Look What Popped Up On Osnews, a lil' zaurus press Options

[rollfaster]

Check it out, when I saw the name Zaurus pop up on one of my regular RSS feeds, I nearly flipped:

OSNews:
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=12978

and actual story:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linu...xw07ZaurusLinux

reasonably interesting, though they do say that the Z has "faded into obscurity." Certainly not here!


Chris.

[speculatrix]

Check it out, when I saw the name Zaurus pop up on one of my regular RSS feeds, I nearly flipped:

OSNews:
http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=12978

and actual story:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/linu...xw07ZaurusLinux

reasonably interesting, though they do say that the Z has "faded into obscurity." Certainly not here! 


Chris.

It's like a time-warp! Has the guy just bought a Z 5xxx off ebay and thinks it's brand new?

[ZDevil]

Yeah, that's kind a bit weird. How come the writer just keeps talking about a 4-year-old model without commenting on the huge improvement in the latest ones and the increasingly active development? Opie is mentioned in passing, without OZ. No Cacko. PdaX is just treated as an experimental toy. The comparison part (between a desktop linux and Z) is still nice, at least for n00bs such as me, but the passage should've come out 4 years back and I'd bet he's not really using a Z now.

Oh forgot to say, he even left out the biggest Z forum on this planet...

[DrWowe]

Yeah, that's kind a bit weird.  How come the writer just keeps talking about a 4-year-old model

The article was written in the context of PDAs sold in the US to consumers, and supported by Sharp. In this context, discussing only the 5500 and 5600 with original ROMs makes sense. And the Zaurus is all but dead in the US market. A few thousand users on the ZUG is a rounding error away from zero, and they weren't discussing corporate uses. (I wonder how many corporate Z users there are anyway?)

Let's face it, everything we do here, all the imported and hard-to-get models, and alternate ROMs are power user stuff. There's just quite a few power users here...

[ZDevil]

The article was written in the context of PDAs sold in the US to consumers, and supported by Sharp.

I don't really disagree with you, but note he writes,
"We remember history so we don't have to repeat it. If you're working on a handheld project of your own, remember the Zaurus SL-5600 as an implementation with qualities worth emulating -- and those worth improving upon."
But still I guess the story will be quite different if he includes 6000 (was it also sold in US for quite a while before Sharp's pullout?) Also is it necessary to make it clearer that it turns out to be a marketing failure (compared to the huge success of Z in japan) rather than any instrinsic weakness of Z itself?

[adf]

The article was written in the context of PDAs sold in the US to consumers, and supported by Sharp.

I don't really disagree with you, but note he writes,
"We remember history so we don't have to repeat it. If you're working on a handheld project of your own, remember the Zaurus SL-5600 as an implementation with qualities worth emulating -- and those worth improving upon."
But still I guess the story will be quite different if he includes 6000 (was it also sold in US for quite a while before Sharp's pullout?) Also is it necessary to make it clearer that it turns out to be a marketing failure (compared to the huge success of Z in japan) rather than any instrinsic weakness of Z itself?

A very clear marketing failure, and a support failure as well. Also, along the lines of it being a marketing fiasco, they were way off on their projected clientele with the 6000, too, Imho. A special model for business (?) use in the us? why would anyone do that?

[DrWowe]

model for business (?) use in the us?  why would anyone do that?

It wasn't entirely a bad idea. Vertical market solutions are much bigger business than most people realize. I just read an article a few days ago on how many billions of dollars railroad companies, for example, spend on technology each year. There's plenty of money in very boring but ubiquitous business tasks like barcode scanning, mobile data entry, and the list goes on.

Sharp just didn't execute very well in that space either. (big surprise there, right?) And they should have, at least, supported the 6000 and kept it visible even if they didn't go to great lengths to promote it. Little, small-budget things like leaving up the dev forums and answering queries by 3rd party developer would have more than paid for themselves I think.

And all the little guys they brushed off, well, there's the lost opportunity for some manager to see his geeky employee playing with this funny looking gadget, and realizing it would be a great solution for the whole department. Don't laugh, it's how Palms became ubiquitous in the first place.

[adf]

model for business (?) use in the us?  why would anyone do that?

It wasn't entirely a bad idea. Vertical market solutions are much bigger business than most people realize. I just read an article a few days ago on how many billions of dollars railroad companies, for example, spend on technology each year. There's plenty of money in very boring but ubiquitous business tasks like barcode scanning, mobile data entry, and the list goes on.

Sharp just didn't execute very well in that space either. (big surprise there, right?) And they should have, at least, supported the 6000 and kept it visible even if they didn't go to great lengths to promote it. Little, small-budget things like leaving up the dev forums and answering queries by 3rd party developer would have more than paid for themselves I think.

And all the little guys they brushed off, well, there's the lost opportunity for some manager to see his geeky employee playing with this funny looking gadget, and realizing it would be a great solution for the whole department. Don't laugh, it's how Palms became ubiquitous in the first place.

I think the second part of what you said is pretty accurate. Aa for the 1st....The Z6k strikes me as too much of a general, non specific device so really kick butt in applications like ups scanner/trackers ( iforget the name) and to big and geeky and hard to communicate withto compete with a blacberry sort of thing.

I love my 6k, but at the time an americanized 860, with a few attachments for phone communication and wireless would have cost them less to produce and export, done as well or better in the biz mkt, and might have caught on with geeks and semi geeks faster if offered

certainly pushing an american 860 would have put far fewer eggs in a single basket...