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Handhelds Portables Hardware

Sharp Ships Zaurus SL-5600; 5500 Available Cheap 332

Posted by timothy from the itchy-wallet-finger dept.
Bill Kendrick writes "LinuxDevices is reporting the good news: Sharp is now shipping the Zaurus SL-5600 Linux-based PDA. Compared to the SL-5500 that's been out for the past year, this new model sports a 400MHz X-Scale CPU, twice the Flash (32MB), twice the RAM (64MB) a much better battery (1700 mAh), and a real speaker and mic. Learn more at Sharp's website." And IceFox writes "Well I wasn't expecting this to happen till next week, but I guess it was put up early. For a limited time on hsn.com you can get a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA for $198.92, combined with a hsn.com coupon you can bring the price down to $169.08. For anyone who has wanted to play with this Linux PDA here is your chance to get it for very cheap." Update: 03/18 02:03 GMT by T : Reader Brendan Hoar corrects the listed specs: "The specs for the SL-5600 are incorrect. It should be 64MB of flash, 32MB of SDRAM. It's technically *half* the RAM of the SL-5500, not twice the RAM." Thanks.
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Sharp Ships Zaurus SL-5600; 5500 Available Cheap More

Sharp Ships Zaurus SL-5600; 5500 Available Cheap

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  • I dont get it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by odyrithm ( 461343 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:08PM (#5531207)
    32meg? Ive got 512meg on my keychain device, after ripping it apart the chips really would'nt take up much room in a pda.. I guess its a cost thing.. but I'm sure it wouldnt cost much to expand to 256/512..

    please enlighten me someone.

    • Re:I dont get it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:15PM (#5531286) Homepage
      I beleive the Flash is for the OS and the apps that come with it. Just pop in a CF card and use that as the "hard drive". It probably is a cost thing. People don't want to pay the extra money when many/most won't use it. I wouldn't be supprised if 50% of PDA owners never add additional software and of the other 50%, half wouldn't have a use/need for more then 32 megs.

      • Re:I dont get it (Score:5, Interesting)

        by bstadil ( 7110 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:52PM (#5531575) Homepage
        Just pop in a CF card and use that as the "hard drive"

        Use CF for stoarage yes, but you need the SD card for running (most) programs. Installing a program to the CF card will in most cases not work. For Swap you can use SD but there is a speed / number of Writes penalty.

        Build in memory vs expansion options almost always comes out favoring expansions. The reason is the volatility and the machanics of the memory market. Most producers can not compete on memory procurement. Reason is the much longer cycle time of finished products (from initial production thru product in users hand) vs memory modules. Plus potential form factor issues, In addition there is the risk factor that the PDA producer rather not take. Risk is expensive even though you win once in a while. That being said I love my Zaurus

        • doesn't using memory cards for swap space kill performance? the memory card I/O is slowww, not to mention that with limited number of write ops on memory cards it'd kill them fairly quickly if it saw heavy use.
        • I added a card the size of a stampt to get 256mb of extra storage and I can still use the cf slot for ethernet on my Zaurus.

          That said, I recently replaced my first zaurus ($300) with a new zaurus ($250) only to be given a heart attack by this article.

    • Re:I dont get it (Score:5, Informative)

      by Falsch Freiheit ( 7780 ) <freiheit@gmail.cRABBITom minus herbivore> on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:46PM (#5531535) Homepage
      It's called "power consumption".

      Memory on embedded devices is kept low, yes, partially because RAM costs $$, but more because RAM costs watts, and watts cost time (as in, less run-time) or weight+size (as in a bigger battery).

      Often the type of RAM that uses less power is also bigger and more expensive than high-power-use cheap ram.

      Your keychain device can afford the power-consumption, which comes from the wall where power is cheap. Also, your keychain device can go head and use that power-sucking RAM, 'cause it's got access to that wall-socket.

    • Re:I dont get it (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mivok ( 621790 )
      From what I've seen, the 5600 is very similar to the 5500, which has both sd/mmc and cf slots. The first thing I bought with my 5500 was a 256MB cf card and 128MB sd, storing programs on the sd card and mp3s (well oggs) on the compact flash, which I could remove and replace with the ethernet card when needed net access.

      The real crippling factor is that in the 5500, the memory was all SDRAM which meant that you could flash with a different rom (openzaurus maybe) and have the full 64MB of main memory for loa
    • RAM requires power to retain its state.

  • When is the C700 coming out (Score:3, Informative)

    by Bytal ( 594494 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:09PM (#5531219) Homepage
    Heard that the C700 was coming in late 2003 to North America. At least thats what techtv said at some point in January.
    • Hmm I work for Sharp so I would know better then most.... FYI though the C700 is a Sharp Japan line product. Same with the B5 and A3.
      • Why wouldn't they release this version in the US?

        I am sure there is a dollars and sense reason, but it would seem that blackberry's (among others) would hint at this PDA being a success.

        I could be wrong. Since you work for sharp, what gives?

        Also, given the difference in the specs, would you hold out for the new zaurus or buy a deeply discounted SL-5500? I am thinking about buying one, but was hoping the price for the new ones would be around $400 considering the cost of add on cards and such. Also,

    • it comes to America when you get the balls to pay someone to buy one and send it to you :)

      alternatively, you can use a company like dynamism.com to get one - they actually don't mark it up much at all considering it comes with 1yr warranty and modifications to english
      • The markup is around $200US considering that it costs an equivalent of ~$460 in Japan and $700 from dynamism. The modification to Enlish doesn't matter if you plan on running OpenZaurus and if you don't for most Qtopia applications there's one file to change in the home dir. The one year warranty is great but not for $200. Now I'm not knocking on Dynamism which does bring a lot of technology from overseas that US buyers wouldn't have access to otherwise, but for this particular product I'd rather wait for a

  • Wonderful Tool (Score:5, Informative)

    by Oriumpor ( 446718 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:10PM (#5531233) Homepage Journal
    The sharp zaurus is one of the best tools ever. I have used it in many different situations where before I would have had to grab my laptop. Using Minicom I have programmed routers with the nifty serial [sc-systems.com] cable. I have spent many hours playing Dopewars and Wyvern [cabochon.com] (a pretty nifty graphical mud). The sharp image comes with Opera and is readable even at the furthest zoom (-4 or something.) My options are NOT restricted by sharp, there is even OpenZaurus [openzaurus.org] (or OZ as the Z junkies call it.) The walkthroughs on the pages are mostly made for Linux noobs.

    It runs Kismet [kismetwireless.net] (with the special socket drivers I can run low power for about 2 hours.) The software library is always growing, and the developers are happy to share their techniques for cross compiling/QT developing.

    The wonderful thing about the Zaurus, is people already have developed and even COMPILED [killefiz.de] programs for the arm that run just fine on the Z, (mostly Ipaq/other linux SA device developers) but that means an even BIGGER [handhelds.org] software library.

    The community is so helpful, you may be asking questions in the #zaurus channel in irc.openprojects.org and the person answering your question, just might have been the one developing the program you are asking about. It is not infrequent to hear "#Zaurus:So_and_so Yeah here that version is kinda buggy, I just compiled the new one here."

    I have to mention Zauruszone even though it is no where near the community it used to be, there still are useful links [zauruszone.com]

    • Re:Wonderful Tool (Score:4, Informative)

      by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:16PM (#5531294) Homepage
      Don't forget the Howtos at docs.zaurus.com [zaurus.com]. I try to get as much up there documentation wise to help everyone.
      • Can this Zaurus do Unicode (and other character encodings)? Or is this a strictly western language device? Can you redefine the keyboard to enter characters for different languages? Can you read e-mail and edit text in Unicode (UTF-8)?
        • it's linux dude, you can alter it to your hearts content pretty much... adding other character encodings is merely a limitation of space and the program you wish to use.

          I'll know more when my sl-c700 arrives and I flash it with openzaurus... with any luck it'll have a gui for the c700 in 2 weeks when I get it.
          • adding other character encodings is merely a limitation of space and the program you wish to use

            Does that mean that out-of-the-box you can only do western languages (Latin 1)?

            Which of the shipping programs would be able to do Unicode if I "added the encoding" (whatever that would mean)?

            • out of the box, it doesn't have unicode font, as I recall. (well, it has unicode support, but no font to display it in)

              So, yes it needs one package: You need to grab the unicode font.

              I believe that I didn't have a problem with any of them after installing the unicode font on the sharp rom, however I don't use it anymore, so i can't test and tell you.

        • Re:Wonderful Tool (Score:3, Informative)

          by pantherace ( 165052 )
          Yes, the Z can do UTF-8, in fact for people who use other languages with different symbol sets, there can be other 'handwriting recognition software, for example nunome for japanese, I believe there are input methods for chinese and korean (and likely others, but I don't know of them) (both sharp and oz roms) Remapping the keyboard would be likely done via an opie-input-method, but I don't know if anyone has written one like that already.

          One of the reasons is that it is Qt, which always supports Unicode, a

      • Re:Wonderful Tool (Score:3, Informative)

        by dr_dank ( 472072 )
        I've also found the Unoffical Zaurus FAQ [newbreedsoftware.com] to be extremely helpful as well.

  • Media Player (Score:5, Interesting)

    by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:13PM (#5531260) Homepage
    With this price there is something that I have wanted to do with the Zaurus for a really long time. Turn it into a media player. For $600 or some insane price you can get one of those media players with the 2 line text lcd. Pick up one of these connect it to the network, power, and receiver. Then write a little app to play audio files over the network onto your stereo. You get a COLOR 320x240 lcd TOUCH screen. I don't think that there is any media center that has that for this cheap. With the touch screen there is all sorts of extra goodies that you could put on it to make managing the music easier. Heck you could just run apache on it and browse to it from any computer and all it would do is display the current song and cool swirly plugins. Put some cool visual plugins on it, duck tape it to your stereo rack (or make a nice case, whatever suits you) and enjoy.
    • The absolute best home audio player I've found yet is the slimp3 [slimdevices.com]. My wife went over there and picked one up for me for Christmas. I think it was $250. The installation was thoroughly impressive (I plugged it in, started the OS X server on my laptop and it had all of my music available, including the iTunes playlists). I actually run the real server on the Solaris machine that has all of my music, though.

      It has no buttons or touch screen, which doesn't so much matter to me because I'm rarely anywhere ne

  • Cool but... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by WegianWarrior ( 649800 )

    ...as my palm130 (http://www.palm.com/products/palmm130/ )do all that I want, I won't switch; Linux or no Linux.

    After all, as far as I can see, the only benefit this device offers is Linux; everything else has been done before either by Palm or bysome PocketPC (allthought I would never get one of those myself, for the same reason).

  • No Linux Desktop Apps to go along? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by xZAQx ( 472674 ) <zrizer@@@sbcglobal...net> on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:14PM (#5531281) Homepage
    From the hsn page, under "requirements:"

    "Microsoft Windows 98/98SE/2000 Professional/ME/XP"

    So, then, Linux is a good enough platform for developing the thing on, and running the handheld software, but Sharp can't write desktop apps for us to synchronize it?
    I'm sure it's very easy to set it up to synchronize with Evolution or whatever-else-you-want, but, seriously, why doesn't Sharp at least tout that it runs Linux as a marketing strategy?

    I don't understand, someone please enlighten me.

    • Re:No Linux Desktop Apps to go along? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:19PM (#5531323)
      Desktop apps for Linux are available (and usually more reliable), but they are brought to you by trolltech (Qtopia Desktop) and available through Sharp's website.

      I actually like Qtopia Desktop better than Intellisync. Intellisync tends to freeze up windows if anything unusual happens with the transfer--never had that happen with Qtopia Desktop, even in windows.
    • This is not a restriction at all, you can synchronize with evolution and the source is open. So if the need is there, and the want is strong enough your favorite Linux mail client can synch with your Z.
  • I had jumped at the Agenda PDA [uni-potsdam.de], shortly after purchasing my original Palm III. I wasn't too impressed with it and it soon became a dust-collection device in my closet.

    Not having a PDA for the past couple years was OK, but then recently I decided to move back to electronic organization of my schedule. In this case, I was looking for features to convince me not to bust out the old Palm3. How does this compete with the new Sony CLIEs or the WindowsCE products?

    • Re:Dare I? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you want a PDA, the old Palm machines can't be beat. The Zaurus and Wince machines are totally inadequate because of the battery issue. I'm serious: a 5 year old Palm wipes the floor with any of the "modern" products as a PDA.

      If you want a portable personal computer, though, the Zaurus is pretty fucking cool. Just remember: it's a PC, not a PDA.

      • Not all WinCE machines have a sucky battery life. I don't know of any PocketPCs that have a greyscale screen other than the iPAQ 31xx series, but they get pretty darn good battery life.

        It may not be the month on a couple batteries my gf's Palm Pro got, but it's a helluva lot more than the 3 hours you get on most WinCE/Zaurus devices. Taking class notes (1-4 hours every weekday) and reading stuff while waiting for the bus, I got 2 weeks or more on a charge. And I use my PDA a lot, probably more than most

    • Re:Dare I? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Oriumpor ( 446718 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:23PM (#5531353) Homepage Journal
      It has a thumb keyboard (really the only way to use it efficiently.) Runs Linux, can run GCC, can be used to program routers with a 15 dollar cable. Has a SD slot and a CF slot, can run a swap file on either memory storage unit, so real memory is not quite so big a deal.

      It's cheaper than any comporable device, has a screen which is backlit, and readable in the sunlight, has a software library with hundreds of titles.

      It can run kismet, it has a wireless internet service (not WIFI but CDPD or some hybrid.) The battery is replaceable so you can carry 3-4 LIon batteries with you on a long flight (although expensive but worth it in my eyes). Flite is precompiled to run on the SA and can be used to read books/trigger events via your WIFI card/CF storage whatever.

      Lets put it this way, if you like to play with your PDA, get a Zaurus and best of all it fits in your pocket.
    • Don't forget palm's offerings here. My Tungsten T's got some decent abilities.

      The web browser it comes with is pretty good combined with either my phone or my powerbook for IP connectivity.

      I've yet to use the voice recorder, but I've got a couple of MP3 players that do a decent job. I still carry my iPod around, though (besides having a lot more storage, it's my #1 backup device for the home databases).

      I've got several books on there, as well as pictures of the wife and kids.

      When I get bored, I do de
    • I run Apache/PHP/MySQL on my Zaurus. I use it to demo websites I create without needing an Internet connection. I just go wireless, or drop the Zaurus in the cradle connected to my laptop and it acts as a tiny server (and a fast one at that).
    • The UI for the zaurus is very badly designed. The people at Trolltech really didn't think about many of the human factors issues involved in hand-held computing. The result feels like a full-size desktop PC interface artificially shrunkend into a 3x5" mobile device.

      Contrast this with palm, where things like minimizing the number of taps needed to perform a task was actually taken into consideration.

      While I find writing GUI apps in python and running them on the Zaurus cool and useful for specific applicat

    • Re:Dare I? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RevAaron ( 125240 )
      When discussing the Zaurus in relation to WinCE, a lot of people go on about features they see as novel to a Linux PDA.

      I'm a big PDA nerd. I'm working on my own PDA OS/computing environment. And I've done a lot of comparisons between WinCE, Palm OS, Newton OS, and Linux.

      Linux on the PDA can do a lot of slick things- run Apache, Emacs, Vi, Perl, Python, SSH, VNC and X11. WinCE can do that as well. There is an XFree port, multiple SSH clients (Free, free and commercial), etc. You can tunnel X11 over SSH

  • CORRECTION: 32MB RAM (SDRAM) and 64MB Flash (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:16PM (#5531296)
    The 5500 has 64MB of RAM (but half was reserved for file storage) and 16MB of read-only flash.

    The 5600 has 32MB of RAM (giving it the same working memory in the standard configuration) and 64MB of read-write flash (giving it slightly more storage space).

    So, there isn't really any more RAM for applications in the SL-5600.

  • Phone home? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by famebait ( 450028 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:16PM (#5531300)
    Hmmm.
    • Real speaker and mike
    • Room for wireless card
    • Running linux

    Sounds like the open-source VOIPs are finally in for some serious usage.

    I guess batterly life (while using wifi) will still be pretty bad compared to a moderm mobile, but for international calls it would still be a godsend; I just spent a fortune calling to Europe from the GDC.
    • Yep, the 5500 can do it (if having a mic/headphone). Check out zmeeting. (h263 (or whaever thoe 3 numbers are that is used in gnomemeeting, and netmeeting, etc)

    • Re:Phone home? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Bill Kendrick ( 19287 )
      Sounds like the open-source VOIPs are finally in for some serious usage.

      Might I point your attention to: tkcPhone [thekompany.com] by theKompany.com [thekompany.com]? :^)

    • Re:Phone home? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by natecow ( 525506 )
      My biggest disappointment with the new Zaurus is that Sharp no longer allows you to plug in a phone headset. This is a major problem if you are developing cool Zaurus VOIP apps - or anything related to speech recognition where you need a close-talking mic. I'd love to hear if someone knows of an easy way to get audio into the SL-5600 (without having to hold the PDA in front of your face).

  • Hmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by B3ryllium ( 571199 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:16PM (#5531302) Homepage
    Does it run BeOS? heheh

  • Almost. So close, if only for the screen! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mcgroarty ( 633843 ) <brian@mcgroarty.gmail@com> on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:17PM (#5531306) Homepage
    This is very close to being a perfect device. The only complaint I've got is that it's yet another 240x320 screen device. At that size, it's not quite enough to make it easy on the eyes for extended use.

    For eBook use, one of the more popular applications for PDAs, you really need something more like the newer Sony Palm devices. This resolution isn't quite enough for crisp fonts (even with subpixel rendering) and it's small enough that most preformatted PDF/Web content still needs to scroll half a screen horizontally to be read at a legible magnification.

    Can we please please see a Zaurus with a 360x480 display?

    • 1) Reading on my monochrome 240x320 iPaq has never caused me any eye strain, headaches, etc. YMMV of course.

      2)Sharp has already released in Japan the Zaurus SL-C700, which has avery nice 640x480 screen. I believe there is a company importing these with modification to be usable by english reading/non-japanese reading people.

    • The biggest problem with the Zaurus (and most PDAs in my opinion) is not the device. Certainly there are issues with most any device and I can think of a few quibbles I have with the Zaurus. But the biggest issue IMO is still that the synch and integration software with PCs is still very poor overall.

      I've written about this before (and probably will again) but these devices still only synch with a relatively small body of address books and calendars, much less a lot of the other stuff out there. Sure yo

  • ebay=~200 (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    retail Price on HSN: 499
    average price on ebay: ~200
    with the coupon it is a deal, but not 300+$ off like the hsn website would lead one to beleive, even if it is "mint in box"

  • Wrong specs listed up top. (Score:5, Informative)

    by IceFox ( 18179 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:22PM (#5531351) Homepage
    right specs:
    64 flash (that is rw via jff2)
    32 RAM

    The SL-5600, which is powered by a 400 MHz Intel XScale processor, features a reflective QVGA (240 x 320 pixel) color LCD screen and a unique integrated QWERTY keyboard with sliding cover. It also includes a rechargeable (and replaceable) 1700 mAh battery, 64MB of protected Flash memory, 32MB of SD-RAM, dual expansion via CompactFlash and SecureDigital/MMC card slots, and an integrated speaker and microphone. The software stack is based on Linux along with the Qtopia GUI environment and PIM suite, Opera embedded browser, and the Geode Java virtual machine.

  • -1, Too US Centric (Score:5, Informative)

    by yem ( 170316 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:24PM (#5531364) Homepage
    HSN.com don't ship outside USA.

  • Couldn't take it any longer.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by senducemhere ( 563189 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:32PM (#5531431) Homepage
    I see a 50 node Beowulf cluster in a 2u rackspace!

  • SL5000 (Score:3, Informative)

    by rf0 ( 159958 ) <rghf@fsck.me.uk> on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:40PM (#5531492) Homepage
    If you want really cheap you still might be able to get a SL5000 which is below SL5500. I love my Zaurus, running Open Zaurus [openzaurus.org] which give you Konquerer and with a CF Wifi gives a really cool portable table like client. Mixed with VNC for remote admin and SSH for cli interfaces.
    Also make a cool MP3 player with cheap SD cards. There is so much I could write. Just get one. It rocks

    Rus

  • A good minicomputer, but not a good PDA. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ElGuapoGolf ( 600734 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @04:41PM (#5531494) Homepage

    I have a Zaurus, and while it's a great minicomputer, it's not a good PDA by any stretch.

    After about 3 or 4 months of using the Zaurus, it went back on the shelf, and the old Psion Revo+ came out instead. The Revo/5mx just kick it all over the Zaurus (and PocketPC) when it comes to doing Actual PDA Stuff. The address book/agenda tool on the Revo is miles ahead of what you have on the Zaurus, and still better than what's on the PocketPC. And, if you want to kick it up a notch, the Word/Sheet programs on the Revo handle Word and Excel files about a hundred times better than Hancom Word/Sheet on the Zaurus. I just feel more productive with the Revo, and it seems that the software is better.

    It's funny, but the Revo+ runs at about 1/6 the speed of the Zaurus, but Opera seems to render pages just as fast. It has half the memory, but it doesn't have any of the memory/space limitations I ran into on the Zaurus' internal memory. (Yeah, I kept the MP3s on a CF card).

    I do hope that the OpenZaurus project continues, but it seems that they're not making any huge strides in the PIM areas. From what I understand, OZ's email client doesn't really work at all. Not confidence inspiring.

    But I do miss the mp3 player.
    • Karma to burn (not like it really matters anyway)!
      OZ [openzaurus.org] doesn't have an email client. OZ is just the underlying filesystem and system, not the gui or the applications. Opie [handhelds.org] is the default GUI/application set that OZ uses. PicoGUI [picogui.org] is really coming along, though, and that's another option for a GUI.

      I can't dispute your claims on the Revo, however, because I've never owned one. I can say that I prefer my Zaurus over my old Visor Deluxe, however, even though most people claim PalmOS is "better". The interfa

    • Re:A good minicomputer, but not a good PDA. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by druske ( 550305 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @06:23PM (#5532380)
      After using the Zaurus SL-5500 for a few months, I'm inclined to agree, though everyone has their own idea of what a "PDA" needs to be. Even the SL-5500 was a very capable device, and I wrote a favorable review [pocketanywhere.com] for PocketAnywhere.com (a site I'm no longer affiliated with). The PIM software was weak, though I was optimistic that offerings from theKompany [thekompany.com] would soon fix that, if Sharp didn't themselves. It was very cool browsing the web with Opera over a wireless link, and fooling around with VNC.

      So why'd I sell it and go back to using a Palm m505 after a few months? Mostly because the capabilities of the SL-5500 were things I really had no use for. If I needed to browse the web on a tiny screen, or needed VNC or other networking tools in a miniature package, I never would've let this thing out of my sight. As it was, though, it didn't do basic PIM functions nearly as well as Palm (even with theKompany's products), and --- this is the real killer --- was simply too big. If a PDA is too big, I don't carry it around, and if I don't carry it with me, it's useless.

      Everyone's needs are different, and I hope that a variety of devices continue to be available to meet them. Sharp's an important player here. Not only are they selling one of the best handheld tools out there, but their presence is one more barrier to the erosion of choice we'd have if Palm or Microsoft monopolized the market.
    • Blockquoth the poster:

      I have a Zaurus, and while it's a great minicomputer, ...

      Back in my day, people understood that "minicomputer" was the thing between "mainframe" and "microcomputer" on the hierarchy of power...
  • So, how do the two compare to each other? SL-5600 has faster processor (at least in theory), 5500 has more RAM (64MB vs 32MB), but 5600 has more Flash-RAM. Which one is faster?
    • See IceFoxes comments with exact specs.

      The SL-5500 has 64MB of SD-RAM, but it's typically divided between 'storage space' (like a hard drive on a desktop) and 'place for programs to run in' (like RAM on a desktop), much like other PDAs do it.

      This gives you, by default, 32MB of 'RAM' and 32MB of 'storage.'

      On the new SL-5600, they've got only 32MB of SD-RAM, but it's all used as 'RAM'.
      So no loss there (unless you were doing something funky with your SL-5500 to get more than 32MB; like running your filesyst
      • Can you change the amounts used for RAM and storage? On WinCE or PocketPC, you can adjust the amounts used for each- for what I do on my Jornada 720 (WinCE), I need a lot of RAM. I have 30 MB of the 32 MB dedicated to RAM, only 2 MB to storage, and store everything on the 2 GB PCMCIA drive.

        I was considering one of these after seeing this deal, but it'd be a shame to give up my beautiful 2 GB PCMCIA drive. :(
    • > So, how do the two compare to each other? SL-5600 has faster
      > processor (at least in theory), 5500 has more RAM (64MB vs 32MB),
      > but 5600 has more Flash-RAM. Which one is faster?

      To clarify this a little:

      The 5500 splits its DRAM in two. Half the DRAM is used for memory, and the other half is used for storage. So the 5500 in its default setup has 32MB storage, 32MB memory.

      The 5600 uses the DRAM exclusively for memory, and the 64MB Flash is used for storage, and 32MB DRAM is, as I said, memory

  • mplayer (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Could this one probably run mplayer (http://www.mplayhq.hu) ? You could use it watching adult movies under your blanket late at night while your mom thinks you are sleeping ;-)

  • 5500 vs 5600 -- strongly consider the 5500 (Score:4, Informative)

    by rjamestaylor ( 117847 ) <rjamestaylor@gmail.com> on Monday March 17, 2003 @05:17PM (#5531801) Journal
    The 5600 is very nice, but differs from the 5500 mainly in battery and updated applications (like Opera 6 versus 5). The XScale is twice the MHz but not twice the speed, something Apple users understand; I recall other hardware mfg'ers having real problems getting the XScale to work properly. I would expect that the newer applications will be made available for 5500 users, since there is little hardware change to prevent this, but the albatross of poor battery life made the 5500 untenable for applications needing to run a scanner or 802.11b radio.

    I'm excited about the 5600 for my use and still recommend the 5500 for general development and use.

    Go Sharp!

  • Questions for a current Zaurus owner... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by PunchMonkey ( 261983 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @05:19PM (#5531837) Homepage
    Before I whip out my credit card and ask a friend in the U.S. to forward this on to me since hsn doesn't ship to Canada :-(

    - How's the battery life? ~4 hours? ~20 hours? How much do you use your s and how often do you have to recharge?

    - The OS that comes presinstalled, it's linux based right? Do I get a shell with it? Can I compile and run most linux apps? What's the deal with OpenZaurus?

    I did try and get answers from HSN and myzaurus.com (and even openzaurus.com) but these ones weren't answered.

    Thanks!

    • Re:Questions for a current Zaurus owner... (Score:4, Informative)

      by JCholewa ( 34629 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @05:46PM (#5532063) Homepage
      > Before I whip out my credit card and ask a friend in the U.S. to forward this on to me since hsn doesn't ship to Canada :-(
      > - How's the battery life? ~4 hours? ~20 hours? How much do you
      > use your s and how often do you have to recharge?

      I have a SL-5000D, which has a much smaller battery than the SL-5600. It gets a little better battery life than the Handspring Visor Prism, if that helps. Actually, it's probably much better in the summertime, since the Prism's screen is unreadable in the daylight, but I could totally turn off the front-light on the Zaurus in daytime (for longer hours and all that). Still, I keep mine plugged in as often as possible, though I do have it set up to have all my data on the Flash ROM, so I don't lose anything (even installed apps, even prefs, whatever) if I do lose power.

      > - The OS that comes presinstalled, it's linux based right?

      Yeah. Based on Debian's arm-ported binaries, though it's not Debian itself. I think that there is a debian port (with X and all), but that's just insane, man!

      > Do I get a shell with it?

      Sharp put its terminal program on the CD. It's easy enough to install, but there are better choices. There's a port of Konsole (the tabbed terminal program used in KDE) for the Zaurus that is very popular.

      > Can I compile and run most linux apps?

      Good question. If you're good at cross compiling, you'll probably have good luck with command-line apps. Graphical apps are a little different. The Zaurus doesn't normally use X. X is huge for a PDA. You could get it, but that's ... well, it's insane. Anyway, programs requiring X libs obviously won't work. Zaurus uses Qtopia, which is a PDA-ish environment based on Trolltech's Qt, a widget set and toolkit for many operating systems. It's neat. I use Qt for my programs (it makes programming a lot easier), and I can easily cross compile gui apps between x86/Linux, x86/win32, ppc/macosx (well, I could if I had the compiler for OS X, and it'd help if I had OS X itself!) and the Zaurus.

      > What's the deal with OpenZaurus?

      It's mostly just a different ROM with different default applications. It uses Konqueror/Embedded instead of the Opera browser. It's made with ssh in mind instead of the insecure ftp that the Zaurus normally uses. It has better scripting support, though I haven't really looked at that stuff. The launcher configuration is amazing, at least compared to what Sharp offers for the SL-5000D. I can change background images for each category, I can change fonts, I can alter the widget style, I can have transparent menus ... lots of stuff like that. Oh, OZ also lets me use the Flash ROM for storage and the DRAM exclusively for memory access, though Sharp does that now, too.

      On the negative side, OZ 3.0 can be a bit crashy and there's a few things that it doesn't work with (Opera, most Hancom Office -- the best office suite for PDAs, bar none -- stuff, and java apps), so if your life depends on that stuff, you might want to stick with Sharp.

      -JC
    • " How's the battery life? ~4 hours? ~20 hours? How much do you use your s and how often do you have to recharge?"

      Generally, battery life is sorta bad: I use my Zaurus for about 10-15 minutes a day (on/off use, basically) and with that, the battery life is about 3 hours. When playing mps, though, ends up being about an hour of use.

      When the battery is uncharged, everything goes bye-bye, too: I'm in the habit of backing up monthly.

      "- The OS that comes presinstalled, it's linux based right?"

      Yes.

      " Do I get

    • Re:Questions for a current Zaurus owner... (Score:4, Informative)

      by dagnabit ( 89294 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @06:50PM (#5532602)
      I picked up my Zaurus at Linuxworld in San Francisco last fall during Sharp's "half off" sale, and have been using it on a daily basis since then. I also own (and continue to use) a Palm IIIxe.

      Battery life for me has been about 2 to 2.5 hours with full backlight on (it's got 5 different settings, including off. The darker you go, the longer it lasts). The screen is very reflective, so if you're outside (or sitting in a window seat on a plane) you can turn the backlight off and get as much as 4-5 hours out of it.

      It seems to charge back up completely pretty quickly once you plug it in, though. And I normally leave it sitting in the cradle (a la Palm V) charging when I'm not holding it in my office, etc.

      But the short battery life definitely sucks if you're truly mobile with it (I fly quite a bit for business). How I wish it took regular (rechargeable) AAA batteries like my Palm...

      It uses embedded Linux as the underlying OS (uname shows "2.4.6-rmk1-np2-embedix").

      There are a couple of free terminal apps you can install (including multi-tab Konsole) to get a shell while in GUI mode. Or I suppose you could kill the GUI and run at the command line... but who wants that in a PDA?

      There are a couple of howtos for cross-compiling for, and native compiling on, the Z at docs.zaurus.com [zaurus.com]. I don't any of that myself (yet), though, so I can only say I've glanced at the docs and they seem fairly straightforward.

      OpenZaurus is a ROM image replacement that gives you more access to the installed RAM, etc. I haven't run it myself, but I've seen lots of positive comments. One note: some/many commercial Zaurus app providers like theKompany [thekompany.com] only support official Sharp ROMs. If you load their stuff on OZ and it doesn't work, oh well. But the OZ developers seem to be interested in knowing about problems like that to make OZ better.

      BTW, theKompany apps rock (IMO) compared to the built-in ones. Yes, they cost a couple of $$ each, but you get free upgrades for life.

      For all it's shortcomings, I haven't found much I can't do with the Z that I do use the Palm IIIxe for. And the "wow" factor of listening to my OGG files while surfing wirelessly or writing something with the keyboard is right up there... I can't count the number of people next to me on flights who have said "what _is_ that thing?" :) The battery life could definitely be a problem though -- can't wait to try a 5600!
    • Do I get a shell with it?

      Yes, both from its built-in keyboard and via ssh.

      Can I compile and run most linux apps?

      Command line applications compile and run just fine. Most Linux GUI apps don't because it runs Qt/Embedded by default. However, there is an X11 server and environment available for it (see handhelds.org).

    • Oh, I should add that you can run gcc both in-device and on your desktop.

      If you plug in a 512M CF card, the whole thing is more powerful and has more memory and disk storage than most workstations had less than a decade ago.

  • No OSX support and very shoddy support from Sharp leads me to think that the only reason you'd buy a Zaurus is because of Linux, not because of having any use of it as a PDA.

    Personally, I wish I could get rid of my 5500.
  • I'd like to have a PDA that simultaneously has Linux, wireless and a camera, so that I could use it to transmit pictures, and perhaps try to make it into a video phone, or, perhaps someday, an encrypted video phone (and perhaps a remote desktop or remote TV, although I don't need a camera on the PDA for those applications).

    I have a Toshiba e740, which has built-in 802.11b wireless and CF and SDIO slots, but I haven't seen Linux for it and I haven't yet found the time to look into trying to port ARM Linux

  • Irony? (Score:3, Funny)

    by Thing 1 ( 178996 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @06:42PM (#5532536) Journal
    Looking at the "PC Software Requirements" list:

    Microsoft Windows 98/98SE/2000 Professional/ME/XP

    So it runs Linux but requires Windows? Hahahahaha.

  • Does the 5500 really have 64 MB of RAM? (as opposed to to the 32 MB others have said)

    What about the screen? Does it have a nice reflective screen like the iPAQ's, that can actually be read out-of-doors? I'm an ecologist and use a PDA [among other things] for field data collection... I have Newton 2100 and a Jornada 720 and am still using the Newton more than the Jornada 720. A big part of this is that I cannot see the J720's screen in natural light almost at all, but the greyscale screen of the Newton is

  • it's just funny (Score:4, Insightful)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:35PM (#5532923)
    that people keep claiming that something like that, a 400MHz RISC processor and 32M of RAM isn't fast enough for running X11 and therefore requires an embedded window system that is incompatible with what we run on our desktops.

  • wrong memory figures (Score:3, Informative)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Monday March 17, 2003 @07:39PM (#5532945)
    The summary gets it wrong. The SL-5600 has 32M of SDRAM and 64M of Flash; the SL-5500 has 64M of SDRAM and 16M of Flash "ROM". See here [sharpusa.com].

    The reason is probably that without using an add-on Flash card, the old SL-5500 stored a lot of stuff in RAM, which was easily lost. The only reason I can imagine why they lowered the amount of SDRAM is for battery life, although that seems kind of short-sighted to me.

  • Are there any packages that let you rotate the Zaurus's screen 90 degrees for using it in a landscape position? (almost a must for taking notes with such a tiny screen) Better yet, something like Nyditot's Virtual Display [nyditot.com], which let's you not only rotate the display, but run it at different resolutions? (640x480 on the iPAQ for instance!)

  • Bluetooth? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by bbn ( 172659 )
    Where is the bluetooth support? Or WIFI? I need either to connect to internet and read my mail.

    Bluetooth is a must, wifi would be neat. With bluetooth I can get internet access through my GSM phone with GPRS. I use this all the time with my ipaq and Ericsson T68i (or Nokia 7650).

    I can drool all day long over how cool the applications are, but without easy internet access when I am on the move, the device is useless.

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