Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 Today? 163
TheAdmin writes "A few years ago the first Linux-based Zaurus, the SL-5500, was released for some $600 by Sharp. Today, it only costs $140 in some places online. This article at TuxTops reviews the 5500 from the point of view of trying to figure out how this model fares against today's PDAs and if it's still a good purchase after all these years, especially at this low price. And so I bought one recently because I needed a full-fledged pocket Linux at my workplace where I work as an admin. I just added a $30 Linksys WCF12 WiFi card (works out of the box after upgrading the SL-5500 ROM to version 3.10) which I use with SSH and by utilizing Zaurus' thumb-board. Works great and it's much more portable than a laptop, especially when all you need is some email and SSH on the go."
If its SSH you vant (Score:5, Informative)
Then and now (Score:3, Informative)
But it always was a great little mini linux box, and now is very good value at $140. Pity about the battery life though.
Just Sold Mine (Score:5, Informative)
1. The battery life with the wireless card was horrible, and that was when the battery was new.
2. To have anything new, you had to use OpenZaurus. Not that OZ is bad, but it means that Sharp basically stopped updating anything for it. Trolltech was supposedly going to release an updated QT ROM for the 5500, but I never saw it materialize.
3. Back to the battery, it was a bit old, so it had a harder time holding a charge.
4. Getting it setup to communicate to the PC under Windows or Linux always seemed to a lot harder than it should have been. I always got it working, but it always took a while.
5. This was the big reason. I just stopped using it because of the other 4 reasons and because I almost always have my work laptop with me. I can pop my laptop out of suspend, fire up Outlook, and I have my Calendar, Address Book, e-mail, etc. just as fast. Yes, I would prefer to carry the Zaurus over the laptop, but since I always have the laptop for other work reasons, why do I need a PDA?
Boot time (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, the Pocket PC OS boots from scratch in under six seconds.
zaurus (Score:5, Informative)
Pros:
- CF and SD card simultaneously
- Nice screen
- Nice keyboard hiding feature
- Even if the display crashes, you can still SSH into it! And then just restart the display driver
- The linux behind the framebuffer is rock solid (uptimes of > 2 months).
- Very hackable
Cons:
- Only some CF cards work, and only SD memory cards work (not wifi SD for example). Limited support for CF chipsets (depends on manufacturer).
- Battery life tends to be a little on the low side
- Wifi card really sucks the battery dry
- Thumb keyboard is really slow for doing CLI (and painful after a few lines).
- Heavy changes in software base (like structure) right now, so the developers are breaking things almost as fast as old problems are fixed. *should* stabilize soon.
- IR PDA keyboards (like targus) kindof suck on it, I bought one but find it frustrating to type on... Press two keys are the same time and only one shows up on the zaurus, but always a surprise which one!
Wishlist:
- Longer battery
- Built in bluetooth (for external keyboard)
Re:I'd love too hear news about this (Score:3, Informative)
I currently use my Zaurus as a PIM, ssh client, web browser, mp3-ogg-divx player, mail editor, and reader for PDFs, DOCs, PPTs, etc. Not to mention kismet and wellenreiter works on it as well which is great for detecting hot spots even if you are fined £500. [theregister.co.uk]
Re:If its SSH you vant (Score:3, Informative)
The good and the bad (Score:3, Informative)
I was happy to find that the OpenZaurus email app has support for IMAPS and SMTPS w/AUTH. I've about given up reading/writing word, excel, and powerpoint files because even though the Original Sharp ROMs have application to do this you can't really get them to work under OpenZaurus. But how much spreadsheet work would you do on a 320x240 device? OpenZaurus does have lots of software, it's got ipkg which you can think of as a mini-clone of apt-get or yum.
As other have said, battery life could be better(especially with the wifi card). But other then that it's cool that there are SD and CF slots. SDIO is not supported but I've got a 1gig SD card working fine. Other have complained about having to use headphones for sound, personally I don't have a problems with that.
Favorite thing done with my Zaurus so far; Walking around every corner of my apartment and scanning all the wireless networks so see what the best channel would be for my network. I've also managed to cut down alot on post-it notes.
And don't forget http://slashdot.org/palm [slashdot.org]
Re:Where does Sharp mention the GPL. (Score:3, Informative)
From the software license agreement:
INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS. The Software is protected by copyright laws, international copyright treaties, and other intellectual property laws and treaties. Lineo and its suppliers retain all ownership of, and intellectual property rights (including copyright) in, the Software components and all copies thereof, provided however, that certain components of the Software are components licensed under the GNU General Public License (version 2), which Lineo supports. You may obtain a copy of the GNU General Public License at http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html [fsf.org]. Lineo will provide source code for any of the components of the Software licensed under the GNU General Public License. To obtain such source code, email to embedix-support 'at' lineo.com.
In short, yes. Also, it looks like that even though it is a Sharp device, Lineo supplied the software.
the UI sucks (Score:3, Informative)
But the problem with all of them is that the user interface on the Zaurus sucks badly. Like PocketPC, it tries to adapt desktop metaphors to handhelds, and that just doesn't work well.
As far as I'm concerned, the only PDAs with acceptable UIs at this point are Palm and Symbian. And since Palm will soon be Linux-based, I won't have to choose anymore between a good UI and a good operating system. For now, I choose a usable UI, which means I continue to use my Zire.
Re:SL-5500 sucks (Score:2, Informative)
i've got an IR keyboard from Taurus that works pretty well with my aging sl5500. in fact, i'd say its one of my favourite keyboards
i've had the sl5500 for a few years now too, and i have to say its a wonderful thing to have a webserver in my bookshelf
Re:I'd love too hear news about this (Score:3, Informative)
Re:SL-5500 sucks (Score:3, Informative)
The battery isn't great, but it's not that bad either.
Serial, worthwhile.
Crashes? You're doing something very wrong. Yeah, it'll crash now and then, but I never had a crash with my Z that lost any data, except in the case of failed upgrades.
That said, yeah, it would definitely do to have a bigger battery, some flavor of builtin wireless, and software that doesn't suck out of the box. But Sharp has completely abandoned the relatively cheap "upright" Zs in favor of massively expensive clamshell ones.
zaurus actually is better for ssh (Score:2, Informative)
the screen (at least on sl-6000) is much nicer than ive seen on pocketpc/wince/palm devices. the device itself is pretty sturdy too.
unlike any palm app, you can use keys, and even ssh-agent (on bash, but it works nicely) (this might be possible with putty on a windows handheld, never tried)
i got mine just to use as an ssh terminal. ive found it does so much now that i often dont bother with the laptop (external keyboard does nicely) the fact that i dont have to ask anyones permission to make it work however i want is a nice contrast to sony who will keep locking down thier systems or microsoft who will threaten/sue you over it. (and, yes that does influence my purchasing descision)