On Monday, December 8, 2003, at 12:32 PM, Michael Thompson wrote:
Anyone here use a Sharp Zaurus 5600? From what I've been reading this
looks like the PDA that I want. Does anyone have any personal
experience with Linux based PDAs they could share? I like the Zaurus
because of the built-in keyboard, the wireless CF expansion, and I hear
you can install an ssh client, etc... I may opt for a standard PDA w/ir
keyboard if there are any other good ones that are Linux based. (Oh
yeah, the 400MHz XScale proc. looks nice too!)
TIA!
--mike
As a student of human factors, one of the pieces of technology that interests me the most are PDA's, because there's all these design constraints you have to work around, and when someone does this really well, it's really impressive. In pursuing this interest, I've owned several different brands of PDA's (Various Palms, Agenda VR3, Zaurus 5500).
Palm works so well because they did stuff like designing the user interface before they ever started writing the code (or designing the hardware). ( see http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,32010,00.html )What Jeff Hawkins did was counter to the Unix Philosophy, which is why it worked so well.
In general, Linux programmers are really bad at designing user interfaces. This hurts on a desktop when you budget several hours to sit down in excellent lighting conditions with a 17" monitor and full-size mouse and keyboard. It kills when you unexpectedly bump into an attractive person in a dark bar and you're standing up and you have just 20 seconds to get down her phone number on a 320x240 pixel screen using tiny and difficult-to-control writing instruments and/or keyboards. Trolltech, the folks who make the Qtopia GUI that the Zaurus runs, in no way took these design constraints seriously. Qtopia has widgets that consume massive quantities of precious screen real-estate with stuff like borders and shadows, and in many cases your typical PDA application like the Zaurus datebook requires 2-3 times the number stylus taps the Palm requires to perform the same task. Finally, the handwriting recognition on a Zaurus really stinks. It's far easier to write far more more accurately far faster on a Palm.
Sharp, the Zaurus hardware folks, are just as guilty of making the Zaurus suck as a PDA as Trolltech are. These dimwits put the power button for the Zaurus on the *outside* of the PDA. It's not protected by anything (the button is actually raised), and more than once I've taken my Zaurus out of my pocket only to find it's already running (other times I take it out and find the battery is already dead). There actually is a visor/shield on the Zaurus that comes down to protect the screen, but the people at Sharp didn't even think of extending it to cover the power button (which should have been recessed as well). My 1998 PalmPilot, in all of it's 8mhz processor 512k RAM glory, had a visor that went down over a recessed power button. Yet a 2003 era Zaurus with a 400mhz processor and 64M of RAM doesn't. Dammit that's sobering.
I really wish that both Trolltech and Sharp had read this document before designing the first circuit or writing the first line of code: http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/docs/zenofpalm/ Enlightenment.html#971128 This should considered the Fine Manual for mobile computing design.
As to suggestions of what to buy, if you want a PDA that lets you take down appointments, e-mails, and phone numbers without hassle, get a Palm. I've got a Palm Tungsten T2, and other than the fact I have to slide the damn thing open every time I want to write something, it really does kick ass. It's real easy to add important dates and contact info. My T2 effortlessly syncs dates and contact info over BlueTooth with iSync on my laptop and with my cellphone. Anyone calls me, I simply add their number on the phone and it shows up next time I sync on the computer. I get a VCard in an e-mail and add it to Address Book, the name and numbers are in my Palm and on my cell phone.
To end this e-mail on a positive note, the one thing the Zaurus has going for it is it really is a mobile linux computer, having access to just about all the things a full-size desktop computer running linux has. I wrote a Python program using the Python Qt bindings to keep track of what I eat and store the info in xml for later retrieval. It was an order of magnitude easier than trying to develop something for PalmOS. If half the time I didn't pull the Zaurus out of my pocket to find the damn thing dead because the power button had been accidently hit, that program I wrote would have been very useful.
--Ilan
-- Ilan Volow Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
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