Newton vs. Zaurus

[Mark Crispin]

Has anyone every convinced a Newton to talk to a Zaurus (Japanese PDA made
by Sharp, model PI-3000)? I've tried various things, with no luck. I
have both, although I use the Zaurus more. Writing long English texts is
less important than Japanese language capability, although I am interested
in tracking how Newton technology evolves (I bought one after all).

As far as I can tell from looking at the infrared protocol, they are very
similar, but evidentally not similar enough. The Newton doesn't pay any
attention to the Zaurus at all; the Zaurus complains (in Japanese, of
course) about a transmission error.

FWIW, the Zaurus doesn't like talking to any of the US-spec Sharp products
either, although this time both ends complain about transmission errors.
It is, however, happy talking with other Zauruses (Zauri?).

I guess the concept of international communication hasn't reached the
vendors of PDAs yet, even within their own product lines (the Newton is
after all basically a Sharp PI-9000). :-(

Besides Japanese language capability, the Zaurus also has some other neat
built-in things lacking on the Newton:
. two phone books (one for personal, one for business)
. business card book (essentially a third phone book, but indexed by company
name -- when you use the ``exchange business card'' function this is where
it puts the other guy's information)
. Zaurus-to-Zaurus email
. report, memo, and letter generator including quite a few built-in forms
. non-obnoxious calculator (how can anyone stand the Newton calculator?)
. built-in Tokyo and Osaka subway maps
. drawing pad including a set of stamps that assist in drawing maps
(e.g. images of various buildings, landmarks, roads, railroad tracks,...)
. Japanese dictionary, Chinese character dictionary, Japanese-English
dictionary, English-Japanese dictionary.
The option cards are not PCMCIA, unfortunately. I have a BASIC
programming language card that gives a nice and quite fast 32K BASIC.
Best of all, it fits in a shirt pocket.

The major missing thing is FAX capability (the PI-4000 Zaurus has it) and
the ability to write long free-hand English texts easily (you can write
long English texts, but it wasn't designed to do that and it shows).

I hope that the next model of Newton considers some of these things,
especially the part about fitting in a shirt pocket. Oh, and the fact
that in spite of heavy use, since it only consumes .24W the Zaurus needs
to be fed two AAA batteries only about once every 2 or 3 months...

-- Mark --

[Martin Rommel]

What you write sound rather like a wish list than a product decsription. I
assume the Zaurus is insanely expensive? How much memory does it have and
how can it get along with so liitle power?
Martin.

[Mark Crispin]

Martin -

The Zaurus comes with 288KB (157KB user area) RAM. The ROM is, of course,
much larger because of all the kanji support (did I mention that it recognizes
kanji?). The newer model Zaurus comes with 544KB (355KB user area) RAM.

List price is 65,000 yen for the older PI-3000, and 75,000 yen for the newer
PI-4000 (91,000 yen with attached FAX modem). The PI-4000 has FAX software
built in, you have to buy a ROM card for FAX capability on the PI-3000.

I paid 43,500 yen for my PI-3000 last March; the street price is much less
now. Only fools pay list price in Japan.

Figure on about 100 yen to the dollar.

I don't know how it gets by with so little power, but it does. My Newton
(MP100) is a toy, and I change the batteries 2-3 times a week. My Zaurus is a
working tool that maintains all my schedules, phone/address books, reminder
notes, and I change the batteries once every 2-3 months.