6000 Head Count

[bluedevils]

I don't have the need to modify my 6000 because it isn't my primary pda.  It is already great for what I use it for, which is my "instant on" web machine.  It is constantly within my home's wifi range.  The only thing I would like to improve is the usb keyboard layout.  The guylhem rom is supposed to fix that, but I'm unsure of its stability.  If drwowe's cg rom addresses this, then that will complete my needs for the 6000.

As far as keyboards go, I prefer the 760's, the 3100's, the 6000's and then the 5500's last.  The 760 is just missing the Dpad, but I don't play games as much and so the directional keys are fine enough.  The 6000 and 5500 just don't cut it mainly because I hate hitting the fn key to input numbers.

[malik]

looking on the software/rom development side of the tosa makes me a
little bit nervous. i doubt that the tosa is the right choice...

Good post, I agree with most of what you said, but I don't agree with this.  pdaXrom and OpenZaurus buth work great with the same features as clamshekks.  That just leaves Cacko as the other "major" ROM, and I'm working on that now.  Cacko is so close to the Sharp ROM that it hasn't been that hard, I've mostky just been replacing various files with their equivalents from the Sharp 6000 ROM.
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to answer in a direct way: i think that the most developers prefer the clamshell devices  
and maybe there are too few tosa users. correct me, if this is not so.

concerning the cg rom: this could be a very good alternative on the tosa.

malik

[xjqian]

limited experience with roms. The only one I used is the sharp rom. I tried fast kernels before but the crippled bluetooth is the deal breaker for me. Stability is what I wanted so far. The programs that I used on daily basis are
*Opera, QuackNews (RSS), Gaim
*KO/Pi, KA/Pi, KP/Pi (aka, Kphone.) with IPKall
*FBReader, OpieReader, QPDF2, Kino2
occasionally I use debian to accomplish the aboves.

My life style is not on the go for now and probably will not be for a while, so sometimes I got an itchy feeling to sell my 6K. But I mananged to crush such evil idea everytime. I'm waitting for something that can upgrade 6K in all aspects. Btw, I've only dabbled with 5500 and 5600 before, but never used any clamshell.

[eji]

I've got a 6000L and have had it for over a year. (Sorry, I only just voted!) I was disappointed with the Z in general at first on account of the middling software (including the half-finished or abandoned projects, perpetual bugs affecting usability, and squabbling between rival development teams), and I've had mixed feelings ever since, but overall I've been pleased with the hardware features offered by the 6000 in comparison to the clamshells -- even though from a software standpoint it seems like development for the c'shells is always six decades ahead of the 6000.

Out of all the PDAs currently on offer, what's better than the 6000? Very few. The new T-Mobile MDA IV looks pretty cool, and I think I'd swap it for my 6000 if some lunatic offered me the chance. But Bluetooth and WiFi are, I'm told, even more flaky on the Windows Mobile OS, so I'm really not worried that the grass is greener. I'm still waiting for Apple to release a handheld that's stylish and functional. And waiting. And waiting.

[eji]

I also wanted to add a quick software list that endears my 6000 to me:

TextMaker
KeroPlayer (for podcasts; has trouble with XML feeds)
dmBlogger (RSS)
Opera 7.55
zPlayer (mplayer frontend; more rugged than Kino2)
QPDF2
ZBEDic (with the wonderful German verb conjugation module)
ZeeCookbook
KDE PIM Suite (including KPhone and PWM/Pi)
GAIM (one of many now-abandoned projects; Jabber and Yahoo! support is crap)
fbVNC Server and VNC Viewer
Kismet
zKnights (Java chess app)
U-Bahn Navigator (another abandoned project)

[kahm]

Well, I've got a 6000 but I don't spend much time in the 6000 forums as my 3100 is my "daily driver" Z. I picked up the 6000 because I wanted a unit that could do wi-fi, serial, and use the Z camera card simultaneously - because I'm going to build a robot out of it

[speculatrix]

The new T-Mobile MDA IV looks pretty cool, and I think I'd swap it for my 6000 if some lunatic offered me the chance. But Bluetooth and WiFi are, I'm told, even more flaky on the Windows Mobile OS, so I'm really not worried that the grass is greener. I'm still waiting for Apple to release a handheld that's stylish and functional. And waiting. And waiting.
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I followed the blog on pda247.com and it seemed that the two admins on the new site who the HTC universal were initially thrilled with it... but quickly became jaded, one selling it within weeks. They had to reboot them several times a day to recover lost leaked memory or crashes etc. Battery life wasn't too bad, surprisingly. So, unless a linux port comes along, my next PDA will be a 3100 if I decide to sell my 860 and 6000.

[skywise]

I've had my SL-6000L for about 9 months now.  I'm still running the stock Sharp ROM, stock kernel. I also have the expansion sled, and a Socket CF Bluetooth adapter (Rev. G).  I purchased it used from eBay (though from the condition it arrived in it hardly appeared used at all).  It replaced my battery-murdering Palm VIIx as my primary handheld.

Things I love about it compared to other Zaurii:
* Portrait orientation enables one-handed operation of things like e-book readers, so I can sip a tasty beverage with the other hand while I read.
* USB host controller makes using USB flash storage drives and USB external keyboards easy.
* Built-in WiFi used frequently.
* Fits nicely in my eHolster, though it makes me look like a bigger dork.
* Groovy expansion sled doubles the battery life, the serial ports, and the CF capacity, and still (barely) fits in my eHolster.

Things that irritate me about it:
* Unwatchably slow video playback at all bitrates and resolutions.
* Lag in support of Zaurus open-source developer community and in accessory market compared to clamshell models.
* Screen cover is annoying to deal with and scratches too easily to be useful - it might as well be opaque.
* No integrated Bluetooth (the 6000W was impossible to find in the US when I bought my L).
* Built-in WiFi seems to have shorter range than my friend's C860 with the Socket low-power CF card (i.e., he can get signal in places I can't).
* Stock Sharp kernel doesn't support the version of BlueZ that supports the Bluetooth A2DP profile (it requires kernel > 2.6), so none of those nifty Bluetooth stereo audio headphones will work.
* Lack of Java applet support from Sharp/Opera for the Zaurus version of the browser.

I like my 6k and have no plans to get rid of it. However, if I were making a fresh buying decision today, I would save up and get a C3100 instead, mainly due to the lag in developer support for the 6000 and the larger flash size of the C3100 (plus the built-in drive). I don't feel confident enough with a soldering iron to attempt to do any hardware hacks on this expensive a piece of gear.

This thread is the first I heard about Cacko6000 - I may look into switching to that to see if it helps my video problem.  I may also try out pdaXrom and OZ one of these days.

Cheers!

[eji]

Things that irritate me about it:
* Unwatchably slow video playback at all bitrates and resolutions.
* Lag in support of Zaurus open-source developer community and in accessory market compared to clamshell models.
* Screen cover is annoying to deal with and scratches too easily to be useful - it might as well be opaque.
* No integrated Bluetooth (the 6000W was impossible to find in the US when I bought my L).
* Built-in WiFi seems to have shorter range than my friend's C860 with the Socket low-power CF card (i.e., he can get signal in places I can't).
* Stock Sharp kernel doesn't support the version of BlueZ that supports the Bluetooth A2DP profile (it requires kernel > 2.6), so none of those nifty Bluetooth stereo audio headphones will work.
* Lack of Java applet support from Sharp/Opera for the Zaurus version of the browser.
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Hear, hear.

Video settings can be tweaked (see my blog post [a href=\"http://charlatan.blogspot.com/2005/10/my-own-ipod-killer.html]here[/url]) to play better on the 6000. But I'm still a bit miffed that my wife can watch Simpsons videos on her 5th gen. iPod with smoother playback and better quality than I can watch them on this mammoth mini-PC called the 6000. Screw Sharp for not giving devs access to the accelerated video code.

Would have loved to own the 6000W with built-in Bluetooth. Am always eyeing BT CF cards on eBay -- the catch is that I have to find one cheap enough that it doesn't matter if it doesn't work.

One thing that does please me is the actual size of the 6000, or just how pocket-sized it is even though it looks so chunky. No eHolster necessary.

[xjqian]

Things that irritate me about it:
* Unwatchably slow video playback at all bitrates and resolutions.
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Video settings can be tweaked (see my blog post [a href=\"http://charlatan.blogspot.com/2005/10/my-own-ipod-killer.html]here[/url]) to play better on the 6000. But I'm still a bit miffed that my wife can watch Simpsons videos on her 5th gen. iPod with smoother playback and better quality than I can watch them on this mammoth mini-PC called the 6000. Screw Sharp for not giving devs access to the accelerated video code.

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As I had a chunk of time this weekend. I'm also extensively testing the video capability on 6K. Surprisingly, even without hardware accelerated video, the stock 6k can play something like 560x292 @ 12fps (~500mb movie) smoothly (except for very fast moving scenes or key-frame transition) for > 1.5hrs continuously with the sled on.

I am trying to find an optimum setting for movie playback (comics should have even better perfomance if encoded accordingly) on 6k. To put  it ahead 1) file size is not a problem for me and 2) I'm using xvid codec with AVI container. I'm also trying to settle on an easy set-up to allow me re-encoding the desktop quality AVI movies to cope with the promises for my future handhelds.  IMHO, the latter is almost as important as the former, cause I don't want to waste hundreds of giga in video source and spend  another 5hours re-encoding from scratch. So all the AVI I played on 6K is not directly from source, but from desktop quality previously encoded AVI.

I learned the basics about Gordian Knot just last week. So correct me if I'm wrong. I think the general question of video on 6k is wondering whether the choppy playback is due to insufficient processing power (again whether CPU decoding efficiency or video output bandwith) or insufficient bitrates (a highly over-rated benchmarker) passing through.  So far something I've observed: 2 pass encoding definitely worth it (don't be lazy), feel free to turn on B-frame options, even 12fps is an overkill for something like 480x320 (turn off drop frame to see the video lagging behind the audio), audio (mp3) encoding parameters hardly makes any difference in terms of performance, a fairly wide range of bitrate don't affect video performance much. I'll post more in the sticky video post later.

What I inferred from the info about is that 6K has plenty of CPU power to decode the xvid compressed video and lame encoded mp3, even with the advanced options turned on. The bottle neck right now is the video card or memory (probably nothing new at all). So the guideline for me is not to stress the video card on 6k. So don't encode @ 320x240 then scale to screen! It's much better encode to a resolution you want (I don't recommend 640x480, we're not there yet) and play the native video resolution on 6k. I also rotate the screen in the encoding step as eji did. Finally I won't hesitate to just pass the previously encoded high quality audio stream through if file size is not a problem for you.

[guylhem]

hello

You should post the mencoder script and a sample avi.

[mjb]

I don't have the need to modify my 6000 because it isn't my primary pda.  It is already great for what I use it for, which is my "instant on" web machine.  It is constantly within my home's wifi range.  The only thing I would like to improve is the usb keyboard layout.  The guylhem rom is supposed to fix that, but I'm unsure of its stability.  If drwowe's cg rom addresses this, then that will complete my needs for the 6000.

As far as keyboards go, I prefer the 760's, the 3100's, the 6000's and then the 5500's last.  The 760 is just missing the Dpad, but I don't play games as much and so the directional keys are fine enough.  The 6000 and 5500 just don't cut it mainly because I hate hitting the fn key to input numbers.
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See my keyboard post at the end of the keyboard thread in the 6000 hardware forum. Building on what was already posted, I am using keyhelper with my own xml mapping file (url in my post) and I have no keyboard problems when using usb keyboards. I switch back and forth between the mapping for the built in keyboard and the usb keyboard with a simple command line entry also documented in my post.