Most of those new handhelds are vapourware or crapware.
They don't exist, will never exist or are utter crap. They may have good looking specs, but their implementation and/or design is terrible. no proper usability studies of the ergonomics of those devices have taken place, battery life sux. heat, noise, etc... give them another 3 years and they might come up with something proper if they havent blown their fundings yet and are still alive.
Seriously, Sharp never claimed their Zaurus to be a mini laptop, we just pushed it to its limit to make it one because it is so well designed and had a lot of legroom, whereas these other companies do claim to be laptop replacements.
Sharp's problem is that they can develop better hardware but on the software side, they have problems keeping up to date. Their implementation of Qtopia is ancient as is their kernel. However, in order to retain backwards compatability with the established software base, this would had been the cheapest solution for them. Sharp just doesn't know how to make software which is the case for most hardware vendors. Maybe this is why they've decided to partner with Microsoft for their new mobile device which is against the previous trend since most mobile companies had rejected MS as their platform but things may be changing again with MS pushing their new OS heavily and Java slowing down on their J2ME momentum they had in the past.
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Meanie, everything you just stated is what prompted me to ask the question, "Is it time for Sharp to take the next step?".
1) Everyone of the HandPCs I listed, pale in comparison to the ergonomic design of the Zaurus Clamshell. Sharp could stand to tweak a few things, but there is no better form factor out there.
2) Though it is true that the Zaurus was not originally intended to be a mini laptop, is not this eventually where the market is going? The traditional PDA has all but disappeared and has been replaced with smartphones, PMPs (Archos, etc), or ultra-mini laptops. People want more funtionality than a traditional PDA can provide.
3) Sharp is one of the best hardware companies around, but is a dreadful software provider. All the more reason to step the Zaurus up to run any standard Linux distro and tap into all of the open source software that is available. Sharp would only need to create special software to ensure funtionality (drivers, etc).
Also, I think Sharp can come in significantly lower than the price point of these devices, because Sharp has already recouped much if not all of their R&D costs and manufacturing set-up costs.
I would love to have my Zaurus running Ubuntu or Suse and if I wanted to have that PDA feel, what about running the embedded software through emulation? If I have the horsepower to run a full Linux Distro, it should be able to emulate our current environment at equal or greater speed.
Nate
