Palm Ux-50 To Zaurus = Happy?

[bigruss]

Hi all,

I am considering leaving my UX50 and getting a PPC or a zaurus. I like the sound of the zaurus line very much but have *no* linux experience at all. I am not stupid and use computers almost all day but do *no* programming at all apart from maybe hello world in html.... But I do fear using these complicated sounding beasts.
I would probably choose a C1000 or a C3100.
My uses are PIM, project management using a decent outliner, office suite stuff, personal financial stuff, email, web surfing via wifi and bluetooth phone. I also use the UX50 for (bluetooth) GPS navigation, I don't think I can do that with a zaurus in Australia? Media and games are nice but not essential.
Are the zaurus PIM software really as bad as is rumoured? I use datebook5 on palm and that does more than I need it to.
I think my uses would expand though once I find out what these little puppies are capable of. Have been reading these forums for the past couple of days and sounds like great product and community
When people talk about apps being slow on pdaXrom, how slow is slow? a few seconds or a minute or so?
Is it easy to learn to use these, for the start of course just installing ready-made apps, maybe compiling my own later I guess that should be simpler than programming.
Would love opinions from those who have left palm for zaurus (or WM2005)

cheers
Russ

[Snappy]

I do not own a clamshell Zaurus, just the older 5500 series. As far as your needs goes:

1. Screen size - the zaurus would be sharper with 640x480 instead of the 480x320. Its also slightly larger, though not that much more.

The zaurus also allows the screen to rotate to portrait mode. I read that the ux50 only has landscape natively. You would know better!

2. Wifi - ux50 has it built-in while the zaurus, throughout its whole line except for 6000W (or was it LW?) has no wifi built-in. You just need a CF wifi card. This potentially mean that you cannot use wifi and gps at the same time if both are cf based.

3. PIM - frankly, I never quite understood the rave or complaints about PIM on Palms, PPCs or Zauruses. I almost always use the built-in PIMs on any of the devices I own and never seemed to have a problem with them. But given the amount of complaints, I'm prob the exception than the rule.

One possible glitch would be the import of PIM info from palm. Its definitely not as easy as transferring from a Palm to Palm device. But for a long while, neither is it easy from Palm to PPC. I read somewhere that if you can export your Palm PIM info to text files, some convertors exist to import them to Z.

4. Speed - I don't see that an issue at all. the C1000 are pxa270@416mhz beasts so they should be pretty zippy.

5.Others - I think BT is not built-in, so you would need to go the cf route, which again means one cf at a time. Meaning, no wifi if gps, unless there is a sd bt supported or cf gps supported.

ok, this is from a 5500 user ... potentially considering a C1000 if the eink ebook readers do not start appearing before june!

[icruise]

Why do you want to give up the UX-50? Knowing that might help us determine if the Zaurus will better suit your needs.

[bluedevils]

if outlook sync is your criteria, then it might not be the first choice device.  If not, then the kde pim pi suite seems to be good for most people (inluding me)  I have very little exposure to palm.

There are a decent number of Z users that are first time linux users, though I have mainly heard from the people with good experiences.  I have also seen a few selling their zaurii.

Software wise the Z should be able to do all that you have stated, but they may not all be full featured.  Hancomword for example does not have spell checking, but if you pay, textmaker does.  Stock microsoft to stock zaurus apps, I don't think they are that far apart (they both suck).

Hardware wise the Z keyboard is something the PPC is not as good as, but then they are also more pocketable.

I am not touching the X apps or roms, because I sense that you will not be ready for them from the start.

[bam]

bigruss, c4p forums? If so, its a good choice bro! you will NOT be regretting it. and best of all Cresho's put a snes/nes/turbographix emulator suite, I have just about every arcade game I ever wanted on my zaurus at full speed and sound! except for tempest, I cant find that anywhere!


thepim apps are great, and very powerful! As for ROm stick with stock for a few months, then take a look at cacko(modified stock rom), and if your looking to be cutting edge on kernel go look at OZ/Opie, and if you feel like having a mini laptop go look at pdaXrom or OZ/GPE, I dont think I missed anything ROM wise...besides you have a great little community that loves to figure stuff out, and a bunch of dev's who do some amazing things.

[bam]

bigruss, c4p forums? If so, its a good choice bro! you will NOT be regretting it. and best of all Cresho's put a snes/nes/turbographix emulator suite, I have just about every arcade game I ever wanted on my zaurus at full speed and sound! except for tempest, I cant find that anywhere!

[bigruss]

Thanks for the replies and advice gents. To keep this going I will answer some of your questions....

Snappy....

The UX-50 will go portrait in tablet mode with the addition of a $10 application
I doubt I will need wifi and gps at the same time as I use gps when driving, so shouldn't really be surfing at that time...... Anyway would probably keep my UX-50 for use as in-car navigation system. It's resale value is not good.

iCruise......

My UX-50 is dying - the internal wifi is shot, the battery life is incredibly low, the speakers are dodgy (my fault I loosened something whilst opening up the UX-50 to try and fix the wifi)- I could buy a wifi memory stick and an extended battery but that would be AUD 300 or so to patch up what I have, and I can buy a C1000 for about AUD 600

bluedevils.....

I don't care about outlook sync, I just use my PDA not my desktop for PIM. I would like to be able to get my current palm data into the new PDA somehow though, once that is accomplished I am happy.

bam......

Yes the same bigruss from c4p. I have had palm for 6 years now, before that psion 5mx and revo. Feeling a little like a change, as well of course as being unimpressed with palms releases for the past few years.


all

Would buy from pricejapan so would need to flash it instantly as I am not a japanese speaker in the slightest. Hopefully this would be simple enough, or at least explained somewhere in simple steps :-D
Zaurii don't appear to lose much value though so if I buy one and we don't get on I can probably sell on ebay for not a huge loss

cheers,
Russ

[bluedevils]

pricejapan can localize it to english so that the rom you receive is about 85% converted.  You might want to mention it to them if you do buy from them.

[icruise]

I actually went from a Palm (Sony Clie TG-50) to the 3100 (I had used Zauri before, but not the Linux variety). I wrote a review of the 3100 for The Gadgeteer which might be a good overview, but let me compare it specifically with the Palm.

The Zaurus requires a heck of a lot more tinkering to get some things to work (specifically, things that aren't supported by Sharp out of the box, like bluetooth). The Palm in general is a lot easier to set up and use, but it can also be less flexible. It's great to be able to use a wide range of USB peripherals with the Zaurus, for example, but in many cases it requires a fair amount of command-line tinkering to get them to work. If you don't like manually editing text files to configure programs, you probably won't like trying to get the most out of the Zaurus.

The keyboard is much better than other PDA's keyboards. The TG-50's thumboard is a total piece of crap by comparison. Same goes for the screen.

The amount of software available for the Zaurus just can't be compared to the Palm software library, and (to a non linux user, at least) a lot of it is rather hard to install and configure. The PIM software included with the Zaurus pretty much sucks, and I don't think any of the other software packages available approach what is available for the Palm in terms of ease of use.

You have very basic office compatibility with the built-in apps, but you might want to look into buying TextMaker if you want a really robust word processor. There are also some free alternatives like AbiWord and Open Office, but both of these require the XQt environment and don't run very fast in my experience. I don't think the Zaurus has anything like Documents-To-Go or other Palm apps that can actually sync Office apps.

The web browsing experience is a lot better on the Zaurus, once you get it set up. The included browser is ok, but Opera is better in my opinion. But again, installing Opera is a little tricky.

I like my Zaurus, but I am hesitant to recommend it to people unless they realize that it's a bit more labor-intensive than a traditional PDA.

[raduga]

quick comparison:

keyboard is better than UX-50, not as good as 5mx.
(also, not backlit, like UX-50)

NB. an absolutely awesome Zaurus hack would be to fit a Z
into a Psion 5mx case,  using its keyboard. A built-in convertor
to feed the Psion's AA battery slot into the Zaurus' charger would be,

well,

something to dream about

A note of caution though,
people who are comfortable with Linux tend to get the most out of this device.

If you are not, there is a good chance it will still work for you,
but you'll be a little behind the curve, and you may find yourself
frustrated at times.  You can get by without much unixing,
but a little knowledge (or memory of MSDOS) will go a long way.

[bluedevils]

To counter that slightly, the cacko rom includes opera and some other non-stock applications.  Putting the cacko rom in is not the hardest thing in the world if you take your time and follow the instructions.  The cacko rom (full) was made to help take the tinkering out of installing some of the more popular applications like opera.  The cacko feed also has many apps that should be ready to install.

The web browsing experience is a lot better on the Zaurus, once you get it set up. The included browser is ok, but Opera is better in my opinion. But again, installing Opera is a little tricky.

I like my Zaurus, but I am hesitant to recommend it to people unless they realize that it's a bit more labor-intensive than a traditional PDA.
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[raduga]

I like my Zaurus, but I am hesitant to recommend it to people unless they realize that it's a bit more labor-intensive than a traditional PDA.
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as with any PDA, effort put in is proportional to results got out.

Part of the "labor intensive" element you notice, is that being a linux-geek
and tinkerer, you find a lot of things to *do* with a Zaurus, that non-geek,
non-tinkerers would be less likely to find.

If your expectations and interest level are high, operating a Zaurus can be
a 24/7 operation, easy.

If your needs are lower, you might put as much time and effort into it,
but still might get what you need.

The Z offers advantages to both hackers and ordinary users,
but unfortunately isn't marketed to the ordinary people
as much as it might.

( more marketing -> more sales -> more users -> more hackers -> better products )

[icruise]

I like my Zaurus, but I am hesitant to recommend it to people unless they realize that it's a bit more labor-intensive than a traditional PDA.
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as with any PDA, effort put in is proportional to results got out.

Yes and no. I did mention that it's possible to some things with the Zaurus that you can't do on the Palm. But it's also true that there are things that are simple to do on the Palm or other PDAs that are a real pain to do on the Zaurus (or that may be completely impossible). It's not simply a question of "you get out of it what you put into it." I just think it's important to have realistic expectations of what each platform is good at (not what is theoretically possible), especially if you're not a Linux user otherwise.

I'm not at all sure that the considerable effort and time I've put into configuring the Zaurus was "worth" it in terms of how much usability I get out of the device. But I'm the kind of person that enjoys tinkering with these kinds of things, at least to some degree, so I don't mind it. But I could see it being frustrating for others.

[cmonex]

icruise, wow i take it you've never tried cacko 1.23 full have you?

i was (still am) a linux newbie. ordered the zaurus (C760), received it, flashed this rom onto it in 5 mins (have NEVER used the stock sharp rom) and almost everything worked out of the box. wlan and bluetooth too. gprs didn't because linux didn't like my phone but it was time to get a new phone anyway  and it works out of the box with the new phone. net experience is very good regarding speed... rendering is OK but i'm spoiled by IE 5.5 and 6.0 on CE.net...  (those are great at rendering.)

it isn't difficult to install most of the apps, i just use the GUI ipk manager... put the ipk on the memory card and put it into the zaurus and run the install manager...  installing via the network is even easier.

opera 7.25 was already included but updating it to 7.55 was tricky as the main cacko feed doesn't have it right, i had to use the backup feed to install it.

i had some problems with installing a wifi scanner, until i went to the forum and read the thread about setting up kismet and wellenreiter  i went with wellenreiter (easier hahaha)

sure i did need to use the console sometimes for some stuff but it isn't that difficult to type in a few commands is it?

so all in all i didn't fiddle too much with the zaurus to set it up and it does the stuff i want from it.

oh and yes there was a learning curve but not as steep as not to be able to cope with it...  i did get frustrated a few times at the start but then got everything right.

well, and a last note: i still think that CE does some stuff better. it just has the advantage of being an MS product hence having better MS app compatibility and such.
CE/WM is also a little more optimized to be a true pda OS. CE can act as a mini laptop too if you're not using windows mobile, just plain CE or the hpc OS. (i can't stand winmobile - ok, still better than palmos  )