OESF Portables Forum
General Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: the_oak on June 12, 2008, 05:35:54 pm
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We don't seem to have much activity here on the forums in recent months. Is it because most questions have already been asked and answered? I hope interest in the Zaurus isn't waning. They are still great devices. Anyone doing something new with their Z?
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Anyone doing something new with their Z?
Not really I use it for the same several tasks that I have for some time now. But I use it every single day. This might change once I get a Neo FreeRunner, but we shall see.
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Mine is working great, and both are in constant use. I think if fennec gets going I might possibly be switching to debian
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I just got my Zaurus!
Debian is moving forward all the time
Zaurus is among first real hardware to run Android
Zaurus has a bright future moving forward. This is due to the great work that has been accomplished over the past couple of years where users have been working with zaurus, establishing a large knowledge base, and overcoming the basic obstacles of the hardware. Now that the price of a zaurus is reasonable, and the base groundwork has been laid out, we should continue to see more interesting and useful applications of/for zaurus.
I would very much appreciate hearing the regiment of zaurus use that stupkid, adf, the oak, and others have. What primary tasks do you accomplish with your z?
cheers -es
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Mine is my laptop replacement when traveling. (Actually, I have it with me all the time.) I like to watch movies, play games, check email, read forums, and e-books in bed at night. I also like to try my hand at graphics, (though I'm not very good). I use it for taking short notes, and shopping lists, and find public hotspots with Kismet. I use the address book too. I bought TextMaker, but haven't really used it that much, as I don't find myself needing to do that much word processing on the go. When I do need to do real word processing, I'm usually at home and use the laptop. I've played with GPS and qpegps, but they are of limited use with the software being rather basic compared to commercial GPS software.
I have always wanted to learn programming for the Zaurus, but never really got too far with that, mostly being hindered by setting up a cross-compile environment. The second thing to hinder is the bewildering number of programming languages, and the fact (?) that it seems that even if you write a nice little script, you need to also use some other tool to write a front end for it. I read about some who compiled programs on the Zaurus, but they indicated that that was really slow.
By the way, welcome to the Zaurus community!
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I do regularly check in on the Zaurus forum - and I mean daily ...
but sadly my Zaurus (C1000) usage has gone down - primarily since I got the Nokia N810.
Wince on the move connectivity was important (checking personal email from office, get instant information from internet, check up a map for a location, stock quotes etc ), the N810 with its built in wifi and the BT connectivity to my 3G phone has proved very helpful.
Sadly for the Zaurus I would need to buy another CF BT card (I have a CF Wifi card) to get the same level of mobile connectivity, that to with swapping often. I do miss the Zaurus keyboard a lot.
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nilch:
You sold your 6000 with it's built-in wifi and beautiful screen? (looking at signature) How does the N810 screen compare with the 6000? I suppose maybe the N810's browser is what made you leap.
I also check forums nearly daily, but seldom have meaningful content to post. Both my Z's do *almost* everything I want, and we don't seem to post much about successes, only posting when something doesn't work. Thus my question about new stuff to do with the Zaurus. I would like to see more new programs (particularly GPS programs) compiled for Sharp or Cacko ROMs. That would give us more content I think. For the sake of newbies that don't want to manually configure things. (OK, for my sake, because I don't want to manually configure stuff.)
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Once pdaXrom v2 comes out... that traffic will be back :-)... and not traffic containing problems :-)
Late
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Good to hear. I thought that pdaXrom was through developing.
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nilch:
You sold your 6000 with it's built-in wifi and beautiful screen? (looking at signature) How does the N810 screen compare with the 6000? I suppose maybe the N810's browser is what made you leap.
I can answer at least part of some of those questions. I personally like the screen on the N810 more than the one on the Z (can't compare to a 6000, though). It feels more like a tablet screen should, like a ThinkPad's screen, if you're familiar with them.
And it was the 128 MB RAM and Debian that made me at least go for it.
Not to hijack the thread or steal nilch's respponse.
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Good to hear. I thought that pdaXrom was through developing.
Hey the_oak,
We were never through, I just took a short break, I got a promotion at work and I worked just about 16hrs of the day (including weekends) trying to clean up the MESS that was handed to me in my promotion.Now that the fires are out, me and sash talked for a few weeks about building pdaXrom again from the ground up with all new packages and the latest of just about everything, then about 2-3months ago, pdaXrom is born again.
Late
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InSearchOf,
Congratulations on the promotion! Looking forward to version 2. Will check out pdaxrom.org.
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Fantastic news, ISO! By reading the notes over the course of this year, I could tell it was only a matter of time before pdaxrom development ramped up again when you were out of the weeds in your job.
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I'm still using my C3200 every day and I'm not planning on replacing it with any other device just yet. I guess most of us have found their working setup and are sticking to it because it just works. To be honest, nowadays I'm mostly using my C3200 as alarm clock, terminal and portable audio player. The latter is really important to me because I'm a music buff. I tried iPods and other PMPs but they just don't cut it for me. It's the number one reason I'm developing Quasar. Expect to see a new release soon, I've been rather busy optimizing the software.
Also, great news on pdaXrom, InSearchOf. Looking forward to porting Quasar.
I also got myself a U810 some time ago, which is nice, but I rather see it as a notebook replacement - replacing my old Dell Inspiron 8100.
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My 6000 has been sitting idle for a bit. Was using it for PIM for work, but was handed a Treo by a friend which removed the need for another device in my pocket.
ISO, do y'all have a 6000 for development? Are you planning a release of padXrom for the Tosa?
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- I've been without money, not been able to find my car keys, out of gas for the motorcycle, and locked out of the house, but I have never been without Hiroshi. It just doesn't happen. I don't know how often I use my Z because Hiro is always there in my butt bag ... I reach to my waist, grab, and use without a second thought. Hiroshi always works, never crashes, never fails, never loses data, and the Z is imminently expandable and configurable to do a simply amazing number of things that were never envisioned when it was made. In my opinion the Zaurus is what every PDA should dream of growing up to be one day. That includes every PDA or smart phone I've see to date.
- I've taken four months to solve a single Sokoban level; this game on the Z doesn't save where you are, it saves the level you are on, so I had that game loaded and active on the task bar for four months straight, in addition to anything else I may have done during that time. I've owned seven different PDAs and Hiroshi is the second most reliable, but the completely and utterly most enjoyable of them all. (most reliable: Psion 5mx - no reboot for three full years until I got my first Zaurus because they stopped making Psion - bows head in silence for Psion's passing)
- I use Hiroshi primarily for PIM and games, puzzle games like Zudoku and Sokoban. I have used the Z for music, wardriving, surfing for info, and I've fiddled around with VoIP, apache, mysql, C++ development, perl, and anything else that crossed my mind in the last four years. The power, flexibility, form factor, and minuscule size are a real sweet spot for me.
- I don't post here much of late because I moved into a "fixer upper" house, which takes a considerable chunk of time, and this is at an excellent dark sky site, so I've taken up amateur astronomy. I do hope to write some astro software for Hiro to run goto telescopes. Time will tell, or it won't, Gosh Darn!
- Having typed all that, I'll definitely give the latest pdaX a shot once it's available! (grin) I like trying out distro and feel confident that some day I'll find one that works as well as Cacko. If not ... NAND backup does just what it should, it puts Hiroshi back precisely as it was before flashing, so it's painless and fun to fiddle around with the possibilities...
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I come to the forum daily, but have not posted much lately. Although I've tweaked my Z over the years a lot, I don't flash it because for a long time it has been my main travel machine and I needed it to work (The C860, that is. The 5000D has been flashed a lot). Now I've bought a EeePC and it might become my travel machine and I am still gathering up the courage to mess with the Z. I've been following the developments on Debian and Android and would like to try those, although most HowTo's seem to focus on the C3x00. I might be the last Sharp ROM user so there is not much reason to post.
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You are not the last Sharp ROM user. Those of us with 6000s probably mostly have Sharp. There are only "works in progress" available for us at the moment. I have experimented with some of these only to find myself coming back to Sharp. The default ROM is not bad. Just a little dated.
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nilch:
You sold your 6000 with it's built-in wifi and beautiful screen? (looking at signature) How does the N810 screen compare with the 6000? I suppose maybe the N810's browser is what made you leap.
Actually I sold my SL6000 after I had both the 6000 and the C1000 and had to choose between one ... sadly I choose the clamshell factor and keyboard of the C1000 over the 6000 screen (also sold of my C750, since wife wouldn't let me keep so many toys
The N810 screen is great - readable in direct sunlight - but still from what little I remember, the 6000 screen was more readable and bright in sunlight.
But the touch sensitivity on the N810 screen is smoother. I miss the rotation aspect of course of the Zaurus series (there is a rotation hack for the Nokia IT's but not as good).
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The N810 screen is great - readable in direct sunlight - but still from what little I remember, the 6000 screen was more readable and bright in sunlight.
But the touch sensitivity on the N810 screen is smoother. I miss the rotation aspect of course of the Zaurus series (there is a rotation hack for the Nokia IT's but not as good).
That's probably the biggest thing for me. Using the Z in a car during the day is near impossible, but it works fine with the N810.
As for the rotation thing, I like having landscape mode be native, since that's how I always use it (no slowdown from software rotation!). If you REALLY want to use portrait mode on ITs, maybe you should try Debian. It's likely handled better there than in Maemo (I haven't really used rotation in Debian, but when I did a while back, it worked fine).
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I stay tunned and using my collie everyday. I'm also a Sharp user, C3200, the rom works well for my needs, and very stable.
So there's some sort of life out there.
Greets
P.D.
Happy 4th.
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FWIW, I'm still here.....just been super busy at work lately as my boss bailed on me 2 months ago and I had to pick up the slack.... although just got promoted last week to my ol' boss's job, so that helps a bit...
Anyway, just flashed 2or0's new Andromeda/Debian ROM and it's a beaut!.....
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Hi guys! I'm still around you know! I was in a recent accident and just bothered taking care of myself. I'm fine...........I think.
Anyway, I still use my zaurus for pictures, games, movies, music when I jog! It is so sturdy! cacko rom was never completed and it crashes on occasions and backup is useless but I dont care since info is on the main drive and I can easily access it. The on ly reason I use cacko is because the kernel can overclock the cpu and underclock it for life saving battery up to 8 hours or more. Also, my medical library and the wikipidia I have in my device.
My device is very usefull but I don't play with configurations anymore since it is ....perfect!
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ohh--btw, I am on the ubuntuforums under the same name. I run pure linux and windows for some old games. I decided to go full linux and it has been an adventure.
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I run pure Linux and WINE for some old games.
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To be honest, nowadays I'm mostly using my C3200 as alarm clock, terminal and portable audio player. The latter is really important to me because I'm a music buff.
Angelina
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I still have my Zauruses, but they don't get used any more (batteries are pretty knackered now). I moved to the Nokia internet tablets, which are pretty cool, just waiting for the next gen tablet to come out with an omap3430 or similar. I'm working on a variety of things, but mainly DSP programming (SBC encoder, Vorbis decoder, MP3 decoder).
Cheers all
Simon
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Now that I'm kinda stuck to a desk job, I find myself using the c1000 lesser and lesser. I do have a notebook running Ubuntu hardy so the consolation is that I'm into linux stuffs deeper than before. I have another notebook in my room running Windows XP Pro, but I could easily switch to ubuntu just as well.
I'm keen to try out ubuntu on c1000 sometime. Then I'm totally ubuntunized!
I do have a eeepc 701 which is running ubuntu as well. Strangely, like the c1000, it is not getting much love these days.
I hate the THICK bezel ... *sigh* ...
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Still here, but not very frequently. All my Zaurus models are boxed so that they don't gather dust. Openmoko has kept me more busy than I have ever expected. Still doing lots of work on OpenEmbedded, which has become really huge.
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I'm still here too. I think one "problem" with the Z is that the hardware is very well known*, so most of the steps these days are evolutionary rather than revolutionary (android being the latter), and so in one sense most things that could be done *have* been done.
people still find new and interesting ways to do stuff, like the Quasar media player.
one other thing we have to remember is that this forum is very rich in information, so nearly every question you could ask has been answered here already!
the 6000 is perhaps the exception, in particular its video hardware which is a bit of an undiscovered country.
* e.g. the oz/angstrom kernel gave us a very good base for those who want to work closer to the cutting edge of linux.