5600 worth it? Or go with 5500?

[tumnus]

I would also imagine (can\'t test it as I have never seen an sl5600, nor I am I likely too as they don\'t sell them in the UK) that they draw similar power from the battery.

The XScale ARM CPU in the 5600 is less power hungry than the StrongARM CPU in the 5500 (albeit not a huge different) and the 5600\'s frontlight is more efficient too. My 5500 screen at 100% brightness is as bright as my 5600 screen at only 75% brightness and with the huge 5600 battery I can keep my 5600 on 100% brightness all day. I could never do that with my 5500.

(BTW I think Expansys sell the 5600 in the UK now)

The battery monitor is very poor at detecting voltage levels and (like the fuel guage on my car) report full for a long time, than drop to 75% briefly, then say \"Please recharge the battery\" very shortly after.

Basically if you get 1 hours use out of your battery you would expect it to show 9(something)% after about 10mins, not 100% as both my Zauri show after 20mins usage.

They fixed that on the 5600. The changes in the battery meter are definitely much more evenly spread on my 5600 than on my 5500, which as you say suddenly drops from 75% to low battery.

[zbones]

(BTW I think Expansys sell the 5600 in the UK now)

My god you are right!!! sadly they quote £318 + delivery which I make to be £324.35 ($572.59 according to todays exchange rate), when I paid £390 for my 760 in January this year ( I forget what the £-]$ exchange rate was then) including delivery/tax/everything.  But at least you can buy one officialy in the UK now, which is a first!!!!!

They didn\'t sell them one month ago as I checked!  I was hoping they where going to sell the clamshells like they promissed back in June 2003 with the c700, the web page is still there.

http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=SL-C700

Yes I pre-ordered one, and I am still awaiting the email to say they have them in stock, nearly a year later now! And of course I no longer want/need it.

Tumnus, just curious, where did you get yours as you were an early adopter of the 5600 if I remember correctly.

What did you pay for it and where from?

By the way, I paid £160 (inc delivery) for my 5500 from a seller on ebay in the US in June 2003 when I could have still bought a brand new one from Empire Direct (cheap electrical re-seller in the UK) for £250, and I have never looked back.

Thanks for the feedback on the sl5600 models power usage. what is the mah rating of the battery?  if it is 1700mah then It is no-where near double that of the 5500 battery so the lower power utilisation is unlikely to make that much difference.

PS, if money was no object would you buy a cl860 or an sl6000 or would you keep the 5600?

Also if money was an object and you had to choose between the 5500 and the 5600, which would you buy, judging the current price difference today?

An honest answer would be appreciated as most people on this forum ( including myself) highly value your opinion!

I know I am playing devils advocate but curious minds and all that jazz.......  I have never owned a 5600 and probably never will, am I talking bollocks,  have I offended you in any way ( I hope not! ) .
Did sharp make a huge mistake by releasing the sl5600 in the US when they should have released the c750/60 ,  or even the c700 .

I really hate to do this, but I feel I have to ask for the bennifit of others who have to make this decision now!

Peter
(who is definately running into the corner to hide)

[tumnus]

Tumnus, just curious, where did you get yours as you were an early adopter of the 5600 if I remember correctly.

What did you pay for it and where from?

Actually I won my 5600 in the ZUG Documentation Contest back in October last year. You can probably search for the news about it still on the front page.

Thanks for the feedback on the sl5600 models power usage. what is the mah rating of the battery?  if it is 1700mah then It is no-where near double that of the 5500 battery so the lower power utilisation is unlikely to make that much difference.

The 5600 battery is 1700mAh, but the 5500 battery is only 950mAh, so it is approaching double the battery capacity and with the extra improvments in the hardware I think it does equate to about double the battery life.

PS, if money was no object would you buy a cl860 or an sl6000 or would you keep the 5600?

That\'s a hard one. Keyboard isn\'t that much of an issue to me because I only use it for short notes, so the 5x00 thumb board is still great (and still much better than any handwriting recognition IMHO). Since I view PDFs and Word docs in meetings a lot as well as surf the web, the VGA screen of the C860 or 6000 would be fantastic. I\'m not too sure about the clamshell design either. I think a clamshell is more for someone who wants a laptop replacement/extension. The 5x00/6000 design is more for someone who wants a device to carry documents and data around (including PIM info). I fall into the latter category and like to be able to pull my 5600 out of my pocket, turn it on, look at an appointment or address all with one hand. That would be very awkward with a clamshell. So I would lean towards the 6000, but the size is a little disconcerting to me as the 5600 is the maximum I would like, even though I have huge pockets in most of my trousers (lots of cargo pants like a true gadget freak  ). It would definitely be nice to have WiFi and Bluetooth builtin, freeing up the CF slot and not having to worry about drivers and compatibility. I also play a lot of games on my 5600, but not the emulators that use lanscape. I have several EON Games apps that can\'t really be played on a c860 because they often require the D-Pad in portrait mode.

My Ideal Zaurus would be a C860 with builtin WiFi and Bluetooth, transflective screen, vibrating alarm with the ability to set the alarm to vibrate or silent for a timed period, builtin mic, D-Pad next to the screen (which would duplicate the arrow and space keys) so portrait games can be played easily, and some nifty design such that you could leave it in portrait mode in your pocket without having to worry about damaging the touchscreen.

But until they improve the software I don\'t think I\'ll be buying another Zaurus (oh and I need a big pay rise too  ), not that I am switching to any other PDA. Sharp seriously needs to sort out the sync and PIM data format issues to fix it once for all. It really can\'t be that hard to use open standards for this and add basic features like snooze and exceptions to the Calendar surely? Yes there is Ko/PI and various ways of copying data around and merging it, but at the end of the day this is only causing more fragmentation in the community. Even with a Linux PDA the power users and hackers are still in the minority IME, so most people will stick with what Sharp supplies.

Also if money was an object and you had to choose between the 5500 and the 5600, which would you buy, judging the current price difference today?

The 5600 may seem expensive on Expansys when converting to dollars, but so does every other electronic item in the UK, including the 5500 still on sale on Expansys. I\'d have to say the price difference on Expansys or Amazon.com isn\'t that much and because the builtin extra battery life is so useful and as is the builtin speaker and mic and other improvements, I would go with the 5600. The 400MHz CPU also handles playing movies and some games better than the 5500 too. Plus I like the fact that you\'ll never lose your data because of a flat battery (yes Home on SD is nice if you can get a SD card the Zaurus likes but I like things to work as they came) and the internal storage is compressed. I would not have gone for the 5600 at its original price though.

[RichS]

Well, nobody asked, but I\'ll offer my opinion on that too ;-)

If the 6000 (or clamshell) came down to $300, I would buy one in a heartbeat and be very happy. I may be a programmer, but I\'m not overly fond of technology. I would dump $300 into a bellows for a 100 year old large format camera long before I would buy another $300 \"PDA\"...

I think the smartest thing Sharp could do would be to keep the 5600 in production at the $300 level. For most of us, that\'s a lot of money for a \"PDA\", but close enough that people would be tempted to buy one. That would get them into the linux arena and maybe \'upgrade\' later to a 6000 or clamshell model.

I bought my 5600 about 6 months ago and love it. Use it every single day for just about everything it is capable of doing, although I have yet to install gcc on it (need a bigger sd card). But I would never spend $600 on a \"PDA\" or handheld computer. That\'s getting too close to the cost of a very capable laptop that would do for me much more.

I am either lucky or plain dumb as I don\'t seem to have any of the problems most people complain about. I easily synch to my Lotus Organiser and run all the software I need, all with Sharp\'s ROM. My complaints about the 5600 are so minor I can\'t even remember any at the moment! Okay, maybe the text editir not being able to create scripts, but that was easily fixed...

The 6000 may be an incredible machine, but it\'s just too expensive for most of us. I see no reason why Sharp couldn\'t keep a less expensive model, like the 5600, to get people interested in their products. After all, you can buy a palm type pda for less than $100 and that does get people hooked on using one! And I would hope the 5600 stays around for a while just in case mine breaks! I would hate to be left with no replacement after all I have invested in it...

[zbones]

I remember you winning it now

Very interesting comments from both of you, thanks for taking the time to reply..

Had the cl700 appeared as promissed last year, I would probably still have it now.  I personaly didn\'t think the difference between the 5500 and the 5600 warranted the extra price and love the clamshell form factor.

I may have been tempted with the sl6000 if they were officially released over here and I didn\'t have a clamshell, mainly due to the difficulty in obtaining it and hardware support being so tricky.

I may also be keeping the cl760 for some time now as I have decided to blow my bonus/tax rebate on a big bike  

I think 1200cc should be big enough to get my zaurus doing 0-]60 in just under three seconds, not quite as fast as the emperors way of propelling handheld devices, but more fun.

Peter

[cgrieves]

ZX12, Bandit or XJR? I\'ve had my Bandit 12 for years now....

[zbones]

Bandit 1200,  allthough I am toying with getting the 600 for a few months first just till I get back into it (6 years since I last had a bike).

[cgrieves]

Nah, I wouldn\'t bother with the 600 if you really want the 12. Most 600 users upgrade pretty quicly to the 12. The 6 is a great bike but the 12 isn\'t a lot more expensive to buy or insure (mine is £130 fully comp and I\'m 33). And although the 12 will happily nut you in the face with the top yoke, if you treat the throttle with respect it\'s a complete pussycat. Also go for the pre 2K model as it\'s much more tunable (10-15 bhp extra with just an end-can, and no rejetting required).

Drop us a line on corin.grieves@nospam@dds.co.uk if you want more info, or join SUKBOG (Suzuki UK Bandit Owner\'s Group) at www.sukbog.co.uk.

Apologies for the threadjack!