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."
I'd love too hear news about this (Score:3, Interesting)
Feels like yesterday (Score:1, Interesting)
I would like to point out... (Score:4, Interesting)
Where does Sharp mention the GPL. (Score:2, Interesting)
Someone please release a good cheap $60 PDA (Score:2, Interesting)
Also the entire "loses everything in memory upon losing battery power" thing bit me in the butt numerious times (especially without the afore mentioned sync software).
If someone released a good 320x240 Greyscale PDA running a Palm4.x type OS that used Flash memory, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Heck with today's silicon manufacturing processes, I can only imagine how many CENTS the CPU back in those older Palm's would cost to make now days.
Oh and the 16MB of ram wouldn't exactly cost a lot either.
I don't need an MP3 player, I don't need a video player, the e-book applications are cool though (woot!), and I don't need WiFi access. I want something that I can fit in my pocket and use to jot crud down.
Quite useful for some purposes (Score:3, Interesting)
I use it as a GPS and a music player in my car [livejournal.com], and it works as a SIP phone [livejournal.com] (though the choice of codecs is limited by a slow CPU, and apparently some people have problems with making it work).
And, of course, it's a regular PDA with addressbook/calendar/todo/notes, web browser (konqueror), ssh, etc.
Re:SL-5500 sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
For one thing, trying to install one of the open-source linux distros on it was like trying to install linux on a PC circa 1998 - ultimately frustrating.
Basic installation was easy, but after that you had to tweak, and tweak, and tweak. Neither of the two main distros (GPE and OPIE) come with a web browser in the default installation, so you must install them separately. OPIE had a version of konquerer that I couldn't install for about 2 weeks as the package dependencies couldn't be found in the openzaurus package repository. Proceed to google groups and start searching for threads to solve the issue. Once konquerer was installed, it sucked. It would crash constantly, to the point of being unusable.
So, want to try GPE? Well, until the latest release a few months ago, suspend/resume didn't work right on the Zaurus, which basically made it unusable.
Want to sync the Zaurus with a PC? You can tweak a bunch of config files and settings to try to get multisync working if you're running GPE, and even then syncronization is spotty. Running OPIE? You could sync fine, if you wanted to use the somewhat outdated Qtopia Desktop as your PIM software on the desktop.
Did you remember to install a hack that puts your root filesystem onto removable memory, like an SD card? No? Whoops - you're out of internal memory space! Start again!
The Zaurus probably would have given a much better experience if I'd had some idea of the state of Linux on the Zaurus - I had expected it to behave a lot like a modern linux distro on a PC. As it is, the learning curve for establishing even basic functionality (like getting a working web browser and some kind of sync solution up and running) was so steep that a month after I got it, I was still trying to work out the kinks.
Well, it was fun to play with if you like to tinker, anyway.
Developed on one last year (Score:4, Interesting)
It's a PDA but I left it plugged in at my office - and sshed to it from home and used X11 forwarding to do GUI development on it from home (it was a python GUI but the libraries were sufficiently different to mean running it on the linux desktop machine wasn't close enough).
It seemed like a good idea at the time...
I even compiled some stuff on it, when I couldn't be bothered jumping through the hoops required to cross compile a python library. Compiling on the little Zaurus while you use your P4 desktop to read email is a strange allocation of resources.
zerg (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:zerg (Score:3, Interesting)
wifi, bluetooth, gnome, linux
'The Nokia 770 Internet Tablet's software is upgradeable and currently runs on the Linux-based Internet Tablet 2005 software edition.'
If you're getting a Zaurus, read this (Score:5, Interesting)
Some of the things I've done with it recently:
- Connected to my desktop via VNC
- Used GAIM at work while all of our machines were down because we were moving offices
- Used it to ssh to my machine to monitor my X10 logs while outside of the house to see the range of the X10 motion sensors
Re:SL-5500 sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
no speaker- it has a headphone/mic combo jack
battery- the manual claims 10hrs, I get 2-2.5hrs with wireless card and have never been away from the docking station long enough to fully drain it with the non-media player apps. The display is clearily visable with the light on setting 2 of 5, saves power.
serial- mine has a USB docking station, do you have the SL-5500D the earlier Developer model?
crashing- never happened to me, I'm using the v3 Sharp rom
I've had mine for 23months, got it new for $195
It's great, used evey day for scheduling, mini-office apps, email, games, media player(mp3&mpeg1) and wireless connection. I get 2-2.5hrs with the AmbiCom WL110C-CF, make sure you get a low power card or you may end up with only 30min to an hour.
There are plenty of accessories; bluetooth, external keyboard, external monitior, gps, make sure they're compatable, SD&CF slots. And more than enough free/low cost software: http://www.killefiz.de/zaurus/ [killefiz.de]
Cons: it's only 206MHz with 32MB each for RAM and internal storage, some apps will only install to internal storage, so got a 1GB SD and 256MB CF cards. But what do you expect from a 4yr old machine?
Who was canned at Sharp over this product? (Score:1, Interesting)
The awful truth is.. Linux isn't perfect or the best for everything. The simple truth is the time wasn't ready. The software development needed atleast 2 more years for it to truely be a competitor to the Microsoft PocketPC. The true believers and rabid zealots would never believe Linux isn't ready. They had to pressure and push out an immature product that seriously stink against microsoft. Now what's the future? Linux has no shot. No other companies are going to take such a gamble or spend millions in R&D to get it up to speed.
I hope some of the Linux zealots out there will wake up after this fiasco. We really had the perfect opportunity to shine, but it was just too early. Too many people in the community have blinders on and aren't willing to objectively look at the current state of linux development.
My $400 Sharp is gathering dust in my basement. I will be happy if I can get $75 for it on Ebay.
What Linux PDA to use: Nokia 770 (not now...) (Score:2, Interesting)
well, it's still not available, but it seems to be one heck of a Linux PDA. 800x480 16bit screen, dual wireless - that's wifi and bluetooth builtin. Oh, and it is supposed to be 802.g, not 802.b, as 110% of the others PDAs that have some kind of wireless access.
I wish it had a snappier CPU (200MHz ARM9) and more memory (64MB RAM). Also, CompactFlash support would be great, but it will sport RS-MMC, for compability with current Symbian Nokia phones. Or so I'm told.
A good review here: http://jkontherun.blogs.com/jkontherun/2005/06/jko ntherun_gues.html [blogs.com]
and the official page: http://www.nokia.com/nokia/0,,74866,00.html [nokia.com]
Re:zerg (Score:2, Interesting)
Get a plain low power 802.11b wireless card, no memory or bluetooth, just wireless. Fancy extra stuff uses too much power and the extra cheap ones use too much power. I got an AmbiCom WL1100C-CF from BestBuy for $45 that gets 2-2.5hrs of wireless depending on signal strength. It's the same with cell phones, lower signal results in the device having to use more power to boost its signal.
Its the best Palm device I've ever owned (Score:3, Interesting)
I also do security for a living, and used the Z for wireless sniffing, vpn, and so forth. Best of all, since its Linux-based, there is an existing infrastructure of free/opensource software, much of which can be adapted to run on the Zaurus, and an excellent support community.
I'm thinking of buying a secondone in case anything happens to this one.
If you have the chance to get one and are even remotely interested in Linux, jump on it...
Re:zerg (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:SL-5500 sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
No speaker. That sucks.
Horrendous battery life.
It would crash every couple of days
That, my friend is where the SL-5600 comes in.
IMO it's everything the SL-5500 should have been, what with the inbuilt microphone, faster processor, more memory, better HWR, etc.
Re:SL-5500 sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
Integrated wifi is #2. The plugin wifi cards suck all the power all the time.
My opinion of most PDA's and cell phones trying to be PDA's, the screens are just to small to browse the web and aren't even very good for email.
Add on to this wifi isn't reliably available, in the U.S. the cell phone soviet ministries charge an arm and a leg for data access, and most cell phones are excruciatingly closed in what you run on them, you can see why mobile devices in the U.S. tend to be, as they say in Texas, all hat and no cattle.
Me personally I'm sick of batteries and chargers. How many bloody chargers do you have laying around, used and unused all of which do the same thing slightly differently. What a waste.
usb foldup pda (Score:2, Interesting)
Just cannot find it.
peace, mark