Only if the whole universe revolves around
Qtopia, which it doesn't.
Well, that's right, there are plenty of alternative to Qtopia.
<mode rant=ON>
And IMHO this is the reason why, basically, the software suck on the Zaurus: too many different ROMs/interfaces, so people reinvent the wheel every other day. Choice is good, and it's a marvel to see how the Zaurus devices can be tweaked and customized to everyone's taste... but alas, it also means a serious lack of software when compared to the other PDA available (PalmOS, Symbian, PPC).
It's great to see that Sharp makes some efforts to provide a development solution (by sticking to Qtopia), but unfortunately not everyone loves Qtopia, and the Zaurus software has become so segmented that it's nothing more than a niche market on any given ROM/device...
There are almost no commercial (as in 'quality' vs. 'alpha/beta stage') applications. Where are the business tools (spreadsheets/wordprocessor/pdf)? Where are the simple and efficient PIM applications? The bundled applications are pretty much limited, and impressively slow to run even on the more recent Zauruses. Replacement PIM apps are available, sure, like KaPI/KoPI, but they are not faster than the original ones, and their complexity make them more suited to a big screen on a Linux laptop than on our tiny loved PDAs.
As mentioned earlier in this thread, there are quite a lot of FAQs and HOWTOs out there, but sadly a lot of material has become unreachable because Sharp stopped caring about the "rest of the world" (read: outside of Japan), and I suspect that a good deal of interesting things are in Japanese only...
But with some patience, everyone can find the right docs and pointers, and start coding simple Qtopia (or whatever interface you like) applications. It's not easy, not time-efficient to gather the docs first, but it can be done, and that's a good thing!
I'm seriously considering writing my own datebook application (because I have specific needs not handled by the available stuff, and because it's a great opportunity for me to try learning a new development environment), but it's a real shame to
have to build your own tools yourself, because that means that most people (those without programing knowledge or skills) can't do that, and will be disappointed by the Zaurus, should they purchase one without thinking when they see such a beautiful piece of hardware...
<mode rant=OFF>
