Customer Reviews

Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 PDA

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've been using Palm PDAs for about five years now and wanted to upgrade to something new. I had seen the Zaurus 5500 and was going to purchase one before I heard that the 5600 was being released. The 5600 is fast, applications load quickly and the OS seems to be very stable. I haven't had anything crash yet. Setting up wireless networking with a CF card is trivial, plug the card in, run the network config application and type in your WEP key and you're on the net. Surfing with Opera is excellent, you can zoom in and out on web pages and I haven't found any pages that it won't display. I have yet to try the Hancom applications for reading and writing Word and Excel docs but everything else works very well. Now I just need to find an SSH client for it and I'll really be in business.

My first PDA was the Zaurus 5000D (developer version of this 5600). I really wanted to like it but it was limited on space for installing apps and I had trouble synching it with my Outlook. But enter the 5600... as soon as I heard it announced I had my eye on it and finally broke down and bought it. What a dream! Straight out of the box I plugged in my Linksys CF WAN card and in no time I was connected to my wireless network and surfing the net with the pre-installed Opera browser. I even checked and sent email. For about $ I was able to enter complete geek-dom and downloaded tkcJabber, an instant messenger package that connects to AIM, MSN, IRC and Yahoo chats. (this and many free software for the Zaurus are available at [website].) And within minutes I was chatting online as well.

The true test was then the synching feature. I installed the Intellisync software on my machine from the CD that came with my Zaurus, plugged in the docking station, put my Zaurus on there and hit the synch button. It all Synched without one problem! What a breeze!

The battery life on the 5600 is much improved over the 5000D and the 5500. Other things I love about the Zaurus: I can read and edit Word and Excel documents on it; can view PowerPoint presentations; the sliding QWERTY keyboard is convenient and, although it looks small and hard to use, it really is quite handy and easy to use. I also like the fact that you can use a compactflash card (CF) and/or a SecureDigital (SD) card. I could list more but I think my word limit is about up for this review! Bottomline: Highly recommend!

This device is almost perfect for the linux user who wants something smaller than his\her laptop. In order to appreciate this device, you really have to like linux. If you have never used linux, dont bother, get yourself an M$ windows pda.

If you're like me and love linux, you'll love the zaurus. You can get virtually all main stream linux apps for it (gcc, make, apache, mysql...the list goes on and on). I especially like that fact that it has a java runtime, and with the addition of compiler (try ibm's Jikes compiled for zaurus) you have a pocket java development environment.

The fact that it has CF and SD slots means you can have your wifi and your extra storage in at the same time, which is a great plus.

The fold out keyboard is slightly slower than a full size, but still light years ahead of stupid handwriting recognition on other devices (although the z has that too)

There are tons of different roms availible, from sharp and others. One that fixes the pxa250 cache errata is definatly required, as you may have heard this is a bug which affects performance. But if you flash with a special kernel it fixes this bug and allows you to clock the device up to 471 mhz! NICE!

The Only thing I would add to this device is a built in DOWNSTREAM usb port, so that you can plug in usb devices. A Compact flash Usb card is availible from ratoc (for $150). I bought that too and now i can connect external HD's, Gamepads, Keyboards, Extra Wifi's, and maybe even printers or cd burners.

While Pocket PC Users can say things like "my Ipaq is LIKE a pc!" The zaurus user can say "my zaurus IS a PC".
There really isnt anything you cant do on the zaurus since its a full linux OS.

I would whole heartedly reccomend this product to EVERY linux user

This PDA is very nice except for the PX-250 CPU it uses. The PX-250 proccessor unforuntely runs ARM4 code (programs compiled for the Zaurus SL-5500) at half speed (around 200mhz instead of expected 400mhz). The only software that will run full-speed on the PX-250 CPU are the default applications on the Sharp ROM, some software from Thekompany, and programs compiled exclusively for ARM5 (PX-250). Intel has made a PX-255 CPU which fixes the half-speed problem on older apps, but it is currently only used in new PDAs such as the Tungsten "C", the Toshiba e755 pocket PC, and the newer Dell Axim X5 Advanced.

Sharp has no word on if they will switch to the PX-255 CPU in a new model.

Casual users may not notice this problem, but many will.

Let me preface this review by stating that I am a long time Unix user/developer and navigating Unix-based OS's is second nature to me.

I finally caved-in and purchased the Zaurus 5600 after Amazon lowered the price. When I finally received the item, I was disappointed to find that unit had the PX250 processor (you can definitively determine your processor type by entering the following command from your terminal application: grep Processor /proc/cpuinfo). Nevertheless, I forged ahead and installed the WCF12 LAN card, rebooted the handheld and I was up and surfing the net and reading reviews for the 5600 on Amazon.com (I have a Netgear MR-814 wireless router)! I downloaded the Konsole application and I was exploring the filesystem using the default bash shell commands. Out of the box, the 5600 does not support X applications. No problem! I downloaded and installed Qtopia-X, Keypebble, IceWM, and XFree86. I started up QTopia-X (which is a VNCServer), started up the window-manager, set the display to the localhost on VNC server and fired up Xterm. Way too cool!! I am looking forward to installing gcc/g++ after I add a SD card to the unit. I am completely blown away that I have fully functioning Unix/X station on the little 5600.

For the more Windows oriented users, I successfully used Hancom sheet to open an Excel spreadsheet, Hancom Word to open a MSWord document and was able to sync with Outlook with no problems.

The keyboard is very usable (vi users, the cancel button is the ESC key and Unix users, pipe is shift-space) and the overall design of the PDA is fantastic and well thought out.

There has been no noticable lapse in performance due to the PX250 processor. I am normally loathe to use a plethora of exclamation points in my writing, but the presence of them in this review is an indication of my affection for the "Little Unix Box(!!!!)."

I've been looking for a replacement for my Visor Platinum for a while now, and this one caught my eye. Aside from the fact that this model carries a faster processor and a longer lasting battery compared to the 5500, the size of the unit "may" look identical from the face, but the extended battery comes with a small price. The back of the unit sticks out slightly to accomodate for the larger battery. It's still one of the most feature rich PDA's out there with a pretty impressive onboard speaker and microphone. Transferring files to the CF or SD memory cards is pretty "clunky" so purchasing a 6-in-1 type reader is the best way to go if you want to transfer larger files. The box itself includes the Zaurus + a removable clear flip top similar to the old Palm III, a usb sync cradle, a laptop style ac adapter which can be used independantly of the cradle, a stylus, sync software, and manuals.

I have had the Zaurus for 2 days. This device is simply amazing. Just a few things to mention
1) WI-FI support, I just plugin my Linksys wireless CF card, and it worked, on Pocket PC, I had to install software.
2) The wirelsss connection and the browser work great. On Pocket PC, the buggy MS software frequently quit working for no reason, and I had to reset the Pocket PC unit. The Linux based Zaurus is rock soild.
3) The USB syncing is reliable. The Pocket PC won't even work via the USB hub, you have to connect it directly to a USB port. Furthermore, activesync frequently stops working, and I had to reboot both the PC and PDA.

Now let me tell you something I have done:
1) installed OpenSSH onto the unit. After that, I leave the unit downstairs, upstairs using a notebook I wirelessly sshed into the PDA, it's just another UNIX server, at the bash promopt, I use wget to download a bunch of files from the net, including PERL, APACHE, and MYSQL. MySQL is only a few hundred kilio bytes, I created a few tables and run some SQL queries. Great!
2) Installed a VNC server on the PDA, then on my PC I use vncviewer to connect to the PDA, the PDA screen shows up on the PC, and I can remotely operate it via its GUI interface.

On the net, I found all sorts of applications ported to Zaurus, even including things like XFfree86 and Courier-mail server. Maybe we should do some web and mail benchmarking on this 400MHZ device.

In conclusion, this PDA is a true Linux machine with a small keyboard and screen that can be put in your pocket, you can use it to listen to mp3, browser web or serve web and email.....or whatever open source.

Unless you get lucky, Amazon is shipping Sharp's pxa250 processors that they discontinued over a year ago. The processors are buggy and don't use a lot of software correctly. There are kernel work-arounds if you are linux savy which are quite stable, but paying for a product that has been discontinued over a year ago doesn't make much sense, especially when you have to jump through hoops and recompile a kernel just to get the unit working correctly.
For those that want an awesome pda and the challenge of building their own, this is a great unit. If you are looking for something fast and stable out of the box, get a vendor with the 400mz pxa 255 processor. The Z is an awesome pda, I have SQL, Python and java running from mine, I'd just suggest you look for the more recent version you don't have to fix out of the box.

Linux OS and the keyboard are the best features of this PDA. The keyboard beats any software input methods by a mile. The Linux OS provides stability and easy commuication with the linux desktops I have. The netgear ma701 wi-fi card simply works after plugging in and the configuration for connecting to my wi-fi access point is straightforward; after installing the free qpe-terminal and openssh packages, I can easily access the PDA from my desktop. The battery life is great without the wi-fi card (I guess I should have bought a low-power card).

This PDA is more than any other PDA out there save of course another later zaurus model. I bought it simply to have a personal PC while I am on the road so I dont have to lug my laptop all the time. The linux operating system offers wondrous opportunities to use this device using open source software ( as in free!). So what have I been using it for : so far I have installed Mplayer and am running 2pass divx encoded video off of a 512 MB CF card which can hold up to 5 hours of movies. The quality is excellent. I use it to connect to my home network wirelessly and securely using Freeswan IPSEC vpn implementation. I use it to browse the web using Opera which has a handy zoom button. Qftp allows me to download files from local and remote ftp servers. I can ssh into and from the Zaurus into other machines on the network. Rotation package from Opie allow me to rotate the display between portrait and landscape modes. I installed opie pacman. Opie player plays my mp3's. There are developers out there working on custom version of ROMS for this device with added featrues. I have barely tapped into all the possibilities that this machine can be used for. Try to do that on a non linux PDA. Definitely a geek toy.