OESF Portables Forum
General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: daniel3000 on January 25, 2006, 06:32:47 am
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Comments appreciated. Especially if you think there is something missing on the Zaurus which would make it a better work tool.
Thanks!
daniel
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An easy to setup sync with outlook is the holy grail for me.
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An easy to setup sync with outlook is the holy grail for me.
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According to zautrix, this will come soon for KDEPIM/PI!
daniel
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Hi,
I often use it to key quick notes when I don't have my PC. I use Hancom Presenter to follow presentations or practice them before the event. Gaim is often left on while in meetings so I can get a quick answer from my Architects.
The Sharp address book and calendar are in heavy use every day. KP/Pi, e-mail, Terminal and the Opera browser are really just novelties for me.
I think it's a great work tool as-is.
Doug
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Hi,
I often use it to key quick notes when I don't have my PC. I use Hancom Presenter to follow presentations or practice them before the event. Gaim is often left on while in meetings so I can get a quick answer from my Architects.Â
The Sharp address book and calendar are in heavy use every day. KP/Pi, e-mail, Terminal and the Opera browser are really just novelties for me.
I think it's a great work tool as-is.
Doug
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Here it is vice versa: If I don't have my Zaurus at hand, I have to use the PC/notebook to take the notes. ;-)
Interesting - you use Presenter? Is it the application called "Presentation" on my Cacko C3000? I have not found out how to use it effectively. It basically seems to be an image viewer with timer... correct? I.e. to use it I have to export a preentation as single image files first.
What I'd need is a tool to _create_ presentations on the Zaurus, which can then be loaded into Powerpoint or later, when I may have the CFXGA card some day, even presented using the Zaurus.
Any ideas?
Have you tried KDEPIM/PI instead of the internal PIMs? It is so much more useful, at least to me. I have just begun to use the timetracking feature of KO/PI together with the Timetracker-Analysis tool by Lutz Rogowski ( [a href=\"http://www.kdab.net/~lutz/tta/]http://www.kdab.net/~lutz/tta/[/url] ). Great stuff! Now I need a good money/ expense tracker. Any recommendations?
For email I strongly recommend mutt, as the built-in email client is a pain, IMHO.
Try to create a mail and attach a file. At least on the C3000 with its big hard drive it seems to scan the entire hdd3 to list every available file in the attachment dialog before it even shows the attachment dialog. It takes about 10 minutes in my case! I have about 10.000 files on hdd3.
daniel
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I use mine for work. Even though my Zaurus is brand new, I've used PDA's for work and school for several years, ever since the Palm Pilot Pro.
I'm a journalist, and PDA's allow me to work anywhere. I usually need to do one of three things: I need to browse the net for info, I need to keep track of appointments and people, and I need to be able to write things and publish them.
In the past I've used Palms, but they weren't very good at handling documents and there wasn't WiFi back then.
A couple years ago I switched to CE and then Pocket PC. I upgraded to WiFi as soon as it was available. Before the Zaurus, I used an Ipaq RX3715.
My Zaurus allows me to surf, work on documents and pictures, and because of the bigger resolution and Linux, I can run more complex apps so I can work more efficiently. I love it!
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I had a Palm m130 for a long time, and usually just wrote on it (notes, fiction, etc), had some games like solitaire and space trader, and a game SD card. Then one day it crapped out. I bought a Sony Clie NX80V, and it was the same thing, but it got used for MP3s and some music writing as well. I upgraded to a Tungsten T3 because it was the best at the time for the music app I was using (Bhajis Loops).
I don't really use my PDAs for my job, but I use them a lot for things important to me . I like to write fiction, music, and play some games, listen to music, etc. I got a Zaurus for the clamshell form factor and storage capabilities. All this Linux stuff is crazy voodoo to me, but it isn't any harder to learn than DOS was and I still say "the Linux crowd" will put Linux on anything with memory they can stuff it into
The only thing missing for my Zaurus is a really nice app to write music with. Otherwise, I am quite happy with it and don't think I will be able to go with anything else for a long time.
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well maybe you can talk to the owner of thekompany.com as he is also a musician. There might be a few others.
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I've bought my C3000 after my laptop broke and been using it and the newer C3100 ever since. No more big heavy laptop. The Zaurus is small and easy to carry anywhere. Zaurus = freedom. I travel a lot and in the past had to carry a big laptop bag and luggage. Now with the Zaurus, I can just carry it in a small camera bag and a small backpack for some acessories and my clothes. I can now travel very lightly!
As for what I use it for, no syncing is required. got nothing to sync with anyway. I use the Zaurus to listen to mp3s while travelling or watch movies and occasionbally play some games. So much for entertainment. Workwise, I use it to write documents and reports, surf the web, and also let the Z read text files to me. The dictionaries and wikipedia are a great source of reference material, and I usually have a host of technical manuals and also maps of various cities stored on my SD. I mainly use the textedit/notes app and abiword. I also use the Z as a terminal client and X client to connect to admin/configure them remotely. For email I use sylpheed because it is faster than thunderbird and it can do imap over ssl as well.
for quick surfing i usually use netfront, but for some sites i need firefox. i look aat a lot of pdf files too and it is a pity that the current pdf viewers aren't very good yet. i use openoffice for heavy duty wordprocessing since my company has standardized to only use staroffice documents and pdf.
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I'm a Linux Sys Admin and i use my c3100 for many works....
The holy grail for me will be TOM TOM NAVIGATOR.....
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yes meanie...zaurus=freedom.
I use it in school for viewing....
1-pictures i take off handwritten documents off peoples notes incase i need to quick copy instead of paying for photocopying.
2-listening to auido lectures
3-I have a full blown medicall drug guide "prentice hall" which comes with a java based drug guide viewable in the opera. works better than palm i can say that much. (copy cd directory to your sd in a folder and open with opera, that is all.)
4-beiks 5.1 bdicty with medical dic, medical encyclopedia, medical Acronym, dic, thesaurus.
--I use the zaurus in the medical field-but of course it's not backed up by skyscape for palm.
i use abiword, gresbi(which works good) and transferable to my linux box. also textmaker when needed to produce word type documents rtf files, etc.
I create txt files with Nursing interventions and also notes for my daily use. It is just freedom.
snes nes turbo emulator, movie watching on m h breaks, mp3 player ....man everything. pda with kapi
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I guess I really just use it for work. Mostly PIM stuff. You know I havn't even tried to use my Z for games. Ebooks work well, but you need to remove the DRM from them.
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I don't exactly use my 5500 (soon to be succeeded by a C1000) for work, but I do use it in political and labour-union situations, to take notes, minutes, etc.
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- I'm lame ... Hiroshi is for personal use, primarily. I put meetings in there for work, but I do about a meeting a month, so that's no big deal. More personal appointments go in than work by a significant margin.
- Addresses and such, personal and work. If someone isn't in Hiro, I don't know how to get ahold of them. (drool) Time management, but only for personal things. I develop for a living, which doesn't require lots of time juggling.
- I religiously use a different user/password for each and every web site and computer system I have access to. PWMPI keeps them all straight for me. That's a heavy work usage, since the majority of systems and sites I use are related to work, hands down.
- I've never gotten abiword to load, but that's just an exercise, because I don't need that level of word processing functionality. Hancomm Word really does any note-taking I need, or the text editor that comes with Tree!Explorer. There's lots of little files lying around in some order that made sense at the time, but with find it's not horribly critical that the order make sense. I just search. (shrug)
- I do MP3 while I'm at the gym, which isn't as often as it should be.
- LOTS of game playing. Any time I have a few minutes, I just load something and poke at it. Zudoku and Sokoban are the current favorites ... I've had the same Sokoban level loaded for a month ... since Hiro never crashes, I just leave it loaded all the time. (shrug) I don't spend a lot of time in any given day playing games, but when I turn Hiroshi on, nineteen times out of twenty it's to play a game for few minutes, look someone up, or find a password.
- My primary interst in the Z is that I have control to do whatever I want. Literally. So Zaurus = freedom, just like Meanie says, but in a different way for me. For me, it's wide open with possibilities, regardless of what I may or may not do with it, and I like that lack of restriction. I've a ton of things I'd like to do with it, but only a few pounds worth of time each day to do them, so it's slow going. I'll get there, or I'll get the next uber-spiff PDA and start the process again. 'Course the way things are going that'll be another Zaurus, so it'll ease the (re)learning curve a bit, hopefully (grin)...
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My Zaurus usage has been quite varied... serious work tended to be typical PDA type activities that I didn't really need the power of a Z for... typing notes in meetings is useful though and I certainly used FreenoteQT when brainstorming with folk - nice to have them receive a PDF in their mailbox by the time the got back to their desk from the meeting room
The real attraction to me is the 'tinker value' of these devices... stuck in a hotel room or on the train you can build stuff and try stuff out without having to have a laptop or desktop.
The entertainment side is also great.. ScummVM I have used a considerable amount and think it's probably the single best accompaniment to a long train journey.
Currently I have to say my SL-C3000 is spending most of the time building OpenBSD ports since cross-compiling is not encouraged and the ports tree doesn't make any attempt to support it but I have to say I'm endlessly surprised that almost everything I have tried building runs without modification (not always quickly but it runs).
If you are like me and want to do more 'standard tinkering' and don't want to be bothered with the quirks of Sharp's distro then I have to say that OpenBSD is identical to the desktop version (once installed)... heh, of course it isn't Linux so you may have to learn a little about OpenBSD but if you have a broad *nix experience you should have no troubles.
- Andy
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Unfortunately, for me, the Zaurus wasn't quite ready for serious work in the realm I would need it for. It's a great device if you live in the server room (serial connection or even wired ethernet into the servers to diagnose problems etc.). It's a great device if you like/are good at coding. Unfortunately, if you're talking "out-of-the-box" useful, it's not. Documents to Go on the Palm platform has left the old Handcom apps far, far behind, and the one company with a modern word-processor on the Zaurus platform really isn't doing very much with it and hasn't seen fit to compliment it with a spreadsheet. I can get any number of GPS solutions for a Palm that don't require me to futz with creating my own maps following someone's arcane instructions. In short, I don't miss my Zaurus much at all, since I sold it. I come back here from time to time, hoping for some miraculous improvement where Openzaurus will suddenly rise to a level where it's actually out-of-the-box great and the developers can actually turn their attention to applications, but that's never really happened and I sort of despair that it ever really will. The Zaurus, I think, is great for the eternal rebel who wants to go his own way, but if you want it to really, really work, it's just not there yet.
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Nearly a year ago I was searching for a subnotebook or smartphone or PDA. Non of the available products met my needs. Then I found the Zaurus at the web - Linux driven nice to see.
After trying lots of applications on the standard ROM also console based apps I was satisfied but not overwhelmed. I've also tried Debian PoketWorkstation and it worked out to be more Linux like but slow.
Then I switched to OpenBSD 3.7 after it's release and found a system I wanted to stay and work with. Nearly any application from the portstree I wanted to use compiled nicely and worked great. Only problem I had was triggered wakeup for using alarms, a slower mplayer as on SharpROM and it couldn't get connected as usbstorage to host computers.
Finally I did my last switch to pdaXRom and wakeup and usbstorage works perfectly. I don't like the partition layout with installing here and linking there. But once set up it is not noticed anymore. Any new application goes to /usr/local on /mnt/ide.
Now I'm using the system very console driven with ratpoison as WM. No taskbar, no window borders nor titlebars. Complete screen to work with!!!
remind for appointments
devtodo for todos
mutt for mails
dillo for web
latex for creating pdf files and presentations
xpdf for reading pdf's
index or sqlite as database
vi or emacs for all text stuff
ImageMagik for pictures - even for 2MB files from the digicam
mplayer in fullscreen works fine with a well transformed movie
I haven't carried my heavy laptop since. And finally I'm completely offline productive with the GPRS AudioVox Card. Get / send mails and surf whereever I am. No hotspot, no dialline needed.
The only thing I could get weak on is the upcoming flybook V33i with Linux on it. But that's another story and it will not fit in my pocket.
Have a nice Zaurus time,
Oliver
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I wish I could use mine for serious work... but the they aren't allow at work... :-(
Just received it in the mail yesterday...
Already using ssh and planing my pdaXrom install!!!
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Ok. this is my use:
PIM tool (calendar and address book mostly)
MySQL database. I call attendance in my classroom with a java program I made, using MySQL to replicate my faculty database and keeping info from my students
Internet terminal (web, gaim, mail) when I am on travel
Of course.. mp3 and chess for free time
Neto
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I use it for work extensively as PIM and notetaker which keeps me on Cacko ROM. I use Textmaker for word synchronization, occasionally Hancom sheet for simple spreadsheets. I stay away from other PIMs mainly because I need one button synchronization with our corporate exchange server.
Outside of work I use Opie-Reader more than anything - occasionally watch videos with kino and muck around with Ruby and Rails.
I wish it would BIDIRECTIONALLY sync with my IMac.
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I use the zaurus mainly for work and a bit for play (Zudoku) and proramming testing.
Main work usage is PIM - Calendering on KDE PIM and Contacts (head hunters contacts - since I am looking for a new job) are my most trusted apps on the zaurus.
I do some Python programming and have also written a few work related apps for the Zaurus and some generic (like a Train Timetable) which I use pretty often.
Email (QTMail) which I couldnt live without - both for personal as well as work.
Personal emails being blocked at office, I rely on the Zaurus for all personal email checking during the day (- thanks to free Wifi by my place).
Textmaker - particularly now for those resume polishing up sessions during job search and in general for composing work minutes and plans in brief.
Notetaking and my main note keeping base station for all those bric-a-brac of important notes to keep life structured.
PWM-PI for managing all those disparate logins and passowords for the online life.
Music listening while on the commute and some Zudoku sessions on and off.
- all thru these activities I never used synching - since my Zaurus is used standalone for all needs .