Review of the Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 172
Gothmolly writes "After reading the story and comments on Slashdot,
I went out and bought one from the Home Shopping Network. It's been a very fun and interesting jump into both the modern PDA (I owned the original Palm until this year) embedded Linux worlds. I've written a review about my experiences over the last few days with it. A lot of this information I found online, a lot is personal experience. HSN is now out of them, but they must still be available cheaply somewhere."
I also bought an HSN special (Score:5, Interesting)
I also grabbed a Zaurus 5500 from the HSN special. Guess those paid-u-tainment slash-vertisements work.
First thing I did was to look for the terminal package. One version came on the CDs, so I installed that.
Second thing I did was to find the OpenZaurus installer (now 3.1-rc3.1), but after finding with several problematic .ipk's from the Zaurus Software Index, I went back to the stock Sharp ROM image. Can you imagine holding the C and D chicklet keys on one side, and poking a recessed reset button on the other? All with the DC power plug attached? I had to do this operation a few times in my experiments, and I can safely say they chose a combination quite apt at avoiding the accidental re-flash.
I still haven't gotten the USB networking worked out. It apparently needs the usbdnet module, which is not in the Red Hat stock kernels (latest errata nor the last beta). I prefer to stick to my distro's official kernels, rather than rebuilding a kernel just so I can ssh to a pda. Maybe eventually.
I noticed that if I install a new ipk file, it restarts Qtopia, which loses the icons for any other already-running tasks. (ps aux) still shows the tasks, they just have no gui anymore.
I noticed that if I click an app button to switch away from the terminal, some key cruft like ~3 or ~4 appears in the terminal. Also, if the unit gets suspended (low power, power off button, etc.), then whatever console app was running gets sent to the background and I have to (fg 1) when I return. This screws up some console programs which don't have a convenient "redraw all" key for when you return. (Example app: frotz.)
I noticed that the text editor opens to what looks like an empty note which is ready for typing, but no, it's in a no-document state and you must tap for a "New" text document before starting.
I figured out how to retrain the handwriting, but not sure how often I'll use it. The real keyboard, virtual keyboard and pickboard are quite enough for text entry, thanks. Weird that you can tap the Fn key prefix then tap the desired key for a function, but you have to HOLD a shift key while tapping a letter. Supporting tap-shift-tap-letter would probably been nicer given the form factor.
I would never have purchased this kind of device anywhere near its original price-- it's a toy to me, not a tool. But it's worth the money I put into it.
difference of opinion... (Score:5, Interesting)
First of all, my Z runs with a wifi card in the CF slot most of the time. However I have several situations where that is of little or no use. My low-power cf card does not support Kismet, so I can not use it to scan for open nets. For the most part I do not need the additional battery drain either.
When I do not need the wifi card, I have found that having a couple of hours of music on a 128M cf memory card can help while away longer bus rides, without affecting how much application space is available on my SD card.
Also I have several CF interfaces for my computers, being able to read/write the CF to transfer stuff when I don't want to use a wifi card is also handy.
As noted in the article sd/mmc cards cost more and tend to have lower capacity than CF cards.
As a last note, there are bluetooth interfaces built to run in sd/mmc slots, which may be of interest to people using blutooth enabled network, phone, printer, or even headset devices. In that case the memory expansion opportunity would be the CF slot.
Then again, that's just my opnion. You will have to make up your own mind.
-Rusty
Never mind the SL-5500 or SL-5600 (Score:3, Interesting)
All the features of the SL-5600 with a nice big screen and full keyboard.
I know Dynamism wants $700 for theirs, but if you can get it for less, there are guides online that have reverse engineered their localization process. I don't know what their markup is but I've seen it put at around $200 (!!)
Re:OpenZaurus (Score:4, Interesting)
Let me put it this way: About two weeks ago I tried out the very latest ROM. I found the ROM itself was stable, but nothing installed properly on it and I ended up going back to Sharp's ROM because there were apps I simply had to have running. Final impression: OZ is really nice and I only plan on staying on a Sharp ROM until I find that OZ can run these other 3rd party apps (which should be now since the new release is out). I was extremely disappointed to find I couldn't use OZ right away, but I've been anxiously awaiting this latest release so I can move over to OZ permanently.
If you want to know all the specifics about why OZ is better, you should check out their site [sourceforge.net]. However, the biggest reason I would suggest OZ is because it's actively being developed. Sharp has only offered bug fixes for it's ROM. OZ is steadily getting better, which means you'll see improvements and new features. So as far as I'm concerned, Sharp's ROM is a dead end while OZ is quite alive.
Another "HSN special too!" And a great toy! (Score:2, Interesting)
Mostly I bought this since besides my old Palm III that I use for a remote control at home, I am PDA-less. The crowd at our M$ shop at work are all getting PocketPC's. So far I've been able to prove it's worthiness except to those with the brand-spanking-new ones. But for the price, I have them all whipped.
I immediately bought a 256MB SD card, since even if this turned out useless, I could find another use for the memory card. There was a spare CF wireless card at work (D-Link DCF-650W). It DHCP'ed instantly. My only complaint is that when it's in you have no access to insert or remove the stylus. I tried someone else's thinner 660W, which gives access to the stylus, and that worked equally as well.
I spent the first day with it getting Kismet to work, making the guy with netstumbler on his laptop jealous.
Next, I had to try the Quake port. Yes, it's neat, since it's Quake on a PDA, but don't bother doing anything with it other than saying "Look! It's Quake! On a PDA!"
I must say, the most novel thing is being able to telnet and VNC to it. I find Zsafe extremely useful. I've yet in my position to need access to e-mail on a PDA, since at home I already have access. Wardriving with it is great. This has proven to be an extremely worthwhile toy.