
--
Pete Nalda
Remove Nospam after email address to reply
Bill Rees
> At first glance I should be a slam dunk customer for Sharp. I've been
> exclusively running Linux at home for seven years this month. I've
> owned three Palm-based PDAs over the past six years. I love gadgets of
> all kinds, and certainly there have been many, many times I've wished
> for a command line on my PDA to kill an errant application. Yet I
> haven't put the money down for a Zaurus. Why?
>
> Because I don't want to carry two PDAs around, and because I keep
> hearing about the weaknesses in the Zaurus' built-in
> applications. This is especially sad considering that Palm's
> addressbook, datebook, to-do list, and memo pad haven't changed
> significantly in almost seven years. They haven't changed because
> there was never much wrong with them in the first place.
>
> I like how my current Sony Clié has every appointment and phone
> numbers going back to April 1997 when I purchased my first 3Com Palm
> Pilot. I like being able to smoothly sync them with jpilot on my Linux
> box. Yes, I know Qtopia Desktop is available for Linux, but what's the
> point of synching them if the PDA apps aren't up to snuff? Is this too
> much to ask?
>
> (I'm also awaiting the release of a factory-localized version of the
> C-700 in the US, but that's another story.)
I got a Zaurus last April and I have been considering selling it on
Ebay. It's a fun little toy and extremely powerful but the software is
lightyears behind what you can do with a Palm with 1/4 of the
processing power. You can do cool things like run a webserver, 802.11
networking, develop java apps right on the device but synching is a
chore and there are no replacements for many of the Palm apps I use on
my old Sony Clie. There are a couple of Palm OS emulators but they are
useless. In fact, some of the software ported to the Zaurus is not
fast enough to be usable. It seems it just gets ported for the novelty
of running the app on the handheld.
I find that I never carry my Zaurus with me either unless it is in my
briefcase. The battery life is horrendous and it's just a bit bulkier
than most Palm OS devices. I'm a staunch Linux supporter as well but I
just don't have the time to screw with these things anymore. Having
something that just works can be great as well.
Robert Feld
I`m also considering to buy a Zaurus.
And as an owner of a good old Plam IIIe I'wondering if it is possible to
sync the Zaurus with the PalmDesktop...
Does that work? Or do I have to use the Desktop Organizer from QTopia?
> Because I don't want to carry two PDAs around, and because I keep
> hearing about the weaknesses in the Zaurus' built-in
> applications. This is especially sad considering that Palm's
> addressbook, datebook, to-do list, and memo pad haven't changed
> significantly in almost seven years. They haven't changed because
> there was never much wrong with them in the first place.
What about the replacements for the PIM Apps from theKompany?
(http://www.thekompany.com/) They look quiet well at first glance...
And another question about the Batterylife: How long does the Zaurus play
mp3 (with screenlight off!) or MPEG Movies? Enough for a Simpson episod?
:-)
(Multimedia Apps would be a really nice "bonus feature" additional to the
Linux compatibility,...)
Thanks,
Robert
Commander Riker
because I ain't got the money!!
Yeechang Lee <yl...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<slrnb2u47...@pobox.com>...
Skyler
emulated the functionality better of the original Zaurus.
Skyler
"Bill Rees" <bi...@billrees.com> wrote in message
news:ac4778d4.03012...@posting.google.com...