SL6000 Questions and general Zaurus Q\'s

[anonuk]

Ethereal, sorry didn\'t mean to rile you up - just wanted to suggest an 860 as a possibility?

Sorry for the rant, but I really am weary of the snide arrogance of some of ZUG\'s clamshell owners who seem to think a tablet model is just something to keep one\'s hand from shriveling up and falling off while waiting for a C860 to arrive from Japan hidden inside a hollowed-out pumpkin.  

I own a clamshell and a 5500 (now in constant use by my gf), and have recommended the 5x00 to lots of my associates, but i use the 860 a lot more than i used to use the 5500 (mainly because of the form factor).

There is always the \'great clamshell debate\' but i especially tried to keep my post short and avoid offending, i was just making a suggestion in case jsilve1 hadn\'t considered the clamshell line of zauruses. AFAICS Any zaurus is a great buy, i\'ve purchased a number of 5x00\'s for members of my family as psion replacements :-)

Sorry if i was out of line...

[Ethereal]

1) What is the width and height of the screen in mm?  I\'ve been in touch with the folks at NuShield about screen protectors for the SL-6000.  Currently, they don\'t offer any but if I can get them the screen dimensions they might have something that would work.

Allegedly, the screen is the same size as the Toshiba e800\'s.

4) When will the 6000W and 6000N be released in the U.S.?

Thank you for contacting Sharp Electronics Corporation.
  
  Unfortunately I do not have any information on the release of this
unit at this time.

[DrWowe]

1) What is the width and height of the screen in mm?

Allegedly, the screen is the same size as the Toshiba e800\'s.

Very close.  My boxwave e805 shield was 1mm too long, it fits perfectly after I shaved it.

[cradlinski]

Thank you both for your replies.

[iyah]

Hi all. I have several general questions about the SL6000.

1) Has anyone had success using USB devices with it? I know the specs say \"USB host compatible with Sharp products\" or something like that. How about other (non-Sharp) products?
 
archos 10g mp3/hd came in as /mnt/sda1
sony dsc-p51 digicam in as /dev/sdb1
Using universal usb cables from staples

2) Has anyone installed OpenZaurus on the SL6000?

No, but pdaXrom works somewhat in console mode (the keyboard isn\'t mapped properly yet). X comes up and looks good but is not quite functional (see the dual booting article in the pdaXrom groups).

3) What is up with www.myzaurus.com? It appears to have stopped in time. The latest news/info/updates on that site appear to be fro June, 2003.

dunno

4) What battery is the proper spare (model number, please) for the SL6000?

dunno, but pcconnection sells them whatever they are.

5) Should I just get the 5600 and save myself 300 bucks? (I saw a 5600 listed on Amazon for $289!!!) Actuall, I will do the analysis on this one myself -- lessee, add in Wireles CF card, compare the screen size, hmmm... compute compute...I think I\'d go with the SL6000. But I just wanted additional impressions and comparisons between the new Zaurus and last year\'s Z.

Depends on what you value for your money. I value screen quality and expandability (but this thing is BIG ... not something you\'re going to flip out in the supermarket to look at the shopping list. That made me strongly consider the 860 )

6) Zaurus SL600 versus full-featured notebook. (e.g Dell Inspiron 1100, which I found refurbished for only around $800) Pros/Cons?

It\'s not a notebook. By a notebook if that\'s what you need, especially if you\'re looking to run any commercial or mature software.

Thanks, all. I\'m sure I\'ll have plenty more questions.

[Ethereal]

Ethereal, sorry didn\'t mean to rile you up - just wanted to suggest an 860 as a possibility?  
...
Sorry if i was out of line...

No, your post unfairly caught a lot of the backlash from 1000 other instances of clamshell snobbery.  (I do appreciate that, before the advent of the SL-6000 (which is still unfolding in the West), the clamshells were the only 640x480 game in town...)

[sakamoto]

Actually, it\'s  co-worker\'s HD. He told me it\'s a laptop harddrive in a slim casing. If Z cannot drive an external HD byits own power, I might have to re-tink getting one. It\'s no fun carring so much cable and power adaptor when you go out.

FW

You may want to try the X\'s Drive or similar product, whish is build-in battery and 6-in-1 card reader (of cause with HD).

I\'m already bring along this with my Digital Camera when travel oversea.

Saka

[DrWowe]

Battery P/N for the 6000 is EA-BL09.

[Ethereal]

Just today\'s update on the 6KW in the US (or not) situation:

Thank you for contacting Sharp Electronics Corporation.
  
  
  Unfortunately there are no plans for this unit to be released in the
U.S. any time in the future.
  
  
  
 We appreciate the opportunity to provide you with this information.  
If you
need additional information include all information from prior e-mail
messages and replies.
  

Diane Habas
Customer Assistance Center
Technical Support Specialist
Technical Support Line: 877-794-8675
Fax: 630-378-9981
Accessories: 800-BE-SHARP
Email: zaurussupport@sharpsec.com

Anyone who wonders how so many of us here can simultaneously hate Sharp and love (at least some of) their products, maybe this little example of their high-handed arrogance toward US consumers will help.

[DrWowe]

Ethereal:  You don\'t know what you\'re missing.  If the 6000W becomes available, I\'ll upgrade in a heartbeat, but even so, the 6000L is the best handheld I\'ve ever owned.  I was a little underwhelmed with my 5600, primarily for the same reasons as my ipaqs and other devices - the screen res.  You have to see it to believe it how much a bright 640x480 screen improves usability.  I can easily navigate websites that were frustrating on the smaller screen.  Also the ruggedness is great - it\'s a nice thing, psychologically, to carry it around without being afraid that I might drop it and ruin a large investment.  With the built-in WiFi, I expect to be able to leave a bluetooth CF card in permanently, so I won\'t normally have to deal with juggling cards.

Oh, a low-level tech isn\'t really going to know what the product plans are.  You just got a canned answer so don\'t read too much into it.  The best we can expect from emailing Sharp is 1. a sense of personal satisfaction and 2. hope for a hallway/water cooler conversation where the techs happen to mention to someone important that they\'ve been getting a lot of inquiries about this \"bluetooth model\".

[Ethereal]

With the built-in WiFi, I expect to be able to leave a bluetooth CF card in permanently, so I won\'t normally have to deal with juggling cards.

Yeah, I\'ve considered that solution, too.  But with the Socket cards not (yet) working in the 6K, I decided it was too much compromise to have an Ambicom wagging its tongue out the top of a 6KL, not only aesthetically, but from a case-fit standpoint as well.  There\'s also something philosophically objectionable about buying a device inside which I know there\'s an empty spot intended for a BT chip, and then shoving a BT card into the CF slot.

If someone wants to step in and school me on how Sharp has good reason to withold the 6KW from the non-Japanese markets, please do.  As I see it, they have the Anglicised ROM for the 6KL, they have the 6KW for Japan, so releasing the 6KW in the US would mean all of about a dozen man-hours to slap an English UI on the Bluetooth subsystem.  

But they\'d rather flip us the middle finger than do business with us.

[cradlinski]

Do any of the Socket cards work in the 6K or is it only the Bluetooth card that fails?

[DrWowe]

I have every intention of making the Socket card work.  Since it already works on other models thanks to Tumnus, I expect it will only require fairly trivial hacking.