[luau] Sharp Zaurus sl5000d

[MonMotha]

Jeff Mings wrote:
> This could be a very cool thing, depending on what you need and want in 
> a PDA.  I have been coveting the new Zaurus with the pop-down keyboard, 
> beautiful big screen, and real, built-in Linux.  The potential to easily 
> move stuff between my Linux boxen and PDA is very appealing, and not 
> really possible with my 5th and current PDA, a Compaq Ipaq.  The Ipaq 
> was purchased by my former boss for me so that I could 
> setup/manage/tailor his Ipaq.  This may sound silly, but setting up the 
> various connectoids, email profiles and various other settings on a 
> miniature version of Windoze is much more complex and needlessly 
> complicated than the same actions on a PalmOS device.  

This is because it's WinCE.  No I'm not saying it's windows so it's bad, 
but it's a much more complex OS than PalmOS, so there's more to it. Now, 
that doesn't mean *I* ever managed to get PPC2k2 to not crash once every 
3 hours...


> Needless to say, 
> I don't like WinCE, and have wanted to buy a Zaurus, but the price of a 
> new unit is too high, so I decided to buy a snap-on keyboard that is 
> functionally similar to the Zaurus' and to load one of the Ipaq Linux 
> distros.  

You can load OPIE and run many of the commercial apps that the Zaurus 
can run (OPIE is a OSS fork of QPE).  Of course, you'll lose the 
flexibility you get with X.  There are scripts to help you run both 
(essentially dual booting, but without the booting part) should you 
desire, but you'll probably NEED a 32MB flash ipaq (or a CF card and 
sleeve) to do that.  One nice thing about linux though, EVERYTHING can 
be stored in flash, so if you have to reboot, you lose NOTHING.


>I will lose the very useful pocket street maps, but I'll gain 
> much more.  I think the retail price is usually $500 for the Zaurus.  It 
> sounds like a great deal to me for a mini linux-box-in-your-pocket.  If 
> you're just looking for an electronic organizer, though, go buy a 
> handspring.
> 

I concur. If you just want an organizer, a handspring or similar device 
will suit your needs much better.  But if you're in it for the hack 
value (ever played starcraft on your PDA?  I didn't think so.), ipaqs or 
Zaurus's are where it's at right now.  Just don't get a 39xx ipaq, the 
x-scale is currently a little buggy and I'm not sure if there's a 
bootloader for them yet.

--MonMotha