Messages

16

New products and alternatives / New Zaurus Successor?

« on: June 01, 2007, 06:52:40 am »

The stiffness of the keyboard isn't that hard to get used to. It will soften slightly over time but it will always feel stiff if you come back to it after using a regular laptop KB. The issues I had with it (layout and dropping keys) are both fixable with a small investment of time and money.

But even before I fixed the KB, I used my SA1 every day. The capability and convenience more than outweighs any minor usability flaws

17

New products and alternatives / New Zaurus Successor?

« on: May 28, 2007, 11:40:59 pm »

Is the Kohjinsha capable of running Vista?

Have a look at the minimum system requirement for Windows Vista.

BTW, I forgot to mention that  the Kohjinsha SA1F00W or V does not come with an external CD-ROM drive. Hence you need pocket about US$100 to purchase a USB CD-ROM drive.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=162200\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I think Antikx was really wondering if Kohjinsha will, at some point, start shipping SA1s with some flavor of Vista pre-installed. But I suspect that by the time Microsoft gets really serious about not letting OEMs ship XP (even on hardware that doesn't meet Vista min requirements), Kohjinsha will have a new machine out that replaces the SA1 (my guess would be about this time next year).

I really can't see any good reason for installing Vista on an SA1 that already has XP. You wouldn't get the Aero UI (no 3D graphics chip) and I suspect what you would get would run slower than molasses in January

But if you do need an external optical drive for installing something more useful (like Linux), $25 for an IDE/USB enclosure and $5 for a flea-market 5.25" CD-ROM drive will do the trick. You can get by even cheaper if you do what I did and find a really good sale on a 3.5" enclosure and just duct tape its guts to an old CD-ROM drive (yes, I did watch a few too many episodes of MacGyver as a kid)

18

Off Topic forum / One More Reason Why Microsoft Succeeded

« on: May 24, 2007, 09:32:18 am »

Only time will tell if Nokia get their formula right. As it is, MS is still the incumbent and lion's share holder of PC and PDAs market
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=161902\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

The accuracy of that statement is a function of how you define PDA. If you exclude smartphones and digital media players, then yes, MS probably has a majority of the traditional PDA market. However, it can be argued that this is less a result of any brilliant strategy and more due to the fact that everyone else has abandoned the traditional PDA market. Symbian pulled out years ago. Palm still makes a handful of devices but their efforts are almost entirely focused on the Treo line of Smartphones. So hats off to MS for capturing a rapidly dying segment of the mobile market

Now, if we expand the definition of PDA to cover Smartphones, then the "percieved" MS dominance of which you speak is non-existant. Worldwide sales of Symbian OS devices from Nokia and Sony-Ericsson currently dwarf sales of MS based  Smartphones and PDAs combined. Throw in the wildly popular Blackberries and most of Motorola's highly successful product line (with the exception of the Q) and it becomes clear that MS magic formula for success in the PC world is *not* carrying over to the mobile space.

Forward compatibility for application software in the broader mobile device market is a miniscule concern given that most mobile device owners (70% or more depending on which market survey you believe) will never purchase a single third party application for their device. Fewer still will purchase anything other than games or other entertainment software for which backward compatibility is a non-issue since most consumers have tired of them by the time they switch devices.

But reading the linked posts re: the Nokia internet tablets, the compatibility direction users are complaining about isn't the one you praise MS for achieving. N770 users appear to be unhappy that *newer* software won't work on old devices, not vice versa. MS in the mobile space is no better at this than anyone else. How many devices running PocketPC 2003 were able to be upgraded to Windows Mobile 5? How many WM5 devices will see upgrades to WM6 (HTC's Dash is the only one I've heard of). And app software that uses newer WM features isn't going to run on old versions. And with most of it being closed-source there isn't anything anyone can do about it.

I'm not one to bash Microsoft, but let's not credit them with things they haven't achieved and things they don't do.

19

General Discussion / How Long Can Sharp Ignore The Umpc Market?

« on: May 16, 2007, 07:30:22 pm »

Sharp did have the vision at one point since they built the device for which there is still no competition out there (even years later there is nothing that can touch the Z). And they also had the vision to put Linux on it.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=161474\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

The Zaurus "visionaries" have all been in the user community. Those of us who have been here since day 1 (yes, I had a pre-release SL-5000 developer model) know that Sharp's vision has had some serious astigmatism over the years  Hence their relative lack of success in Europe and the US and their marginalization as a "cool e-dictionary" in Japan.

Who remembers the original C700? Full VGA screen ... Brilliant! Clamshell design ... nice, but HP and Psion were there long before. Barely enough memory to boot the OS ... huh?  It arguably took them three tries to get a clamshell Z that most would consider usable (the C760).

Now go back to the 5X00 generation and look at their vision. Sliding keyboard thingy ... cute but not as useful as it looked (could have just ditched the huge D-pad and buttons and done it Blackberry style). Other HW specs ... pretty standard compared to PocketPCs at the time.

Some would say that using Linux was visionary, but I challenge you to go back to an old stock Sharp ROM and tell me how good their Linux vision was  They figured "throw it out there quick and the Linux community will write tons of apps for it". But anyone that knows the Linux world knows their forte is "incremental improvement". And since Sharp did a shoddy job on the software and didn't Open Source anything but the kernel, half the community went of and started trying to fix the kernel and the other half went off to recreate the DE using stuff that *was* Open Source.  Visionary would have been to open up the whole software stack and then work with the community to integrate all the improvements into the "official" ROMs.

The goal of consumer electronics is to sell so many that your device becomes a houshold word. Blackberry, iPod, Palm Pilot ... those were visionary because they predicted the needs/wants of a large segment of the population. Sharp accidentally stumbled into a surprisingly capable little device with the Zaurus SL line, but visionary it was not.

20

General Discussion / The Zaurus Replacement (perhaps)

« on: May 08, 2007, 08:59:12 am »

Nice to see I'm not the only one who was never thrilled with the KB on the Z clamshells. I like the clamshell form factor for the screen protection, but I found the keyboard too big for fast thumb typing yet too small for touch typing. And with a CF WiFi card sticking out the right side, it's even worse.

In "mobile mode" (i.e. not using it at a desk) I actually think that I was slightly faster on my old SL-5500  And if the 5500 had a 5th row with number keys and symbols it would be no contest.

21

New products and alternatives / New Zaurus Successor?

« on: May 04, 2007, 07:10:24 pm »

Actually, most CF WiFi cards I've used are Type 1. The only Type 2 CF "card" I've seen is my 4G microdrive. I don't have any of my WiFi cards handy (the beauty of the SA1 is that I don't have to carry all that junk around any more) but I did find an old wired ethernet CF card and when I plugged it in, Windows detected it and prompted me to install drivers. I didn't try to go any farther than that (since I know this particular card is broken), but I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work.

Now, whether Linux running on the SA1 would see it may be another matter, but I believe a few posts back that someone (Da Blitz?) determined that the CF slot was being handled as PCMCIA just like it is on the Zaurus.

22

New products and alternatives / New Zaurus Successor?

« on: April 28, 2007, 10:20:59 pm »

Well, looks like angelv over at http://angel-de-vicente.blogspot.com/ managed to get the binary Kohjinsha WiFi driver working with RH4. He's promised details soon

I see he's also started a SA1 Users mailing list on Google Groups (http://groups.google.com/group/kohjinsha-sa1f00-users). Probably a good idea ... seems odd that right now one of the most active English SA1 discussions is buried on a Zaurus forum  

23

New products and alternatives / New Zaurus Successor?

« on: April 22, 2007, 12:52:36 am »

Ok, Linux purists, look away now

It turns out another option for Linux on the Kohjinsha is to use VirtualBox to run a Linux virtual machine on Windows. The speed is surprisingly good (even in GNOME) and the virtual network operates through the built-in WiFi perfectly. With the VirtualBox guest OS drivers installed I can even run fullscreen at the native 800x480 resolution. This post is coming to you from Firefox in Ubuntu 6.06LTS on my SA1! That is a pleasant surprise considering neither VMWare nor Parallels will run on this machine.

The downside is that it takes a relatively long time to boot, and I'm sure that it's still not as fast as running native. Lastly, if you want direct access to hardware for things like WiFi hacking, this isn't going to cut it. But if you just want to run Linux apps in a real Linux environment (as opposed to something like Cygwin), this is not a bad solution.

24

New products and alternatives / New Zaurus Successor?

« on: April 05, 2007, 07:29:56 pm »

Nothing wrong with rounding out the model line, I guess. But the beauty of the SA1 for me is that Kohjinsha kept the price low and I didn't have to pay for a single feature that I don't use. In terms of feature set, the SA1 almost feels like I spec'd out the machine myself

Some folks might be able to put a touchscreen to good use, but I'm not one of them. But if the rumor is true, it will be very interesting to see what it does to the price.

On a slightly different note, I see Conics.net now has SA1 batteries available. Pricey (a little over $100 with shipping) but I couldn't resist. Ability to use your laptop through an entire coast-to-coast flight without carrying 5 lbs of batteries ... priceless

25

New products and alternatives / New Zaurus Successor?

« on: March 23, 2007, 01:31:31 pm »

qemu with full arm system emulation?
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=156960\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Theoretically possible, but performance on the Kohji would be really poor. You'd be looking a speeds on par with underclocking a Z to 50MHz or less. A better move would be to build OE for x86 and run that in QEMU with KQEMU acceleration. I've actually run a Debian server VM that way on the Kohji and it worked pretty well. Note that VMWare, Parallels, and (probably) VirtualPC don't support the Kohji's Geode processor, so QEMU is about your only high performance virtualization option.

As for Kohji screen concerns ... the screen is awesome! It's one of the machine's best features. The native 800x480 resolution is sharp and clear and surprisingly usable for most tasks. I find that I can use it for long periods with no eye strain and I seldom ever have to switch to one of the higher "scaled" resolutions.

26

New products and alternatives / New Zaurus Successor?

« on: March 19, 2007, 02:21:19 am »

First, does sidescrolling work as expected?

Well, I'm a keyboard person and don't pay much attention to pointing devices, so I'm not exactly sure what "expected" would be

Second, is it a synaptics touchpad (you can tell in the mouse setup).

Yes ... or at least it's using synaptics drivers.

Third, I read in another review that the buttons on the touchpad are loose and floppy feeling, and I just want to get your opinion on that.

They definitely are, and it was a little disturbing at first. But its not due to build quality, it's just how they're designed. I've quickly gotten used to it. I'm actually bothered more by the plastic chrome finish that causes them to always proudly display my fingerprints

27

Off Topic forum / Apple Just Announced The Iphone

« on: January 13, 2007, 02:13:28 pm »

HERE YOU GO- MOKO!

http://tech.netscape.com/story/2006/11/07/...with-gps-debuts

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting after seeing Harald Welte's (a key Moko developer) latest blog entry.

28

New products and alternatives / Will The Iphone Replace The Zaurus?

« on: January 12, 2007, 01:28:09 pm »

What makes the real difference to toss just an old piece of Objective-C on a MacBook with Wireless connectivity? The risk of compromizing system integrity (especially the networks) is 100% the same... Or are the Mobile networks inherently less safe than let's say DSL?

The "network integrity" thing is a likely a red-herring meant to distract from the real issues at hand. Note that in the NYT article Jobs did say you will be able to add applications and those apps may be developed by 3rd parties, but the only way to get them will be to buy them from Apple.

The optimist in me says that Apple wants to be able to exert some control over software quality. If my "cool iPhone game" app crashes the phone's UI, user's aren't likely to figure out it's my app, they'll just say that the iPhone is flakey. This is already true for Windows Mobile based phones. A lot of the instability that Windows Mobile has been blamed for is really a result of poorly written applications.

Now, we could go into the huge philosophical debate about how a "good" OS should protect apps from harming the system or each other. But reality is that in an embedded device like this, OS software is usually forced to cut corners to get adequate performance. I can easily write a Zarus app that will render Qtopia unusable. Sure the OS keeps running, but what good does that do me if I can't switch out of the broken application? Most people don't want to telnet to their phone and "kill -9" the offending process

The pesimist in me says this is a way for Apple to guarantee they get a cut of 3rd-party software revenues. Once everyone has an iPhone that wants one, how do you continue generating revenue? With computers, technology advances force upgrades. Not always true with things like phones. Getting a cut of app software purchases and upgrades would help fill the gap between initial purchase and replacement.

Reality is that both are probably true to some degree. We'll have to wait to see how this plays out, but I'm much less enthusiastic than I was a couple days ago.

29

New products and alternatives / Will The Iphone Replace The Zaurus?

« on: January 12, 2007, 07:41:30 am »

so says steve jobs...NO 3rd party ALLOWED!

Well, I stand corrected. Personally, I think that's a significant blunder on Apple's part. I can see not letting joe-hacker toss just any old piece of Objective-C code on this thing. But a nice safe Widget sandbox would add huge potential to Apple's phone without the risk of compromising system integrity.

Oh well, my Cingular contract doesn't run out until year end, so that should be enough time for the clever engineers in Korea and Japan to start cranking out more flexible knock-offs

30

New products and alternatives / Will The Iphone Replace The Zaurus?

« on: January 10, 2007, 03:30:48 pm »

The future will tell if the Apple iPhone will be a totally closed device with nobody other than Apple and Apple blessed co-developers will be able to develop apps for it  or others can also write apps for it using a freely (or easily) available SDK - which actually makes it an open device.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=150726\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

I've seen comments in a number of places today suggesting that the iPhone will be a "closed" platform but I really can't understand what's prompting them. I fail to see any good reason why Apple would want to lock third party developers out of the iPhone. OS X is *very* open to developers. The entire OS X SDK (including compiler and IDE) is a free download to anyone willing to fill out the registration form on Apple's web site. The success of the Mac is largely a result of high quality third party software ... much of which comes from small development shops. My experience has been that Mac shareware is of extremely high quality and is a big contributor to the Mac's loyal user base (you can have my copy of Quicksilver smwhen you pry it from my cold, dead fingers  ).

To me it looks like the iPhone will support OS X Dashboard Widgets (in fact the whole UI is strikingly similar to Dashboard). If that's true (and you can install new widgets), then you'd be able to create your own apps using little more than HTML and Javascript (which is how one currently writes Widgets for OS X). And the fact that Widgets are not compiled means that they could potentially work cross-platform allowing you to run the same Widget on your iPhone and your Mac.

I see the potential for a rebirth of the Palm Pilot software development world where developers could create small, simple, specialized apps without investing thousands of hours in embedded software development. This could only help sell more iPhones, so why would Apple oppose it?

And as for Cingular, they already ship all their Windows Mobile devices unlocked (at least for adding software) so why would this be any different? As long as they keep their exclusive, more iPhones = more contracts = more guaranteed monthly revenue. And most useful apps will want to interact with the network in some way, so more available apps means more network usage (and more $$$) for the Cingular. Some carriers are too short-sighted to recognize such a business opportunity, but I've seen little evidence that Cingular is amongst them.