I had an SL-5500 which I decided to sell in a moment of "need new gadget and really ought to finance it by selling old gadget" madness. I hope the guy who bought my 5500 is still having a ton of fun with it!!
I was going to buy an Archos PMA 430, but that was based on the speculation that it would be available by Xmas 04 and far more impressive than it turned out to be when it finally appeared in March 05! Doen't get me wrong, am sure it's a fab little device, but in my boredom waiting for it to be launched, I bought an Archos AV480, which is a fantasic media player with an 80gb hard disk. The PMA with it's 30GB hard disk and oh so many other downsides just didn't appeal to me.
A cheap black and white Zire was my PDA gadget for a while, but after you've had a colour screen PDA, you can't really go back. I've nothing against the Zire, it's PDA functions were in advance of my SL-5500 (which in itself is a shame, I hope the PDA side to the C-1000 has had a bit of a spruce up!!), but one thing it taught me... I NEED A KEYBOARD! LOL
By this point I was really missing my SL-5500 with it's little fold out keyboard :-(
My Zire is going to a friend who'll love it I'm sure.
I need something new!!
So... what's next? I'm gonna be 30 soon, so the thought was SPLURGE.
OQO is out there, it's a fab gadget, it's a fully fledged PC in a small sized case. BUT, the hard disk is a paltry 20GB, I've read the battery life is poor, the device is too hot, the digital pen thing is pants, and it suffers way too much from being Model 01. And for £1,500 I would really need a convincing argument to buy that. Plus with all those capabilities I'd be thinking about ditching the AV480 and putting things on the OQO, but it can't equal the AV480 for multimedia and hard disk size, so what would be the point?
I'd never buy another Pocket PC, been there done that a few years ago, sold it on within a month! Some guys at work have the iPaqs and I've played with them, but the interface and abilities don't feel like they have progressed that far.
So what's left... I'm back to the Zaurus. The C-3000 tempted me, but an extra £100 for a 4GB hard disk that I'd not use cause I've got the AV480? Erm no. The C-1000, a slightly cheaper, but sexy looking beast, gives me a small linux powered near micro laptop computer with an apparently great screen and an apparently good keyboard. I'm back to the realm of Qtopia which I'm reasonably familiar with thanks to my years with the SL-5500. I'll be able to tinker, post questions, install rubbish on it, flash it when OE/OZ supports it and have a few years of faffing like I did with the SL-5500. I think I'll be pretty happy!
By the time I'm sick of both the C-1000 and the AV480, something all new and fabulous will have come along that will replace both of them, my mobile phone and digital camera all in one neat little gadget! Well maybe....
Anyway, as soon as Shirtpocket.co.uk (who were very nice on the phone btw) deliver my C-1000, I'll be back on the forums asking loads of inane questions again and having a merry time waiting for the responses, as I did before! :-)
