Any New Zaurii Upcoming?

[Curious Aardvark]

apparently the reason sharp don't include wifi and bluetooth in the japanese z's is actually because there are lots of different wireless standards in japan and they don't like nailing their devices down to just the one. And lets face it stick a big sd card in and what else are you going to use the cf slot for ? Hell I keep a 128 mb cf card in just because it fits tighter than the cover that came with the z - I pretty much don't use it.

And before anyone asks I can't remember exactly where I read this but I think it might have been on the japan-direct.com site somewhere.

The thing that puzzles me is: why use an english keyboard and english service menus in a device never intended for sale outside japan ?
I'm bloody glad they did mind, just have no idea why they would :-)

[Stubear]

I recently discovered a posting that discussed a complete recovery process and revealed that the 3000 actually has a complete minimal NAND based Linux distro accessable by cold start with D+B held down so if the HDD does become totally unrecoverable and needs flattening then its possible to do the prep work from this boot environment (handily I now have a hdd1.tar.gz file containing the minimal stuff needed for the first partition too!).
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Just a note to the curious, the C760 and C860 (probably C700 and C750 too but I don't know from first hand experience) also have the minimal linux distro accessible by D+B boot-up

The thing that puzzles me is: why use an english keyboard and english service menus in a device never intended for sale outside japan ?

All keyboards in Japan the I have ever seen (been here 11 years) are based on the qwerty keyboard layout. Most keyboards also have hiragana (Japanese syllables) on the keys but I don't know a single Japanese person that uses them.

The service menus are probably standard for the chip or bootloader and Sharp didn't think anyone would see them (other than their techs) so didn't bother translating them.


I've  been toying with the idea of getting a C3k, but like many here I'm concerned about the lifespan of the microdrive. Although the extra space would be very usefull.

Stu

[ev1l]

Since I am a fan of the clamshell design since the C700 appeared, there's not much I would dislike on the C3000. It's a nice machine, although I am worried about how the microdrive reliability works out in practice all-day usage and also I'm disappointed by the lack of built-in WiFi which is - for me personally - a very important feature to have.
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Seriously. The thing is, having a CF slot and connector cards is much more adapted to the japanese market. I don't understand why they didn't bring the 6000 with both wifi and BT to the US.
The only other problem with the Zaurus line is that all the software is closed, and so are the specs. With an open architecture in sync with Trolltech instead of their closed fork (why they ever did that I'll never understand), the Z would be so much more powerful.

[marshmn]

For me personally, I don't so much mind the fact that I have to use the CF slot for, say, a WiFi card. The only really annoying thing for me is that because I'd like both bluetooth and WiFi, I'm going to have to have two CF cards and switch them as required, carrying the other one around separately etc etc.

I'd also be pretty much happy if there was one CF card which had bluetooth and WiFi in it, but I don't see that happening really...

Matt