Manufacturer: Sharp Model#: SL-55 Weight: 0..4lbs Height: 5..4"     Width: 2..9" Length: " Average Rating: 4 out of 5 Stars	Retail Price: $399.99 Online Sale Price:
Features: Linux/Java-powered handheld computer with 64 MB RAM, 206 Mhz Intel processor, and organization and productivity software High-resolution color reflective TFT screen with support for over 65,000 colors Integrated QWERTY keyboard that slides out from bottom of handheld Listen to MP3 or watch MPEG video; includes stereo headphone jack What's in the box: Zaurus SL-5500, EA-70 AC Adaptor, Docking Station (USB), AC Adapter and Power Cord, Rechargeable Lithium-Ion Battery, Stylus, Display Protection Cover, CF Slot Protection Card

User Submitted Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA Reviews (cont...)

The software is an entirely different story. It ranges from quite good to abysmal. The "OS" itself is nice and intuitive, modelled quite straight from standard KDE (if you're not familiar with KDE, it's very Windows like). And although things like a "start menu" don't translate well to the tiny size, the OS is still quite navagable and usable. The Opera web browser is great, the Jeode java virtual machine produces no complaints, media player is great, the to do list, contacts, etc are just fine.

But the calendar application is awful. It's very buggy. Trying to change an appointment from within the PDA often leads to disaster, with the calendar app left in an unstable state (hard to explain). Attempting to fix the situation usually just leads to appointments being deleted. I've been reduced to only adjusting appointments from my desktop and resyncing, which removes a significant reason for having a PDA in the first place. Just horrible, and the biggest strike against the machine as I feel the calendar app is the most important of the bunch.

The desktop syncing software is also unfortunately pretty raw. The version that ships with the Zaurus is pretty crippled and old. Newer versions lead to more features (such as the ability to install software), but they have their own unique bugs (such as sometimes the syncing process ignoring your overriding preferences and doing what it wants at times).

If you're looking for a neat gadget to have some fun with or experiment with, look no further. Unix in your pocket is pretty cool. If you want a solid PDA you can depend on, keep looking. Or at least wait, I suspect a revision or two of the core ROM should change things dramatically. After all, rather small bugs are holding the show back, easily squashed.

Date: 2003-01-03
Coolness
Ok, this PDA is awsome!! I got the Zaurus for Christmas this year, and this thing is so cool and easy(My mom could even figure out how to check her e-mail without too much help). I couldn't get it to sync with my computer through USB, so I used my wireless LAN card to sync, which was easy enough, and if it means less cords, I'm all for it! With the wireless LAN, all I did was put it in there and it reconized the link on my dad's access point! No software required! All around, this is a great PDA!!!

Date: 2002-12-28
Good toy, but has ways to go to become useful
I was not really looking actively for a PDA, but when a good one showed up for a reasonable price on this site, I decided to go with Sharp Zaurus. Before that I have read quite a few positive reviews, and decided that Zaurus seemed to be a good choice.

While it seemed that Zaurus was a nice little gadget, it's usability as a tool has not met expectations. I travel, I write, I program Java and Perl occasionally, I read email and browse, read books, listen to the music, and that's what I expected to do with this PDA.

Battery life. Battery life was perhaps the biggest disappointment. Three hours is ok to get you through the day just checking up phone numbers and going back into the hybernate mode, but when I am up for reading a good book on the road trip, the battery life is quite disappointing, especially since newer models from Dell and Compaq boast 7-8 hours for the same kind of color screen.

Keyboard. While Zaurus features quite an innovative design with built-in keyboard, if your plan is to type a journal entry, extensive email, or a 2-page paper, this PDA won't be of much use. I am a male, which besides some strong points brings in such indispensable attribute as large hands with large fingers, meaning that Zaurus experience was quite a nuisance for me. To be fair, that's probably true for all PDAs, not just this one specifically. But next time I will shop for one that has an external keyboard, Zaurus built-in one was good enough maybe to type two lines of text, not more.

Applications. There's a wealth of applications for Zaurus out there and I did not feel that I was missing anything important. I discovered that I could not play WMV videos, but that's proprietary Windows format, so it's expectable. Zaurus did a good job playing MPEGs and MP3s, which is what most of my collection is anyway.

Large documents. You would imagine that a PDA with 200 MHz, 64MB of RAM and about 512 MB total of added Flash card memory would cope with a text file of size 1-2 MB. After all, if you download a book off the Internet, that's the size that is quite common, especially if it's a PDF file with illustrations or some weird page formatting. My old laptop has a Pentium 90Mhz with 16 MB of RAM (don't laugh) and I had no problem dealing with large (larger than 1 MB) Word documents, PDF files or plain TXT documents. On Zaurus this experience proved to be quite painful. The documents sometimes would take 20 minutes (I am not kidding) to load and even then I would get an error about insufficient memory. Small documents under 50K load quickly, but then you can read them in couple of minutes anyway.

I sold my Zaurus and am on the market for a new PDA. I am OS-agnostic, thus I don't care whether it's Palm, Windows or Linux based device. Now that I have had experience with a pocket computer, I know what to look for.