Help Me Pick A Second Zaurus!

[blinkblob]

Hello, I bought a 3100: what a thing of beauty! I now can truly live without my laptop when travelling.
I still use my Palm t5 for Pim duty and bluetooth email though, as the 3100 is just too big to stick in a pocket or a belt pouch. (I also use the 3100 with bluetooth and Wifi)

-I am looking for a T5 replacement.
-must be able to use a bluetooth card to download email
-must be much more compact than the 3100
-must be able to use KOPI PIM software
-must be able to use the basics like a spreadsheet etc...that is compatible with the 3100
-Must be linux...of course.

I am looking at the 5500 5600 6000 c760 c860 etc... but I am lost as I cannot actually hold them in my hands to see if buying one of these will make a major difference in portability.

Can anyone help me focus a on just one or 2 models. I saw the c760 at one place for about 300.00 bucks. Would this be a good choice? Is this a model that could work as a smaller 3100 for everyday PIM and bluetooth email use?

As a t5 replacement, bear in mind that I will be using it 1000 times a day. Not really doable with a 3100 as it's too big and heavy and I would not want to subject such a nice unit to so much abuse. My 3100 will be used in my hotel room for serious work only.

Thanks for any help.

ME

[boosalis]

Blinky.  

Why the rush. Why not wait till the Nokia 700 comes out.  True Nokia has delayed it a bit but they say it will be out 4 quarter this year if I am not mistaken.  The fact that they delayed it for software reasons probable means that Nokia is interested in producing a quality consumer product.  The only bummer is that its not a Qtopia device, but lets keep our minds open as maybe the GUI they have will prove superior.

[blinkblob]

Blinky. 

Why the rush. Why not wait till the Nokia 700 comes out.  True Nokia has delayed it a bit but they say it will be out 4 quarter this year if I am not mistaken.  The fact that they delayed it for software reasons probable means that Nokia is interested in producing a quality consumer product.  The only bummer is that its not a Qtopia device, but lets keep our minds open as maybe the GUI they have will prove superior.
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Wow, that is a sweet looking machine!
I think the main thing is that it has no keyboard. I can't stand "graffiti" type input, it's way too painful. Look forward to seeing reviews on it though. Pretty cool stuff.

[adf]

the smallest z is the 5500.

the 750,760,860 are pretty much like the 3100 in dimension--at least as far as you seem to be concerned

the 5600 is bigger than the 5500 because of a large batter
the 6000 is comparatively large.

if you must have a z for pim look into the 5500.
otherwise, I'd really recommend you look into smartphones..so as not to duplicate less and add more functionality. -though maybe a smartphone with a keyboard and a decent pricetag is hard to find?

[icruise]

I agree that there isn't really another Zaurus that would be small enough to merit using two different models. Is it really necessary that the second PDA be a Zaurus? What's wrong with your current T5?

[sidmoraes]

Get an Ipaq or Dell Axim and install Linux on it.

Familiar is a good distro.

[blinkblob]

There's nothing wrong with the T5: it's a really nice unit and bluetooth works with no tweaking all the time. Bluetooth is a tad buggy on the 3100, but I finally figured out how to make it run when it does'nt want to.

The main attraction of using another Zaurus is:

-the keyboard: I rarely reply to email on my T5 unless I pull out the IR keyboard as using graffiti is too painfull for anything more than a short sentence.

-PDFs: pdfs are becoming, at an accellerated pace, the no. 1 means of document exchange. I noticed a major adoption by everyone in the last year, more so than any other year. One cannot view pdfs on any Palm unless you do a desktop conversion first. Dataviz is coming out with a native pdf viewer later this year for the Palm platform but it will still require conversion. It's not an instant read.

-KOPI: this PIM suite is far more advanced than anything on the Palm. Also, the idea (it's an idea as I have not tried it yet) to be able to have the identical data on my ubuntu laptop, my 3100 and my windows xp box is pretty cool. Synchronising the t5 with a linux laptop is buggy most of the time. For all I know , synching KOPI might be even more buggy.

Overall, the T5 is buggy with frequent resets. Still within acceptable tolerances of stability, but just on the border of being too buggy.

Thanks

[icruise]

The main attraction of using another Zaurus is:

-the keyboard: I rarely reply to email on my T5 unless I pull out the IR keyboard as using graffiti is too painfull for anything more than a short sentence.

Yes, I agree about the keyboard. Of course, you should keep in mind that 3100 probably has the best keyboard of all the Zaurus models up to date. If you get an much older model, you might find it's not quite as nice as you expect (although still better than pretty much anything else out there). But the price you pay for a good keyboard is size. As I said, I'm not sure you'll find a big difference in portability with another Zaurus model.

-PDFs: pdfs are becoming, at an accellerated pace, the no. 1 means of document exchange. I noticed a major adoption by everyone in the last year, more so than any other year. One cannot view pdfs on any Palm unless you do a desktop conversion first. Dataviz is coming out with a native pdf viewer later this year for the Palm platform but it will still require conversion. It's not an instant read.

I can view PDFs without conversion on my old Sony Clie using the included Picsel Viewer, which actually works much better than the Zaurus PDF reader. Except of course, that my Clie's low res screen makes viewing full-sized PDFs somewhat difficult. Have you considered a used Clie UX-50?

-KOPI: this PIM suite is far more advanced than anything on the Palm. Also, the idea (it's an idea as I have not tried it yet) to be able to have the identical data on my ubuntu laptop, my 3100 and my windows xp box is pretty cool. Synchronising the t5 with a linux laptop is buggy most of the time. For all I know , synching KOPI might be even more buggy.

Sounds interesting, but as you say, you've never actually tried this, and to me the idea of trying to keep three machines synced sounds like a huge hassle.

[bluedevils]

get an 860 and the small battery (and cover).  It is much thinner than a 3100, but similar dimensions otherwise.  Though you will get diminished battery times, it should be quite acceptable for just PIM duty.

Just my opinion.  I think their might be pics on the net that compare a 3k to a small battery 860.

BTW I pull my kopi/kapi data straight into the kde pim suite on my gentoo machines no problem.  Syncing with Zautrix's pi version should be no problem.

[bluedevils]

Another consideration for the 860 is that you can buy an extra small battery and an external battery pack.  These can be stored in your bag or coat pocket and used to switch batteries without a reboot.

[blinkblob]

Well I took the plunge and bought a 5500 on ebay for $177.00 US. I also bought a 3 charger package, AC, DC and 4 AA charger for 35.00. I bought a body suit case from Extreme limits for 80.00 (it just looked so nice, I could not resist it). I then bought a screen protector for 12.00 from Brando in Hong Kong. For $304.00 US dollars, I have a complete pda system that is much more advanced than anything for a comparable price from Palm or the dark side.

Now I have to spent another few hours trying to figure out what to flash it too: Sharp's 3.13 or Cacko or ?? Oh, boy, too many options.

Hopefully, I won't have to buy another PDA for a few years. These units appear to be very well built.

Now I will make another post asking for suggestions on what to flash it too. I hope this is simple.

Thanks for all your help.

[bluedevils]

simple - the latest cacko is the most up to date sharp ROM for the 5500, AFAIK.