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Handhelds Hardware

Agenda Linux PDA Finally Out 210

Posted by CmdrTaco from the well-isnt-that-special dept.
MacauMan writes "Finally, after six months delay, Agenda Computing has just released the Agenda VR3, which, if I'm not mistaken, is now the world's first PDA that ships with a Linux OS. It sports a 66MHz MIPS processor and comes with 8MB RAM and 16MB flash memory. It looks like a nice little box, and at $249 the price is right. I just hope they sorted out all those little problems they had with the developer model..." The folks at Agenda shipped me a review model and I'll try to have a report soon. So far I have mixed feelings: the UI isn't as smooth as a Palm or Wince system, but you can get a terminal, so its the only system where I can use ps and kill.
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Agenda Linux PDA Finally Out More

Agenda Linux PDA Finally Out

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  • palm compatability? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    can it run copilot?

  • Re:not gunna get one (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Palm resolution 160x160. Windows CE resolution is 240x320

  • Re:So what's the problem? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Well, all the applications are in CVS and GPL so people like Ximian can integrate support for common formats into their new products as well. The released unit is a DEVELOPER model, not the finished product. Looks like the Linux Symposium has 20 of these as part of their early-registration draw as well at http://www.linuxsymposium.org/draw.php

  • Re:Speaking of X displays (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I can see it now. "X isn't bloated! How else do you remotely access Atari 800 games from your cradled handheld?" Everyone will be convinced.
  • Hi,

    My wife suggested this would be great for sys admins-- can hook up to any server or cluster box that doesn't have a monitor, to do diagnostic stuff.

    Whee! Maybe I can persuade my advisor to buy me one for the 64-machine Beowulf he just got working.

    Sandy
    sandy@rpg.net
  • Is it just me or does this thing not include a browser. I looked hard but I didn't see one. What gives?

  • K5, IWETHEY, mailing lists (Score:3)

    by KMSelf ( 361 ) <karsten@linuxmafia.com> on Thursday April 05, 2001 @10:12PM (#312636) Homepage

    I hit Kuro5hin a lot (hell, I designed the moderation system), though I agree with you on story content -- K5 got grabbed by a bunch of HS/College PoliSci types. I think it's getting a bit better than it had been for a while, but the article focus is way off. Submission system needs a lot of work.

    There's a community that gelled over at the old InfoWorld Electric forums (mostly under Nick Petreley's columns) which now hangs at IWETHEY [ezboard.com]. The group's getting a little long in the tooth, but still is good for a read on stuff. Looking for a new home though -- EZBoard's forum SW basically stinks.

    I do a lot of email -- mostly Debian lists, a few discussions of other topics. Many forums seem to be quieting down though as people ride out the downturn. Definitely interesting times.

    What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?

  • Wish I knew. My guess is that they aren't telling. :)

    Someone said kuro5shin, which is probably true for some people. I'm not too interested in the focus over there, however. Too much discussion of politics, religion, and sex. :)

    Really, though, Slashdot was neat because for a time because more often than you would expect, the people doing the neat things you read about in the articles would be posting in the comments as well. That's not so common anymore.

  • In addition to it just being cool (which it is), it's very valuable. Think of all the tools you've got available. The entire set of GNU utilities, compilers, etc. All the libraries already written for Linux. You don't need to completely reinvent the wheel. Stuff like Qt/Embedded is already there, too. If you can build the box, stick Linux on it, you've got a huge amount of work you'd have to do already done.

    You may not realize it, but there's usually a lot of behind-the-scenes development work required for developing things. If you have to rewrite everything, the OS, the compiler, the interface, that's work. Then imagine you're developer: now you have to relearn new API's, get acquainted with new tools, etc. Not to mention the fact that the OS and other source probably won't be available if it's proprietary, which means if you run into problems (which is highly likely on a new platform), you have no recourse.

    With Linux on things, you already know what you're working with. You're familiar with it. You've developed for it before. If you've done development for desktop apps, embedded apps aren't going to be too big of a stretch (you'll learn some new API's probably), but you've got your development environment already figured out and ready to go. Build a cross-compiling gcc and you're set.

    If you're a commercial vendor producing the latest-and-greatest PDA, not having to convince developers to relearn all your whizbang (or less-than-whizbang) tools is a major market advantage. And, users (in theory) can run all the stuff that's already available for other Linux PDA's, because it should be a fairly straightforward recompile (given you're using something portable like Qt/Embedded).

    Sure, opening an xterm on a PDA and having bash there is neat, but there really are "practical" advantages, too.

  • $249 is pretty average for handhelds (a bit more than an average Palm-type, less than an average Wince-type handheld. If you're waiting for PDAs to get down to the sub $100 price point, you might want to start looking around for old used Palm IIIs.

    Down that path lies madness. On the other hand, the road to hell is paved with melting snowballs.

  • So what's the problem? (Score:3)

    by bmetz ( 523 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:11AM (#312640) Homepage
    Rob's torn between a bad interface and his neverending bias for Linux? I don't see much here to debate. If it's not as slick as the palm or WinCE or whatever, well, end of story. It's not as easy to use.

    If I put a linux sticker on a block of wood, would you buy it?
  • I noticed in the developer FAQ that the Agenda uses its Flash ROM as a disk storage device, with RAM being used only for execution space. Given that Flash ROM deteriorates if rewritten too many times, I'm not sure if that's such a good idea.
  • How are you networking with that?
  • Plywood would seem to be the obvious choice: it's many small piece of wood working together. And very strong, but very dense. ;)

    (as opposed to hardboard, which is total crap: heavy and weak)
  • It already runs X. Developers have been exporting
    the display to their desktop terminals all along.
  • Old /.'er? Heh... I guess I could say I'm one.

    It's exactly this SHOUTING MATCH of wanna-be whiners is why I'm drifting away from Slashdot. That, and the *shitty* moderation system that rewards too-frequent posting, or people with dummy accounts. I see Slashdot spiraling downwards into that "was-cool-once" memory bin.

    I suspect there are more people using warez copies of Windows XP than Linux.

    I've been waiting for AGES for a Linux handheld, besides the expensive and Linux-unsupported iPaq/Itsy. I still need to justify the expense, but I think it's impressive to be able to port a Linux app right over, and with one ability to code you can write for two "platforms".

  • It's a pity that the Itsy [compaq.com] was never released (AFAIK) to the public. Although current PDAs offer similar specs, the design was cool back then.
  • Here's a WinCE (Actually PocketPC) user that doesn't even have to reset once a week (going on 3 weeks since my last reset, still running fine).
    What do I do with my PocketPC?

    I use it as a PIM, I send and receive internet email using the built in mail program, I surf the web with the modem I bought for it. I used that to surf over to the Xircom website to get tech support for my coworker's Visor modem when it crashed while we were offsite. I have a few vid clips that I can play from PocketTV. I have a demo CAD program that lets you view/edit CAD drawings (we use CAD for the network diagrams here). The field manual for a product I use is stored on it in PocketWord format. Basically, I use it as a mucho portable laptop. It has never crashed, but has gotten flaky a couple of times (the worst was a hardware button not responding until I reset). So far, it's been more stable that the PalmPro it replaced...

    Chris
  • Many people seem to be saying "Palm is easy to use and has a huge installed base -- I'll stick with that." By that (alleged) reasoning, you should use Windows.

    With an open OS & apps, you have all the same benefits of Linux on your desktop -- if you don't like something, you can fix it -- always assuming somebody else didn't fix it before you, in which case you just d/l the patch, and off you go. "apt-get upgrade" anyone?

    Also, has anybody considered the impact a device like this may have on the "Linux: usable by anybody -- even (especially?) your Mom" front? All those apps are open source and available, yes?

  • I'm curious about that 'consumer IR port'. I've had a program on my Palm Vx called "OmniRemote" for quite some time that talks to my TV, VCR, and cable box. (I haven't gotten around to doing my DVD player yet, but I will eventually, I'm sure. :) Anyway, what's the difference between a "consumer IR port' and the one for talking to Palms 'n such? Since Palms can already talk to consumer devices using IR?

  • I'm gonna keep this in mind next time somebody tries to tell me X11 is too bloated. Hehe. I wish I could display Palm apps on my laptop's display so easily...
  • Oh yeah? Well, I'm announcing an anti-gravity belt today. If anyone else actually ships one before me, they'll just be blatant thieves!
  • Wrong!

    The Zaurus was big. The Newton was big. Even Radio Shack/Casio has a product called the Zoomer that was doing better. (Ironically, the zoomer came from the same designer as the Palm Pilot).

    Palm made it because of price/value and the ability to use it. And basically they shot a bunch of money into it and made it really cheap to make. (Something the others had problems with).

    Pan
  • I'd kind of have to agree. But I think that they may be making a market for people who want a little more power then a palm, but not the expense of a Pocket PC. At 259 or whatever it is less than a Pocket PC but if you can install your own apps, maybe they are hoping for the OS community to port some palm apps to it as well as some Linux apps. I'm sure there are lots of apps on Linux that could run in less than 8Meg of RAM, of course Mozilla would not be one of them. How hard is it to use the grafetti(sp) like language?

    It has more memory than a palm as well. ANY palm. Palm max mem 8M, Agenda 16Meg + 8Meg....

    I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
    Flame away, I have a hose!

  • How does this make it any more unstable than a general-purpose PC OS that includes ps and kill (or the NT alternatives)? Just because you have the ability doesn't mean it is required or even used very often at all.

    You sound like a guy that buys pencils w/o erasers, because the presence of an eraser will cause you to make mistakes...

  • Did you even look at the images on the web site? Nope - you didn't click the link. There are the usual dumbed-down apps that you need in a PDA. Also, how do you KNOW that multithreading isn't useful in a PDA in the near future? I'm sure someone said the same thing about larger-scale computing systems in the past....
  • I'm sure there will be addons by either Agenda or a third party. Jeez. You think Palms synced with anything but Outlook right out of the box?

  • Cute but.. (Score:4)

    by sith ( 15384 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:11AM (#312657)
    Its a nice little unit, but what is their target market? Aside from geeks, who is going to buy one of these instead of the more standardized palm or wince device? Do they include a tool to move all your palm data to their format, or are they assuming that the people buying the Agenda won't be upgrading from an existing device?

    Oh yeah, and are we taking bets on how long till somebody is running apache on it?

  • Have you tried PocketMoney [catamount.com]?

    I've used it for about 12 months now, and it's helped me track my expenses quite well. It does get a little slow after you've got a thousand odd records in it, but that usually doesn't happen until end of year anyway.

  • I've been porting Atari800 (the near-perfect Atari 8-bit emulator for Linux) to the Agenda.

    newbreedsoftware.com/agenda-atari800/ [newbreedsoftware.com] - Enjoy!
  • Check ftp://orasoft.org/pub/agenda/ [orasoft.org] for Apache for Agenda.
  • Does this mean its fully multitasking?

    Yep

    And does this mean it has apps that are unstable to the point you would ever have to kill them?

    Nope. I think the only process I've killed on my agenda is the keyboard app... and that's because I wanted to restart to test out a new keyboard layout file I was working on.

    I just updated to "Matrix" (the latest builds of the kernel and applications) and, man, is this thing sweet. My Palm's days are numbered.
  • The 160x240 can be a bit of a pain... but when people ask how it compares to the Palm, I can say "it's a little higher rez." ;)

    The greyscale is great, too. X applications that are happy in 8bit or 16bit or 32bit mode on a real PC seem to do just fine on the Agenda's greyscale display. Props to whoever's working on the X server.
  • It's not FVWM. It's "VRWM":

    PS shows:
    70 default default S /usr/bin/vrwm -cursor 255


    -bill!
  • It depends on what you mean by "Sync."

    If you mean grabbing your phone list and schedule off of the Agenda and using it in Outlook... yes, you need Windows.

    If you mean transfering files, backing up your PDA, and grabbing your phone list and schedule off of the Agenad and using it on [your favorite Linux PIMs]... no, you don't need Windows. You can use Linux.

    Agenda has an RSYNC daemon running by default. I don't have Windows, so I don't know about using Agenda with it, but under Linux, you simply set up PPPD on one of your serial ports (stick it in "/etc/inittab" to have it running all the time), plug your Agenda on, tap "Network", tap "Direct Serial", tap "Start".

    All of a sudden, there's a mini LAN between your Agenda (IP 10.1.1.2, for example) and your PC (IP 10.1.1.3). (Edit "/etc/hosts" to turn those IPs into human-readable host names like "agenda" and "workstation".)

    Depending on what app. you use on the Linux end, it shouldn't be too hard to read in pretty much any of the PIM data off of the Agenda.

    I imagine that apps. which currently inherently support PalmOS will soon support Agenda. That's just the way Open Source is.

    -bill!
    (who needs to upload his GnomeCard file to his Agenda)
  • Woah... Have you not seen Andy's Agenda Help Page [umbc.edu]?

    Follow his instructions, step by step (literally, cut and paste commands from the web page into an xterm), and you're set!
  • My Agenda's running Kernel 2.4.0pre9

    -bill!
  • No wonder applications are klunky.

    Says who? You? Do you have an Agenda?

    I do! IMHO, the applications are not "klunky."
  • Good question! That'd be quite nifty!

    Semi-related: I've been considering compiling pilot-link for it and see if I can backup my Palm onto my Agenda. Time to dig up an RS232 gender-bender.

    -bill!
  • Got an URL? Agenda "announced" coming out with a Linux PDA long ago. So did Samsung. Has Lisa Systems actually DELIVERED one? Thanks!

    -bill!
  • Yes, the software is GPL and available.
    Go to http://developer.agendacomputing.com/
    From the FTP site, you can download source for pretty much everything.
  • Thanks for the plug. :) Two games I played a lot on my Palm (other than Mah Jongg and Solitaire) are Galax and Invaders. Simple enough to code, so I wrote my own.

    Soon after starting Aliens, someone mentioned that an ancient Galaga-style game I wrote under Solaris actually ships with the Yopy PDA! Bizarre!
  • Very cool! Thanks for the link!

    (And as for not searching myself, it could've been something convoluted like "www.somecompany.de/mobile/lisapda/" or something :) That, and I was taking off for lunch ;) )
  • Actually, the "BUY HERE" button went up yesterday, a day after it was 'officially released' at Comdex.

    Before that, it was a big "DEVELOPERS BUY HERE" link. I'm surprised you missed it!

    One thing I HATE about the site is their use of obnoxious bouncing animated GIFs. (A cool side effect of going to the page is the nifty dual-sinewaves my CPU meeter applet draws, though. Ugh)
  • How are you networking with that?

    Well, I use Linux... no idea how the Windows folks do this. Anyway, here 'goes:

    1. PPPD is running on the host (workstation)
    2. Agenda is connected to the TTY that PPP is on
    3. Tap "System -> Network" on the Agenda
    4. Open the "Direct Serial" network connection
    5. Tap "Start"

    Voila!

  • Is it running X?

    Yes, it's running X. About a week and a half ago I began writing a simple game for the Agenda [newbreedsoftware.com] from scratch (you may have seen it mentioned on LinuxGames.com [linuxgames.com] and the Linux Game Tome [happypenguin.org].

    I'm practically done. It was incredibly easy. Developing it on the PC end wasn't hard (I obviously had some experience coding X apps), and making what I wrote run on the Agenda was a matter of using a cross-compiler.

    Porting Atari800 has proven quite easy, as well. I had it cross compiled and up and running (albeit slowly) on the Agenda in less than a half an hour.

    Of course, if you want to stick to the "standard look and feel" of applications already written for the Agenda, the tool to use is FLTK (Fast/Light Toolkit) [fltk.org].

    It's a C++ lib, though. :^/

  • Speaking of X displays (Score:5)

    by Bill Kendrick ( 19287 ) <bill@newbreedsoftware.com> on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:39AM (#312676) Homepage
    One of the sweetest things about the Agenda is the ability to do this:
    workstation$ export DISPLAY=agenda:0
    workstation$ /usr/X11R6/bin/favorite_x_app

    and vice-versa!
    agenda$ export DISPLAY=workstation:0
    agenda$ favorite_app_stored_on_agenda

    The screenshots I took of Atari800 running on the Agenda [newbreedsoftware.com] were done by running the program on the Agenda, and displaying it on the Agenda.

    Then, I ran "xwd" on the workstation, with the Agenda set as the display. A crosshair cursor popped up on my Agenda's LCD and I tapped the screen. "Beep!" "Beep!" Suddenly a ".xwd" screenshot image file was stored on my workstation!

    In other words:
    agenda$ xhost + workstation
    agenda$ ./atari800 -tiny -basic &
    ...
    workstation$ export DISPLAY=agenda:0
    workstation$ xwd > screenshot.xwd

    Developing for this PDA is a f**king breeze!
  • The specs page lists as one of the standard accessories a headset with microphone, IIRC. Anyone have any ideas why? I couldn't find anything else on their site.

    Maan
  • CmdrTaco, Rob, *POSTED* this article but he didn't write it.

    Pay attention.
  • Doh! My bad on the unitilicized portion. Must be the utter lack of brain exercise that is my job today (rare occasion). Sorry.
  • ... Agenda is fighting against a large installed base. U.S. Robotics had no such competitor when it first released the Palm Pilot 1000 back in '96.
  • Guess you could say I've been around for a while. I've basically given up commenting because you never really get noticed. :) As you probably well know, freedom of speach means nothing if nobody hears you.

    Flames, trolls, and idiots -- oh well.

    In answer to your question about where everyone's gone, I'm sure it depends on the person. Personally I'm very active on comp.os.vms (watch, I'll get flamed for even mentioning VMS here, especially when I say I'd prefer it to linux in most cases if there were more apps available! :P), and sometimes (not too often) comp.sys.sgi.
  • I'm sorry, but until someone kicks the palmvx's ass without me having to drop over $300 again and has USB hotsynch support for my favorite linux flavor, I see no reason to entertain Yet Another PDA.

    (I want you, palm m505 or visor edge. Try to meet me halfway. Please?)
  • Have you looked at the Qt embedded enviroment?
  • >does this mean that all of the software on the machine is GPL or something similar

    Yes, the built in apps are all open source.
  • >All someone has to do is port X to it and that will change.

    Uh, the Agenda already runs X as standard. The preferred toolkit is fltk, but low level X apps work just fine.
  • >the sync software only runs on Windows....

    You can connect to a linux box and use standard apps to sync your files. There isn't a point'n'drool version for linux, but rsync works just fine.

    What's really fun is using nfs to mount a remote drive on the Agenda (or vice-versa) and exporting $DISPLAY one way or the other. Running Agenda apps displayed on a PC monitor (or vice-versa again) is useful as well as having a high geek quotient.

    This little unit really is running a full version of linux and X, and if that's good enough for the internet it's good enough for a PDA :P
  • They claim that the IR will talk to any "OBEX-compliant" device. Is this simply at a hardware level, or will I actually be able to exchange appointments, addresses and memos with my wife's Palm?

    --
  • Hey! I may need a prosthetic for my short-term memory but the rest of me is in full working order!

    --
  • >why don't pda's support PCMCIA cards..?

    Two words: power consumption
  • This one runs apache [supermegamulti.com] :-)

    The link also shows many other apps for the Agenda...
  • Was at Comdex in Chicago today and played with one for a few minutes. It looked like a PDA and did standard PDA things, so to me it's not much different than my Palm IIIx. I believe that the price is a bit high, however: at $199 or so it could be tempting (opening a terminal session on the PDA was *fun*) but at $299 I have doubts that they'll sell enough to pay the bills.
  • </RANT>
    It's nice to finally see a PDA with a screen covering the whole display area. I've always been a little tuned off by the Palm (-like) devices becuase of the graffiti writing area. If the screen was just extended to that area as well, developers would have that much more real-estate to work with.

    For now, I'm using a Xircom REX [rex.net] 6000. The PCMCIA form factor and touch screen make it the perfect companion to my laptop, carrying names, numbers, notes, etc. It doesn't run every application ever written, but I can't complain becuase the size simply rocks.

    Speaking of real-estate, what's the purpose of putting buttons on the units anyway? Every PDA I've ever seen (iPaq, Cassio, Palm, REX, etc.) has buttons - several. Why? Doesn't a touch screen provide the same functionality (even soft-power...) as the buttons, and if you did need a button, why couldn't it be an edge button like the Nokia 82?0 phones or the m505's power button? A PDA the size of a large post-it note (and as thick as a pad of them) with a full-touch-screen would be dandy. As long as the "normal" applications are supported (read email, addresses, calculator, notes, yadda yadda yadda), that's just about the right form factor.

    </RANT>
    I'll get back to work now.


  • no, i'd just get the source my self. How else is my termite farm supposed to run apache?
    ----------------------
  • Here is an FAQ [agendacomputing.com] from the Agenda Developer Zone. Among other things, they mention that the batteries last about a month, which is what I was really wondering. :-)
    --
    Patrick Doyle
  • Its a nice little unit, but what is their target market? Aside from geeks, who is going to buy one of these instead of the more standardized palm or wince device?
    That was my initial reaction. What a small market to target. And while I think that still has merrit, another bit of history dawns on me.

    The Palm Pilot was the first widely successful PDA device (despite the merrits Newton fans like to point out).

    Palm didn't spring up in the executive board room. Sure, Palm's own glossy pamphlets showed two business types setting up a meeting on a golf course. But that audience was slow in picking up the devices. Early on, there was strong support from third party developers, tinkerers, and hackers. Geeks.

    The Palm device was the geek status symbol. If you were a tech-head, you HAD to get one. Everybody was doing cool, odd things with them. Oh. And while you had it - wow... it WAS usefull for notes and keeping appointments and other mundane activities. But have you seen the cool tricorder simulator? How about that RISK game that makes those meetings you're now remembering to attend actually bearable?

    So Agenda might be targeted towards the geek crowd. But then... that might be the right place to start.

    Palm's initial design was right. But it was third party developers that made the device fill in niche markets and become indispensible.

    It will be interesting to see if Agenda has designed the right platform. And it will be interesting to see if developers (read: hackers) will fix anything Agenda is lacking.

  • Yeah, ditto! My pro is a little trooper. The screen needs recalibrating a lot now though, dispite reseating the connector many times. I suspect the capacitance or whatever effect generates the touch detection is going. I can't think of anything else I bought in 1997 I'm still using today, though :).

    Palm IIIxe's are going for $250 cdn here. It's tempting up upgrade, but I really want one of those m505s..

  • Palm has LOTS of source available (Score:5)

    by xtal ( 49134 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:30AM (#312706)

    So when they say "Join the Linux revolution" and "free software movement", does this mean that all of the software on the machine is GPL or something similar, so that unlike Palm OS, when I want to change a built-in app I can (provided I have skillz)? I'm not finding a lot on their site that indicates one way or the other.

    IIRC, Palm has the source to all of the on-board applications (and a lot of the games) included as part of the development kit, so you can indeed change the application to do whatever you want. Some of them have, as I believe there are several very nice calendar replacements available based on the 'stock' code. You can even get the source code to the OS as a liscenced developer - is it free? No, but the code is available.

    Palm has actively supported the free tools; They could be nicer about the USB specs, but I don't know enough to comment on that.

    You might want to check out Palm Open Source [palmopensource.com] for more goodies. There a nice little market doing custom development for palms, now, too.

    NOBODY has come out and offered what I really want - linux on a PDA with a nice keyboard, a la the Jornada! GCC to go, with a real keyboard. I could toss the vaio then.

  • MultiUser Digital Assistant = MUDA?

  • They're 66MHz processors (although they are MIPS, it would still be slow...)
    --------
    Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
  • There was that Qt-Embedded. Unfortunately, that adds C++ overhead, though.
    --------
    Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
  • There's newer NVRAM chips that don't degrade near as easily as the older ones, IIRC.
    --------
    Genius dies of the same blow that destroys liberty.
  • (disclaimer: I am programming/use a Palm heavily these days; so I am biased)
    I have used a Linux PDA before, saw a cheap knockoff unit at work a while back and I was completely unimpressed. A PDA is about being able to get to information quickly, not about being able to use an xterm (pterm?). I don't want to have to scribble in "cp ~mydir/foo.pdb /etc/foo2.pdb". I want to be able to use a quick and dirty UI that does it for me.
    Also multitasking is totally useless in a PDA, just look at how slow they run when you have more than 1 app going. Why do you think the Palm is single threaded? (for all intensive purposes, I know you can hack this)
    Summary: buy an m500 and enjoy an OS that doesn't get in your way, is designed for the system that it is on (from the ground up; not hacked to fit the system) and is simple / easy to use.
    OTOH, if you have too much time/$$$ on your hands, buy a Linux PDA and be 'leet. Its your life.
    --
    ************************
  • There are Palms and Handsprings available in the $149 range, but they come with 2M of user accessible memory. That is just slightly more than a floppy disk, making the device as a whole slightly more usable than a calculator and an address book.

    This has 8M of RAM, plus since its open source I expect you can use some of the Flash area for your own archived files.
  • This device is in the middle ground between the expensive, colour CE devices like the Casio-thing/IPAQ and the low-spec Palm.

    The fact that it competes directly with the PalmPilot on price, and offers a much higher spec, along with a readily customisable, open source OS sells it for me.

    Colour is a feature i just don't need in a PDA, and the ability to program this device with familiar tools makes it very attractive to me.

    The company i work for currently does CE development, but the high price of these devices limit the number of cutomers we can get. i.e. they like the software, but balk at the price of the hardware to run it.

    If our (NZ) dollar wasn't so far down the toilet i'd have bought one already.

  • oh my GOD have you ever tried to kill off the application you're currently running on WinCE? It's at least 5 clicks if not more. At some point, the ability to close an application with the little X button was removed from thePocketPC platform.

    My boss bought me a Jornada 548. I used it for a week before I sent it back, even though I'd gotten it for free. I'm back to my Vx, and even without the color screen, it's still a FAR superior handheld.

    It's ironic, because when I would reach for the cradle I would see the Jornada in place of the Palm -- and I would actually wince.

  • Where's the value? (Score:3)

    by drin ( 83479 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:44AM (#312720)
    I'm really don't think there's any value inherent in a Linux PDA.

    Before I get flamed mercilessly, let me explain...

    I started with the original Newton. then moved to Palm when the Pro came out. Then came the Palm V. After that, I got a Psion V w/ Epoc 32. Then I managed to get my hands on a prototype Newton tablet that Apple never released. Then, when I realized that wouldn't do what I needed, I built my own Linux-based PDA using the ucLinux SIMM hardware project [uclinux.org] and an LCD panel. Then I moved onto the iPaq

    After going through all of these handheld devices, I still haven't found one that can be hacked to the functionality I desire, which is essentially a wide-area wireless browsing device. For all its virtues, Linux (at present) doesn't provide much beyond its coolness factor in the handheld arena. Functionally the Palm or the iPaq with their native operating systems are FAR more useful to the end user population.

    When a decent UI (read: simple yet complete) UI and a stable business application suite are made available under Linux on a PDA, then they'll do better than they have. Palm compatibility for data transfer will be essential, as will battery life.

    Until that time Linux on a PDA (IMO) will remain a mere curiosity for geeks to stare at (I personally am now over my staring phase... :) ).

    -drin

  • Re:You guys are slipping (Score:3)

    by passion ( 84900 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @10:44AM (#312721)

    I dunno - if you carried around a beowulf cluster in your pocket, you'd probably get more radiation sent into your gonads than a damn cel phone sends into your melon.

    That would not be a Good Thing

  • worth it just for the terminal (and the ability to telnet, and remote-display, ...)

    My psion 5mx has VNC, SSH and telnet on it, along with a perfectly usable bash clone.

    It also has a 640x240 display which makes it nice and practical, and a keyboard, which makes using SSH/telnet viable, and it also has a bunch of fantastic apps.

    ok, so it's not open, and it's not linux, but it is practical, fast, and reliable. Unless the agenda really is stunning, I know what I'll be sticking with.
  • I dunno how comfortable I feel using a handheld whose only claim to superiority is the fact you can kill errant processes. The implication being that if you have to use this often, the system isn't very stable.

  • Who cares? (Score:3)

    by SpookComix ( 113948 ) <spookcomixNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:24AM (#312733) Homepage Journal
    You know, I've got the original Palm III, and as much as I'd love to spend the money on a new toy, I can't justify the expense. Why? Because my 2.5 year old Palm still does everything I want it to do: quickly, effeciently, and just like I want it to.

    Why, for the sake of having Linux on a handheld, would I or anyone else want to accept a product that is admittedly inferior?

    --SC

  • Speaking of real-estate, what's the purpose of putting buttons on the units anyway?
    Right-click & center-click are the biggies. A "fire" button might be nice for games. A scroll wheel -- which I think I remember seeing on a PDA -- makes reading long things much easier.

    (BTW, you screwed up with your opening rant tag. Perhaps you need a copy of Sarcastic Faux HTML For Dummies. ;-)

  • People shouldn't get hung up on whether it uses Linux or not. Who cares apart from a few geeks? More important is whether it's any good as a PDA. If the software sucks, or the battery life measures in hours, or the screen is rotten then why would anyone in their right mind want to buy it?
  • I like Psion's palmtops. I actually owned one of them for a about a month before deciding I'm just too rough with most PDAs...and got rid of it before it became a paper weight.

    While the Psion series are sweet, they aren't cheap. This thing retails for about 1/2 the cost of a Psion, though I admit if both were free I'd have a hard time choosing. For now, I'm sticking with my 2MB Palm III.

  • Not true (Score:3)

    by jayhawk88 ( 160512 ) <jayhawk88@gmail.com> on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:54AM (#312757)
    From various Agenda info pages:

    "CD-ROM Software QuickSync for Linux and Windows PC" - http://www.agendacomputing.com/products/system.htm l#system

    "With our QuickSync Cradle and software, you can easily exchange information between your Agenda and your Windows or Linux PC." - http://www.agendacomputing.com/products/details.ht ml

    Too lazy to link...
  • Oh yeah, and are we taking bets on how long till somebody is running apache on it?

    OK, somebody has to say it: Imagine a B-Cluster of these!

    __

  • at least the "online store" buy portion of the site ...

    my big question is (judging only from previous /. story/comments), is has the handwriting recognition been improved? is it grafitti or some other construct?

    i love my visor but since i bought it (about a year ago), i still haven't found a good checkbook application - i've tried all the commercial, shareware, open source free stuff out there and none of them fulfill my basic requirements (approximating my checkbook register in my since discarded Franklin planner):

    • nothing complex, just store check num, tran type/code, amount, description, date and maybe flag for tax deductable ...
    • sort transactions in reverse order - this seems to be a big issue on palm os apps ...
    • don't even care about reports or budgets or any other nonsense - just give me an easy way to enter entries and look them up (search by name or date range) - the fancy smancy reporting i can code a little script to total up in 10 minutes
    • Find really isn't an issue either if i have an option to export a spreadsheet type view for a given date range into txt/memo format

    the apps that came bundled with palm were fine 2 years ago, but i don't think they take advantage of the 8M-16M devices now - i don't want to have to access my home box or carry a planner/book around when i want to locate quickly the dates when i sent a check to the insurance company or when the power goes off i can easily verify that i paid the bill instead of settling for rolling blackout ...

    i considered rolling my own for palm os, but just was discouraged at learning another API and i think even a gimped linux handheld os might offer a better platform than the palm - i still find it astonishing that i can play a decent game of bridge on my visor, but i can't find a decent checkbook .prc - i tried to live with the built-in expense app but it was awkward and clunky and had to tap thru 2-3 screens when entering stuff or looking it up ...

  • One of the big reasons that people liked the Palms over the old Windows CE machines was that on a palm you don't have to do any resource management other than storage space. I really hope that this company did not fail to learn from MS mistakes. The only think worse than putting out a bad PDA is putting out a bad PDA first. Then you go and ruin the market for everyone.

    "Freedom of speech has always been the abstract red-headed stepchild of the Constitution"

  • More questions than answers... (Score:3)

    by ichimunki ( 194887 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:18AM (#312768)
    So when they say "Join the Linux revolution" and "free software movement", does this mean that all of the software on the machine is GPL or something similar, so that unlike Palm OS, when I want to change a built-in app I can (provided I have skillz)? I'm not finding a lot on their site that indicates one way or the other.

  • Uh???? (Score:4)

    by java_sucks ( 197921 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @10:06AM (#312769)
    At $249 the price is right???? I honestly have to say that at about $99 the price would be right. This is not meant as a slam on the product, I've never seen it, but I think these things need to get around $100 to really fly. Until then it's nothing but a geek toy, a cool toy, yes, but a geek toy nonetheless.
  • The advantage of using Linux over Palm or CE on a PDA is that they don't have to sell as many Linux based units as they would if they went with Palm or CE as they don't have to pay licensing fees to Palm or MS.

    On the downside they had to write all their own applications for the thing. No shortage of "gee wiz" toys for Palm and CE platforms. For now, WYSIWYG. That shouldn't take too long as long as the Linux community embraces it and writes stuff on it. As it's running Linux, they should pick up a good handful of sales just for that reason, hopefully keeping the "chicken or egg problem" to a minimum. (ie, how do you get users to buy a platform that has a minimal amount of apps?)
  • http://www.lisa.de/ [www.lisa.de] - use your imagination! "Lisa systems in Germany."

    Anyway, yes - they are delivering. It's based on the iPaq. Some snippets from the site include:

    "In december 2000 LISA mLinux 0.6 was released. Our first Linux distribution for a handheld put Compaq's iPAQ under Linux."

  • Unfreakinbelievable (Score:3)

    by thelexx ( 237096 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @11:01AM (#312788)
    I'm starting to wonder if aliens/the feds aren't busy kidnapping /.'ers and replacing them with drones.

    Here we have a company that was willing to try and bring out a reasonably priced and decently performing handheld unit that runs Linux and runs it well. They have been nothing but open, friendly and helpful to those who are trying to develop for it.

    Is it perfect? No. What version 1.0 of nearly anything is these days? Especially with a product that IS geared toward the geeks among us?(There are at least a couple left I'm sure...)

    Since many of you who have posted to this topic obviously won't ever look for yourselves, believe me when I say that you CAN in fact use this device in as brain-dead a fashion as a Palm. Set an appointment, jot down a contact, etc WITHOUT having to type in command lines. But you can do so much more when the guts of the machine are readily available and familiar to you in the form of Linux. (Though I suspect that no longer are the majority of /.'ers Linux users, AT ALL!)

    So, finally it's ready for release and what do you guys do? Shit all over it. From people who are obviously feeling threatened (oh no! MY cool shiny thing isn't so cool anymore! Wait a minute, I'll just throw mud at everyone else and proclaim how great my toy REALLY is and then it will still be shiniest! Yeah, that's a plan!) by it to just plain ignoramuses who think it requires command lines to do anything.

    What the hell is wrong with you people? Could one of the ex-/.'ers of old who might still be lurking please tell this straggler where you all have migrated to?

    LEXX
  • I've had a developer model VR3 for a few months now, which I believe has little to no significant differences from the just-released consumer model.

    I really like it. Probably the biggest benefit is that it runs Linux and X, giving it a huge amount of software that can easily be cross-compiled to run on the VR3.

    The posts I've read so far seem to indicate that people are unsure of this... ALL OF THE VR3 SOFTWARE IS OPEN SOURCE, which gives all the typical advantages that I won't mention.

    The developer unit was completely upgradeable, as in you can totally replace the entire OS, including the kernel, if you want to, and that seems to also be the case with the consumer unit.

    The VR3 seems so much more versatile and open than the typical PDA's, and software can be written and ported to it very easily because of the familiar programs and libraries it uses.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @07:35PM (#312800)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Re:depends on what wood (Score:3)

    by Graspee_Leemoor ( 302316 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:28AM (#312815) Homepage Journal
    "All someone has to do is port X to it and that will change"

    Read the web page linked to before you open your .. er .. fingers...

    I Quote from the faq:

    "What window manager does the VR3 use? Can I open multiple windows at the same time?
    The VR3 uses a modified version of flwm. Windows are maximized by default, but the `status bar' application includes (among other things) a drop-down window listing to facilitate managing multiple windows."

  • Re:Palm has LOTS of source available (Score:3)

    by Spy Hunter ( 317220 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @10:35AM (#312819) Journal
    NOBODY has come out and offered what I really want - linux on a PDA with a nice keyboard, a la the Jornada! GCC to go, with a real keyboard. I could toss the vaio then.

    I think what you want is an iPAQ with this [pocketnow.com]! It's a full-size laptop-type keyboard that ingeniously folds up to be about the size of the iPAQ itself. This is no cramped "chicklet" keyboard! I'm seriously thinking about getting one. The only problem is I don't know if there are Linux drivers (probably not). I'll bet there will be soon, though!

  • There's this Giant led sign with an ir port at the casino in my city. A BIG sign. It has blinky lights, and beckons to me. It says 'hiro, you need this pda. Hack me, hiro. And then buy some disposable cell phones and crank call washington'

  • Multiuser? (Score:4)

    by hirofx ( 415176 ) on Thursday April 05, 2001 @09:16AM (#312834)
    It would be interesting to allow multiuser access to this kind of device. I'm not sure at what level the ir communication is at, but it is certainly possible, and would be neat.

    Too many people begrudge neat for it's own sake. I think that it's by playing with things that are neat, which we are passionate about, that we make the truley innovate advances.

    I think that the ability to code for these things yourself is fantastic. Are there many tech companies who write client-oriented software for these things? Who do 'solutions?'

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