Ya, Finally Got A Zaurus!

[metal9966]

ok, i know I am a few years behind the curve, but I finally got a 5500 from Ebay.

I am enjoying the new toy, and have observed the following (sorry for the palm comparisions):

ROM Version: 2.37

The bad:
Can't find a console app in the menus, and I dont have the CD, or a cradle, just the charger. Battery life (as this is used) seams to be really, really bad. Hancom word is horrible by today's standard, cant seem to open large  DOC files. PIM APPS seem kind of complicated. Its easy to tell why this thing didnt really take off for the average "PDA user"
Palm os vs stock sharp ROM is easy win for Palm when viewed as "PDA" only.

The Good:
Operates much faster than I was expecting. Multi tasking rocks! (Palm os 5, really, really needs multi tasking) Love the hidden keyboard, Like the SD and CF slot, and like that I can beam items from Z to my other palms and back. Like most of the other built in apps (except for Hancom). Opera looks cool (need to get a wifi card though to really try) and really like that it runs Linux!

I think i want to try this KO/PI you guys talk about so much, and flash with cacko/Crow rom that moves home to SD. And I want to try textmaker and VNC.

Offroadgeek, thanks for the great site. Also thanks to all the people that have put so much info up on this site! I am making a donation as I type.

I think I have a lot of Forum posts and writeups to read, and a lot of things to add/change    

I think i need to get a Clamshell model!  

[speculatrix]

ok, i know I am a few years behind the curve, but I finally got a 5500 from Ebay.

welcome to an elite group of PDA owners...

you'll suddenly find that you're irresistible to members of the opposite sex,
you'll be invited to the best parties,
people will listen eagerly to everything you've got to say,
you'll spend way too much time on these forums and playing with your Zaurus.

--
Disclaimer: your experience may not quite match the above.

[bluedevils]

congrats on the new old Z,

You can always buy a new battery to get more of a charge.  Tell us how much battery life you are getting.

definitely switch ROMs.  2.37 is generally unuseable and tkcrom and cacko (both based on 3.10+ sharp rom) will make  a world of difference.

A word of warning about kde pim pi, last I saw on my sister's 5500 the default config does not look good on the 5500.  It is so configurable that you *will* be able to make it usefull.  I'm just saying don't get discouraged on the first day of configuring it.

[bluedevils]

the only one I didn't have before was spending too much time on the forums.....at least in my mind.

welcome to an elite group of PDA owners...

you'll suddenly find that you're irresistible to members of the opposite sex,
you'll be invited to the best parties,
people will listen eagerly to everything you've got to say,
you'll spend way too much time on these forums and playing with your Zaurus.

--
Disclaimer: your experience may not quite match the above.
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[nilch]

ok, i know I am a few years behind the curve, but I finally got a 5500 from Ebay.

I am enjoying the new toy, and have observed the following (sorry for the palm comparisions):

The bad:
Can't find a console app in the menus, and I dont have the CD, or a cradle, just the charger. Battery life (as this is used) seams to be really, really bad. Hancom word is horrible by today's standard, cant seem to open large  DOC files. PIM APPS seem kind of complicated. Its easy to tell why this thing didnt really take off for the average "PDA user"
Palm os vs stock sharp ROM is easy win for Palm when viewed as "PDA" only.
...
...
...

I think i need to get a Clamshell model! 
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=106535\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Welcome to the group.  

good you started off on a bad note ... since along the way as you tinker, you will find how good it can be made (software wise) and how usable it can be  - really a big gap between the first experiences and the prolonged use experience.

My word of advice - for text processing get (buy) Textmaker from Softmaker.
It is THAT good when compared to Hancom and I will venture to say that it is better than Windows Mobile based Word processors (yes MS Office thingy) (for a PDA).

Battery - since its replaceable batteries (unlike PALMs) you can easily switch to a larger capacity battery and keep this as extra with you for that extra juice.

Console app - Dont know why they dont give it bundled with the original software - but I guess they dont want to frighten off first-timers and laymen with that black console with white letters and then wondering what do I type on it ...
If you switch to Cacko, you will get console (a better one) with it. Or else you will easily find it in the Cacko repositories as a seperate install.

KDE-PIM is a bit frightening the first time (particularly on a 5500 screen).
But it is really really usefull. Don't know if it beats the pants out of Agendus or whatever PIM app on the PALM that PALM afficiandos swear by...

Lastly, when you venture into more of a power computing device usage (and not just a PDA), then you will find the true wonder of this little machine.

All the best and hope you will get to love it.
And of course you will have to switch to a clamshell very soon.

[metal9966]

I got about 1 hour of battery life last night when i was playing with it (I think i need to buy a new battery).

I tried Textmaker, it works very well (will actually open my large MB Doc File, although it did take a while due to the slow SD).

 I will try to flash the Rom with Sharp 3.10 this weekend. I want to get more familiar with the Z before I try the cacko rom that puts the home on SD.


One thing. I have noticed that the SD Card slot is super slow. Maybe the 3.10 Rom will help some. Is the Slow SD Card slot a consern for moving home to SD with the Cacko/Crow Rom?

I have been using SUSE for the last 2 or three years at home and have setup and Maintained a lot of SUSE Servers at work. I installed the Console app from Sharp, but one thing is strange, a lot of Console apps and commands seem to be missing, like "top" for instance. Is there a console apps package that works with Sharp ROM to add some of the things I am so used to on SUSE?

I am having too much fun during lunch at work.

Thanks.

[bluedevils]

elsix.org

search for top.  It's there.  Cacko rom I believe has it there by default (it does on my 3100).

BTW most of the default commandline linux apps are handled by busybox.  Most others like top need to be installed

[metal9966]

thanks bluedevils

[Meanie]

welcome to an elite group of PDA owners...

you'll suddenly find that you're irresistible to members of the opposite sex,
you'll be invited to the best parties,
people will listen eagerly to everything you've got to say,
you'll spend way too much time on these forums and playing with your Zaurus.

--
Disclaimer: your experience may not quite match the above.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=106563\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

This is an exact description of my current situation

[bam]

welcome to an elite group of PDA owners...

you'll suddenly find that you're irresistible to members of the opposite sex,
you'll be invited to the best parties,
people will listen eagerly to everything you've got to say,
you'll spend way too much time on these forums and playing with your Zaurus.

--
Disclaimer: your experience may not quite match the above.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=106563\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

This is an exact description of my current situation
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=106646\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

wait how come this hasnt happened to me  


oh yea and welcome to insanity...err owning a z.

[JohnX]

1 hour of battery life means that battery has been on it's way out for quite a while,  If you're conservative with the backlight (side-light really...) and leave it at a low setting or off entirely and you aren't doing anything too processor intensive (playing video or running distributed.net) you can probably get at least 5 - 6 hours straight.  As for the SD card, there are a couple issues with that.  For one thing if it's mounted with the sync option writes will of course be horrible.  The other thing is that in all Zauruses the SD implementation isn't complete IIRC.  As a result you don't get very good transfer rates or support for the newer 2GB SD cards or support for SDIO.  It's been described as basically an MMC slot with support for SD cards.  The SD card is fast enough to watch video from, so it's really just an issue when moving files around.
<shameless plug>As far as which distribution (aka ROM) to run I'm a big fan of OpenZaurus with Opie.  It provides a wealth of applications and it feels much snappier to me than the Sharp ROM, As a bonus it leaves root on the internal flash, lets you choose the RAM / ramdisk split (at install time) and still allows you to install stuff to the SD card, compactflash, the ramdisk (if you choose to have one) or to internal flash (not that there's much room on it.)</shameless plug>

BTW, I used to have a Visor Prism.  I really liked how fast it was for PIM stuff and I do miss the old Palm Grafiti.  Alas it died long ago (prompting me to get the 5500 actually).  Though in reality I'm faster at thumb typing on the 5500 then I ever was with Grafiti. I think you'll really enjoy the Zaurus.

-John

[metal9966]

1 hour of battery life means that battery has been on it's way out for quite a while,  If you're conservative with the backlight (side-light really...) and leave it at a low setting or off entirely and you aren't doing anything too processor intensive (playing video or running distributed.net) you can probably get at least 5 - 6 hours straight.  As for the SD card, there are a couple issues with that.  For one thing if it's mounted with the sync option writes will of course be horrible.  The other thing is that in all Zauruses the SD implementation isn't complete IIRC.  As a result you don't get very good transfer rates or support for the newer 2GB SD cards or support for SDIO.  It's been described as basically an MMC slot with support for SD cards.  The SD card is fast enough to watch video from, so it's really just an issue when moving files around.
<shameless plug>As far as which distribution (aka ROM) to run I'm a big fan of OpenZaurus with Opie.  It provides a wealth of applications and it feels much snappier to me than the Sharp ROM, As a bonus it leaves root on the internal flash, lets you choose the RAM / ramdisk split (at install time) and still allows you to install stuff to the SD card, compactflash, the ramdisk (if you choose to have one) or to internal flash (not that there's much room on it.)</shameless plug>

BTW, I used to have a Visor Prism.  I really liked how fast it was for PIM stuff and I do miss the old Palm Grafiti.  Alas it died long ago (prompting me to get the 5500 actually).  Though in reality I'm faster at thumb typing on the 5500 then I ever was with Grafiti. I think you'll really enjoy the Zaurus.

-John
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=106650\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yes, I think I will need a new battery. I reflashed yesterday with Sharp 3.13. The first attempt, the Zaurus turned on the screen like after about 3 min and started flashing across the screen inode 4001 with diffrent numbers and would not quit for like ten min. I reset the unit and it was still 2.37. I put the Ospack file on the card again after re-downloading, and it worked fine. Sharp 3.13 is way better and faster than the 2.37. I dont know if i did something wrong, The files MD5 were the same. I did notice that the first time the file name was "ospack". The second time i did it as "Ospack" Dont know if that has anything to do with it or not.

I think I will try a few ROMS including OpenZaurus as you have mentioned. Ya I used my Prism for amost 3 years, (still works today, but I did have a buy a broken prism to replace the backlight in mine.) I just need to find a WIFI Card, Frys electronics does not seema carry a CF wifi card except fot the Linksys G card that does not work with linux. I guess I will have to get one from Ebay.

[JohnX]

I have a Linksys WCF12 802.11b, which isn't the smallest or lowest power card but it seems to work fine on just about everything out of the box.  It seems that it's discontinued but if you look on froogle.com you can find it at several places for less than $50. Ah, also one more note about ROMs: Check out a whole bunch before you settle on one and start converting your all your PIM data from PalmOS format, otherwise you'll find yourself doing a bazillion export / imports from different PIM formats.

-John

[brashley46]

1 hour of battery life means that battery has been on it's way out for quite a while,  If you're conservative with the backlight (side-light really...) and leave it at a low setting or off entirely and you aren't doing anything too processor intensive (playing video or running distributed.net) you can probably get at least 5 - 6 hours straight.  As for the SD card, there are a couple issues with that.  For one thing if it's mounted with the sync option writes will of course be horrible.  The other thing is that in all Zauruses the SD implementation isn't complete IIRC.  As a result you don't get very good transfer rates or support for the newer 2GB SD cards or support for SDIO.  It's been described as basically an MMC slot with support for SD cards.  The SD card is fast enough to watch video from, so it's really just an issue when moving files around.
<shameless plug>As far as which distribution (aka ROM) to run I'm a big fan of OpenZaurus with Opie.  It provides a wealth of applications and it feels much snappier to me than the Sharp ROM, As a bonus it leaves root on the internal flash, lets you choose the RAM / ramdisk split (at install time) and still allows you to install stuff to the SD card, compactflash, the ramdisk (if you choose to have one) or to internal flash (not that there's much room on it.)</shameless plug>

BTW, I used to have a Visor Prism.  I really liked how fast it was for PIM stuff and I do miss the old Palm Grafiti.  Alas it died long ago (prompting me to get the 5500 actually).  Though in reality I'm faster at thumb typing on the 5500 then I ever was with Grafiti. I think you'll really enjoy the Zaurus.

-John
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=106650\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Yes, I think I will need a new battery. I reflashed yesterday with Sharp 3.13. The first attempt, the Zaurus turned on the screen like after about 3 min and started flashing across the screen inode 4001 with diffrent numbers and would not quit for like ten min. I reset the unit and it was still 2.37. I put the Ospack file on the card again after re-downloading, and it worked fine. Sharp 3.13 is way better and faster than the 2.37. I dont know if i did something wrong, The files MD5 were the same. I did notice that the first time the file name was "ospack". The second time i did it as "Ospack" Dont know if that has anything to do with it or not.

I think I will try a few ROMS including OpenZaurus as you have mentioned. Ya I used my Prism for amost 3 years, (still works today, but I did have a buy a broken prism to replace the backlight in mine.) I just need to find a WIFI Card, Frys electronics does not seema carry a CF wifi card except fot the Linksys G card that does not work with linux. I guess I will have to get one from Ebay.
[div align=\"right\"][a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=106787\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a][/div]

Welcome to the club. The 3.13 ROM works well enough for me, for most purposes, but without a cradle to sync through you will really, really want that wifi card ... if you can find an AmbiCom WL1100C-CF, you will find that works out-of-the-box. You'll also find for network detection that Kismet works with this device on this ROM. I haven't tried Wellenreiter.

As for the 4 advantages of owning a Z? Only number 4 has happened to me, but then I'm an old married bicycle-and-science-fiction geek so the negative vibrations prolly outweigh the positives!

 

[metal9966]

ok, Flashed to Cacko/crow Rom 64-0, This is way better put home on my 1GB SD card. 64m or Ram is more than enough, and I can open my large files now (allthough Handcom still complains about them) I also put on a lot of games. my wife has stolen my Z to play Yatzze or whatever. Battery life seems to be improving. ? Maby it just needed a few cycles?

I still need to try kopi though as the Built in pims still suck really bad. I am so used to the default palm apps.

The Tiny Java web server is awsome. very cool. I am buying a cf wifi card soon. Opera 7.3 looks interesting, hope to have in on the real web soon.

I want to try netfront as well but can not find it for the 5500 roms? I use netfront on the Palm 5 pdas  and it works really well.

SO basically I am enjoying the Zaurus. except for the actual pims. Also, I am confused, does the Rotation appelet on the cacko site work for this rom?

also, i cant seem to leave well enough alone. If i run OZ with GPE can i run like abiword on the tiny 240 x 320 screen? thanks. if not I think i will stay with this rom.

later!