Advice needed please

[Mike]

Hi

I am in the UK and would like to buy a Zuarus 860.  Obviously I want to pay as little as possible.  The two options I have seen so far are www.shirtpocket.co.uk which will import the 860 with an English ROM on it but it will cost 565 pounds!  

Or I could try www.pricejapan.com which costs 335 pounds but I will be getting a non-converted japanese model.   Of course I will change the rom to one of the english ones such as OpenZaurus or something but what issues do i need to consider?

I don't know ANY japanese - will this cause me problems when putting a new rom on?  Also will I be able to get a power adapter for it here in the UK?

Finally has anyone used pricejapan.com and how did they get on with it?

Thanks - Mike

[Guest_alan]

will this cause me problems when putting a new rom on?

It won't change anything : models sold by shirtpocket and others are imported from japan. You will have to pass trough the japeneese menu before flashing wherever your Zaurus comes from. But don't worry about this, it's really easy if you follow instructions (basically: enter the menu, choose 4, choose SD  or CF, and here comes an english menu !!)

Plus most japaneese sellers speak english very well, so this must not be a problem.

Good luck

Alan

[totaln00b]

Hi Alan,

I went through exactly the same debate a few months ago and ended up going for the expensive option and using Shirtpocket. There are pluses and minuses to this: if you're not that much of alinux guru (or a complete noobie like me) then you have the benefit of an english machine straight off, along with a UK adaptor and some after sales support.

If you're feeling marginally more adventurous then go for a japanese machine and flash it as soon as you get it- the instructions are easy to find and follow on this site. You'll end up with a better-translated machine but will have had the stress of flashing it to cope with! People seem to have been happy with the service they got from price-japan, there are also some good sellers on ebay.

Since there are better roms available than the standard one, you'll probably find that you flash to a new one pretty soon anyway.

In terms of adaptors- I brought one of those variable ones with lots of different connectors and it works just fine.

Hope this is of some help

Jo

[jamesm]

I'm looking into importing a 5600 into the UK, I've contacted shirtpocket.co.uk and am waiting for a reply. I haven't checked out pricejapan yet, so thanks for the tip!

Currently the best option for me would be to import through an ebay (US) seller, who are offering new, boxed 5600's for around 220 GBP (plus shipping and tax). I'm just slightly worried about the ebay-factor (perhaps not receiving the item).

If anyone has any experience of good ebay sellers (or if you are one) then please get in touch as I'd be very interested in purchasing from you.

[Mike]

Since there are better roms available than the standard one, you'll probably find that you flash to a new one pretty soon anyway.

What are considered the best roms?  As a desktop Linux user I think I would be drawn to OpenZaurus.  If I were to follow this route then would I stil be able to run software that is sold as Zaurus-compatible on places such as handango  or does a lot of commerical software only run on the sharp roms?

Mike

[lardman]

would I stil be able to run software that is sold as Zaurus-compatible on places such as handango or does a lot of commerical software only run on the sharp roms?

Most should work fine (not that you really need any commercial software, there's plenty of free stuff). You will need to use the compat libs (assuming you go for OZ 3.3.6pre1 which is the best IMHO) however this isn't a major problem.


Si

[totaln00b]

I don't know a great deal about openzaurus and what apps you'd get to run on it, but in terms of the sharp roms then Cacko 1.21 is about your best bet at the moment.

[jfv]

I don't understand why there is so much criticism of the Sharp ROM. It's the one that supports most of the available software and hardware, it's stable and works pretty well for me. It doesn't directly run X applications but with X/Qt it does. I don't use the PIMs so, perhaps, I don't see its faults there.

Felipe

[uczmeg]

Hi

I am in the UK and would like to buy a Zuarus 860.  Obviously I want to pay as little as possible.  The two options I have seen so far are www.shirtpocket.co.uk which will import the 860 with an English ROM on it but it will cost 565 pounds! 

Or I could try www.pricejapan.com which costs 335 pounds but I will be getting a non-converted japanese model.   Of course I will change the rom to one of the english ones such as OpenZaurus or something but what issues do i need to consider?

I don't know ANY japanese - will this cause me problems when putting a new rom on?  Also will I be able to get a power adapter for it here in the UK?

Finally has anyone used pricejapan.com and how did they get on with it?

Thanks - Mike

Hi Mike,

I have an new 860 currently for sale in the UK if you are still looking. See the For sale forum.

But to answer your questions...

The service from PriceJapan is great, but  do bear in mind when buying from them that you either need a UK PSU (find on eBay for about £12 delivered) or a stepdown transformer (from somewhere like Maplins) to get it to work.

More importantly expect to pay import duty and fees that tend to work out at around 20%. You won't get caught every time (more likely if you use a courier, so choose EMS, it is still quick and cheaper) but you will a lot a of the time so it is better that you have considered it.

Converting the unit to English is very easy as long as you have a compact flash card or SD card and a card reader to write files to it.

Cheers
Marc

[kic]

Just to jump in late on this, I just got an 860 from pricejapan. I ordered on a Thursday and got it on Monday (DHL shipping). Pretty fast if you ask me.

Everything being in Japanese wasn't a problem. I got into the English service menu, backed up the original rom to an sd card, got into the Japanese service menu and put on pdaXrom. Nifty!

If you haven't already purchased and you're planning on replacing the default stuff, this isn't a bad way to go. If you plan on converting, I wish you better luck finding a terminal on the default rom than I had (I couldn't find one, period).