Let the hive mind of Engadget get that for you.
"We need a digital camera that can be switched on and fire off that first shot fast. It's not a commonly tracked statistic on any review site, and nobody seems to have this information for every camera. We were hoping other readers could inform us as to what small digital cameras can fire off their first pics in under a second (ideally under half a second). It needs to be small, but mostly, just really quick in operation. Thanks!"
I own a Sharp Zaurus SL5600 and an AV320, so I am very familiar with both worlds, so I believe that I am qualified to answer some of these questions. (I have even run Linux on my AV320).
The PMA430 will show up as a generic USB mass storage device just like the other Archos products so there will be no problem at all syncing files in Linux or Windows.
Whenever you are using the operating system portion of the PMA430, i.e. not playing video files, you will always be running at 320x240, regardless of whether you are using an external display or not.
Contrary to popular opinion, on a screen as small as these devices have (even a little bit larger screens) 320x240 resolution is more than ample for fantastic video playback. It is a total waste to have a high resolution screen if the size is so small (<4.5 inches). Remember that NTSC Television is roughly about 352x240 resolution. Now would you throw out your 35" TV because the resolution is too low? Now don't get me wrong, I know you can't exactly convert TV scanlines to pixels like that, but it's close enough to make that analogy. Also with HDTV and new stuff coming out, old TV seems pretty bad, but really it's got decent picture quality, even on larger screens. So all of you complaining about screen resolution need to just zip it until you learn more about video OK?
The Linux system that the PMA430 uses is basically the same as the Sharp Zaurus: embedded Linux with Qtopia windowing environment. Therefore, the software installation will be by the Linux based handheld standard method- IPKG files. These are nice packaged files similar to rpm or deb files and are most of the time easy to install. All you have to do is transfer them to the device using usb, network, or whatever method you prefer, and then install. 90% of them can be installed by using the Qtopia graphical installer and the rest need to be installed in a terminal by issuing the command "ipkg install programname.ipk". See, no big deal.
With some fiddling, you should be able to use roughly the whole 30GB harddisk for application storage if you so desire. This is Linux, remember? :-) Now, mind you, I did say with some fiddling. For the Linux-familiar geek this should be no problem. For the average Windoze user, you should be able to have plenty of space to install loads of software with a minimum of effort.
As far as the filesystem being exposed, that is not a factor on this device or any other (including the Zaurus). As was mentioned, the Linux filesystem will show up as a file under another computers view when the device is connected to USB, but files in the FAT32 partition of the PMA430 can be read by Linux just as easily as the native filesystem. So there is no problem about getting a file "into the Linux filesystem". At worst, it's a two step graphical process, so no biggie.
As far as CPU, the PMA430 uses a TI ARM7 CPU running at 80MHz. This may seem slow, but the special chip from Texas Instruments has special video encoding/decoding abilities to handle the media playing and recording that the device does. On the other hand, the regular apps like MPlayer, Opera, and others will not run as fast as they do on Zaurus because the Zaurus runs everything at either 206MHz (5500 series) or 400MHz+ (5600, C700 and newer series). This means that things like Mjpeg/MPEG2/Quicktime video playing may not be very good because it will have to run without the special features of the fancy processor. But I assume that at least Ogg/MP3/WMA/WAV and other less processor intensive codecs will play just fine, even at 80MHz.
But, there is hope for additional codecs: When Archos releases the SDK, I am sure that some dude will immediately begin working on a video player based on MPlayer or something that will take advantage of the fancy TI processor's video features.
Since it is ARM7, it is binary compatible with Zaurus applications, but as was mentioned before, some do not run because of being made specifically for the Zaurus.
But porting even those special apps should be able to be done with little effort.
With MPlayer or VLC, streaming video over a network to the device is no problem. I do it with my Zaurus all the time. It should be about the same stuff. But, as before, using these programs will diminish the video processing performance because they don't take advantage of the special hardware in the PMA430.
About using AIM or some variant: You should be able to run several instant messaging programs on this device that were written for Zaurus with no problems.
HDTV support? on this tiny thing? gimme a break. That would be stupid to begin with and a waste of hardware.
The USB host is a SWEET feature. Although it only runs at USB1.1 speed, most, if not all USB2.0 devices will operate at this speed so there should be no problems.
The host port opens the door to a whole new world of peripherals like joysticks (for playing emulated games etc.), keyboards, cardreaders, network interfaces, cellphone connections, external harddrives, external CD/DVD drives or even with some extra software and some tinkering-- CD/DVD burners. I seriously doubt that that would be practical, and may not even work, especially for DVD because of the high speed needed to write them, but in theory it is possible. CD/DVD readers is definitely a possiblity and more than likely will work well.
So anyway, I hope that I have answered some questions.
God Bless