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| Home >> Handheld & PDA Reviews: Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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User Submitted Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA Reviews (cont...)Date: 2003-08-26 Only for experts I bought this based on a recommendation from a tech insider who said "your tech teams will love it", but even they were frustrated with the syncing options and software. The unit performs ok, but it is not intuitive on installation and hot syncing. Too many different programs to keep straight. Finally when installing on my XP system it (along with the tech support people Sharpe directed me to delete several critical drivers that it conflicted with - only to have equally important pieces of equiptment fail. WHAT A PAIN! If you do not enjoy plumbing the depths of your computers operating systems and bios - order something with more dependable software. The unit looks great and has good graphics and adequate functionality, but woe to the operating system. Date: 2003-07-18 Great for Students I was reluctant to purchase this PDA when I was searching for one. The price, the size, and the OS weren't big selling points to me. I had never had much experience with any forms of Linux before. But after some persuasion by the salesperson at CompUSA, I decided to get it. I have yet to regret buying it. I had two other PDA's to compare to: the Toshiba e300 and the Palm m505. I must say that this one beat out the others hands down. Here are some of the selling points. 1) There is a lot of free software for the Zaurus, mostly because of the open-source code of Linux. 2) It came standard with versions of Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. Note that these aren't from MS, but from Hancom. 3) It is infinitely expandable, It has both a SD and CF slot. These are helpful if you happen to start installing too much software. 4) The keyboard is very helpful. While my classmates are using their graffiti, I am typing away. 5) Being able to hookup to a wireless network is as easy as plugging in a wireless adapter. I reccomend this (or the updated SL-5600) to anyone who is searching for a reliable PDA. Date: 2003-05-17 Pocket Laptop!! (SL-5500 users: Download the ROM v3.10 now!) First and foremost, if you are looking for purely Personal Information Management (PIM) functions and not generally inclined towards Linux, then do yourself a favor and buy yourself a Palm Pilot. The Zaurus is basically a mini Linux workstation with a lot of functionality you would normally find only on a desktop. With the Zaurus, you can: It is so powerful that you can actually use it as a Web or file server (using Apache and Samba). I use my Zaurus to administrate my Linux server and Oracle database server when I am away from my desk. Plus there are tons of applications, utilities, games, etc., that you can download. Zaurus has a very active user community forum (check the links from the Sharp Zaurus official web sites) where you can get a lot of useful tips from. Having said all that, the PIM functions that came with the Zaurus were pretty poor compared with the Palm Pilot. This lead me to hang on to my Palm Vx for dear life. I even took the drastic step of downloading and installing a Palm Pilot emulator (called QPose) onto my Zaurus. The performance hit on the Zaurus was so bad that I had to delete QPose and instead carry both my Palm Vx and Zaurus with me. However, now that Sharp has released a new ROM (v3.10, as of May 15, 2003, see below) the PIM functions have vastly improved. So much that I am now inclined to keep my Palm at home and take only the Zaurus along. Upon getting your Zaurus, do yourself a favor and install the terminal and file manager applications that come in the CD. The terminal application enables you to do a lot of tweaking and is mandatory if you plan to use the Zaurus to its full capabilty. It actually comes with a basic Linux shell environment and comes with such neat utilities as vi editor, ftp and telnet clients, ping, and a large number of Linux/Unix tools. Another application I found very useful is called "rotation". It enables you to rotate the application screens by 90 degrees, making such things as web browsing, file editing and using the terminal appication a lot more pleasing and functional. You can download the "qpe-rotation" and "qt-embedded-rotation" files (ipks) from the ZaurusSoft website. Also, an important suggestion to existing SL-5500 users:
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