New Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000
posted Mar 11th 2005 8:15AM
Looks like Sharp is going to tantalize us yet again with another PDA offering that we may never get our hands on in
the States (at least not directly). The SL-C1000 looks to have similar specs to its cousin, the
SL-C3000 but, rather notably, sans hard drive (which we
can only hope will cut the price tag on this significantly, though no word on the dollar sign factor yet). It should
have about 8 hours of battery life and 52MB user-area RAM. We're looking at a tentative launch date for the 18th of
this month, when many cries of "Kampai!" will ring through the night in Japan, and cries of another variety altogether
will be ringing from those folks' jealous counterparts in this hemisphere. Peep another photo after the break,
mates.
[Thanks, Robert!]
You are welcome! Here is another page (sorry Japanese only) that shows some good photos of this new Zaurus.
http://ascii24.com/news/i/hard/article/2005/03/11/654713-000.html
Combine this with QuantumStep and it's probably as close to a New Newton or Mac PDA as you're going to get. If only they would sell these in the USA, I'd buy one in a heart beat.
QuantumStep :: http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=QuantumSTEP
Combine this with QuantumStep and it's probably as close to a New Newton or Mac PDA as you're going to get. If only they would sell these in the USA, I'd buy one in a heart beat.
QuantumStep :: http://www.dsitri.de/wiki.php?page=QuantumSTEP
Not that I take those rumors of a Mac PDA too seriously, but this platform does actually have some promise in that area -- it's already linux based, which means that working with an OSX-like system would be easier to do. And it's gorgeous, and different than anything else on the market. Skinned in a nice titanium or gloss-white, why not?
It kinda makes me wonder if Sharp has been intentionally withholding these devices with the idea of a partnership in mind all along...
New Mac PDA circa 1993 maybe. that QuantumSTEP link was hideous. talk about ugly. looked like Windows 3.1 or Mac OS 7.6. perfect example of what people mean when saying that aesthetics and design in an OS *do* matter. gah. i still can't get the disgusting images out of head!
back to the Sharp... i *really* wish more people would make landscape oriented PDAs again. i think the portrait design is not nearly as useful. especially a portrait including a thumbboard. doesn't the SL-C3000 and presumably this one lack WiFi and BT? or not? seems sort of pointless if it does.
It would be wonderful if this flew in the North American market. But it won't because these things never seem to. And it's not a converged device: if it doesn't include everything - including the kitchen sink - the only buyers will be the early adopters. The mass consumer and corporate markets will continue to stay away.
Carmi
http://writteninc.blogspot.com
Sorry, but 52MB of RAM just doesn't cut it anymore. Dropping the hard drive may have been a good move, but leaving a PDA with only 52MB of RAM is just plain silly. Reminds me of Moto's MPX, with its anemic 32MB of RAM, rendering that device almost completely useless.
PDA manufacturers arent making more lanscape oriented PDA's, because the majority of users are still using them primarily in portrait mode. Not to mention that all new PDA's can be switched into landscape mode with a touch of a button.
CARMI,
AGAIN: Stop posting -- I mean advertising -- in the comments. Everytime you postvertise I gag on your awful digital existentialist comments. If I wanted a moral for an engadget article I'd read a fable.
Thanks Aesop.
fyi:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000727035343/#comments
Another casualty to my lack of conformity and lowest common denominator consumerism. I will probably NEVER own one of these...
*Sigh*
That being said, I agree; 52mb is nigh insulting. Doing away with the mechanical drive was probably a good idea to bring down costs and increase battery life, but what does a 512mb CF card cost these days ? $45 to $60 retail with SD being maybe 10% more (imagine if bought in bulk). I think they could have integrated some flash memory into the chasm left by the HD's removal w/out too much cost, even if not via an actual sd/cf card at least, the guts of one.
Though it would be pretty cool to have a user upgradeable (for the slightly more adventurous/tech-savy/reckless) internal memory slot a la the Jornada 720. It defenitely is fragile when opened, but if you can refrain from card swaping and just use either a USB sync cable, wifi, or even a crossover cable and ICS on your PC (hey! it beats serial) for larege file transfers, as 'Disco Stu' says.....
eeeeeeiiiiiiiii...........
Seriously though, 512mb to 1gb of flash memory (with upgrade potential) instead of the HD is IMHO the perfect compromise for price+performance-battery life.
Especially if you still retain the CF and sd slots...
#5 - your comment made me go and look at the screenshots. Gaaah! I should have listened!
That is the right direction. The reason why the PDA market is slowing down is because most people only use it for carrying addresses and to do lists. If it was a device that was a point of convergence like everybody wants in that little package, it'd sell like hotcakes.
I have one of Zaurus without HDD and I'm totally happy with it. Let me say if
you think 53MB is too small, your usage is wrong. That 128MB internal memory
is just a workspace, You buy 1GB SD card and use it for main internal storage
(and you will never eject it).
CF slot is there to gives you Wifi, GPS, or 4GB HDD capability.
I don't know 'Higon', I respect your opinion, but I also disagree with it a bit.
What if you want to copy something off of someone elses SD card ? If all YOUR storage is on your SD you're either limited to 53Mb, need to have a CF storage/adapter card as well, or have to shuffle the data between their card your ram and your card in <53mb chunks. Not very appealing choices to me. Same if you want to offload pics from your SD digital camera while traveling...
All in all I think the 'C' series of Zaurai are pretty obviously not your typical PDA. They are basically ultraportable computers (actually I think they are BETTER than the OQO and the U50 in many ways...the Flipstart might be compelling if it actually comes to market), and as such I think the way the people who would actually buy them would probably use them warrants some differnt features, like internal storage (integrated wifi/BT *might* be nice to).
If everyone knows the first thing people are gonna do after they buy one is jam a SD card in it, why not put in a little extra time, a few more resources, charge a little more money, make a little more profit, and save the end user a little time and effort?
There are definitely advantages to having your NV storage being removable though, I'll give you that. It makes it both upgradable and replaceable. Both good qualities. But if I'm going to be using this device like a full on computer that happens to fit in my pocket (which is why I would buy one) I'd like to have some decent internal storage.
It just seems like it's a long way from 4gb of non-volitile storage to 53mb of user available ram. Kind of an all or nothing proposition. But then again...look at the names...
C1000 and C3000...
Perhaps the 'C2000' will give me exactly what I want (but probably still can't afford), a happy medium...
All that said I'm glad you are happy with your purchse (lucky...is it a C860 ?), 'cuz in the end that's really all that matters... :)
Thanks for your reply despite of my rough comment. I just didn't want
someone to miss this machine because of its seems-prehistoric-number
'53MB'. I realize my comment is too rough. My opinion should have been
"Zaurus is good machine for me when I use it in *unofficial way*"
When you look at this machine as "Linux box", Zaurus really roars.
(although it's different from Sharp's concept.) You probably start
from killing SD card slot (or CF slot by HDD), making "swap partition"
to enhance its memory. Then you'll see it's being no longer ordinary
PDA.
>What if you want to copy something off of someone elses SD card ? If
>all YOUR storage is on your SD you're either limited to 53Mb, need to
>have a CF storage/adapter card as well, or have to shuffle the data
>between their card your ram and your card in 53mb chunks. Not very
>appealing choices to me. Same if you want to offload pics from your SD
>digital camera while traveling...
CFSD adapter can virtually add one more SD slot for Zaurus.
Size of copied file shouldn't matter. But, I don't know since I've
never tried 2 SD at once. I usually copy data from notebook data
via USB.
They gave CF slot to you so that you can select PHS Card/Mobile Card/
Wifi/Bluetooth for its network connection. This is good solution where
PHS internet is available in flat charge of $20 or so. In U.S., Bluetooth
does good job but Bluetooth just doesn't make sense in Japan. de'mit.
>If everyone knows the first thing people are gonna do after they buy
>one is jam a SD card in it, why not put in a little extra time, a few
>more resources, charge a little more money, make a little more profit,
>and save the end user a little time and effort?
I think default feature of Zaurus is not inferior to that of Palm/PPC.
Software can be installed, uninstalled or moved to SD card to manage
memory space. Plus there is geeky way (never for beginners...) to turn
it into Linux-PC, which I think you need to fill one of two slots.
Mine is C750 with 32MB free user space by default.
C1000 should be better :P...
"By default" is the operative word here. The specs say that there is 128MB included flash ROM. The default distro installed on the thing leaves 54MB for free, but what is all the space taken up with?
The Japanese-English translation software takes up a lot of space. Cacko ROM doesn't include the J-E translation software.
As a result, a lot of us running the SL-C860 (which also has a 128MB ROM) have over 100MB free.
And yeah, you'd be nuts not to own an SD card by now. And for SD to SD, what... does the other guy not have a device? Copy directly from one device to the other somehow, instead of wasting time swapping cards.
"Copy directly from one device to the other somehow"
'somehow' being the operative word. Zaurus to Zaurus is probably pretty easy (never tried it...don't know, but it stands to reason), but the Zaurai are not exactly mainstream.
Though I have both WinCE based devices and an SL-5500 I've never really gotten them to connect directly (over my home network using FTP yes... but that involved a router, a bridge, a switch, an ICS enabled PC, a cross over ethernet cable and the grace of god...though there are undoubtedly easier ways...). Since the Z's don't have integrated wifi or BT, out of the box you're stuck pretty much with IRDa for device connectivity.
Do PPC (I guess you can throw Palm OS in as well) and the Z play nice over IRDa (serious question, no sarcasm) ?
I've done IRDa between my Z and my PC at work (before I got a second docking cradle), but my efforts between two handhelds have not been successful...
And even with ad-hoc wifi I'm not sure it would be that easy to exchange data
device-to-device.
I'm not saying that a direct connection is not the prefered method of data transfer, but some times card swapping is just easier. Maybe I feel this way cause I date back to the old sneaker-net days before everything was connected to everything else and that just feels more intuitive to me...
It certainly requires less preperation...
But if there are applets or other little networking interfaces for PPC/Qtopia that make connecting one to the other a realatively straight forward affair
POST/SEND ME THE LINK!!!
It's so a pity Sharp only sells their C series officially in Japan. The price in Russia is ridiculous high - about twice the original price.
The main idea about C is the site http://www.pdaxrom.org/ with unofficial bios. So you can have some interesting programs, working on it:
Abby Word (close in abilities to FULL MS Word, not pocket one).
Gnumeric - equivalent to MS Excel.
And many others.
Add wifi and bluetooth and increase the screen to 800x480 (taking up the entire footprint of the device) and I'd get one.
FYI, it's $170 cheaper to import vs the c3000:
http://www.dynamism.com/sl-c3000/index.shtml
> Do PPC (I guess you can throw Palm OS in as
> well) and the Z play nice over IRDa (serious
> question, no sarcasm) ?
SL-C1000 seems to play nice with Palm wrt IRDa. A co-worker with Palm OS based (Sony Clie?) device and I with SL-C1000 successfully transferred files using IRDa this morning. Of course, I don't have my OpenZaurus-equipped SL-C1000 equipped to read/view Palm formatted (pdb and the like) files yet.
> Do PPC (I guess you can throw Palm OS in as
> well) and the Z play nice over IRDa (serious
> question, no sarcasm) ?
SL-C1000 seems to play nice with Palm wrt IRDa. A co-worker with Palm OS based (Sony Clie?) device and I with SL-C1000 successfully transferred files using IRDa this morning. Of course, I don't have my OpenZaurus-equipped SL-C1000 equipped to read/view Palm formatted (pdb and the like) files yet.
On the comment: "Posted Mar 11, 2005, 9:55 AM ET by 010111
New Mac PDA circa 1993 maybe. that QuantumSTEP link was hideous. talk about ugly. looked like Windows 3.1 or Mac OS 7.6. perfect example of what people mean when saying that aesthetics and design in an OS *do* matter. gah. i still can't get the disgusting images out of head!"
There are reglular shapshots published which also improve in some small (quantum) steps on aesthetics. Please look yourself or submit suggestions.
But the main focus of the project is still to make it working, compatible and stable. Looking wonderful but not working would just be a fake. There are already enough fakes in circulation.