Hi, I\'m Tom. I live in southern NJ across from South Philly. I have worked for different computer companies as a systems engineer for more than 20 years. I travel locally a lot and like to take some of my toys with me such. The Zaurus is now along for the ride.
I was first interested in the Zaurus a while back, but only recently came to the conclusion that I needed to go back to a real computer as my pda.
My first pda was an Atari Portfolio (very limited dos machine), then hp95lx (better dos machine) and hp200lx (real pcxt dos palmtop). All of these were clamshells running a dos, which was limiting, but it had a CLI and you could write your own apps even on the palmtop itself. I had a c compiler for each of these for writing quick little one-off programs.
When HP abandoned dos in favor of wince I moved to Palm. Palms are great for what they do, but I now find what they do too limiting and I wanted a real keyboard in a clamshell design.
When I recently saw a review for the SL-760 I had imediate techno-lust, but I had never seen any zaurus up close and personal. I had only seen a few reviews.
Before shelling out more than $600 I needed to confirm that the PIM sw was sufficient and that I like the overall performance and environment. So I picked up a used 5500 last month on ebay (sort of a pilot program). After a week I was sold on the zaurus in general. So this week I got a used 7600 off ebay and I love it. The 5500\'s thumboard was much better than using a stylus (even I have trouble reading my handwriting), but the 7600\'s keyboard is great. The speed ain\'t too bad either.
So far the only downside (other than support and documentation) is that not all apps from 5500 work, or if those do work, they are rotated on the display. So, for the time being, there is not quite as much off the shelf sw completely ready for the sl-7x0.
I need to find out more about the X11 roms and other options before I consider reflashing it from current English\'d sharp rom.
I am glad to see there are some locals. I look forward to hearing what people are doing with their Z\'s. Although I thing the PIM environment is better than Wince, and probably as good as Palm, I doubt that is the only thing that most of us are using the Z\'s for.
If any of us ever do get together live, I prefer Guinness.
\"It\'s not just for breakfast anymore\" :-)
Tom
------
sl-5500, sl-760, 256sd, dlink dcf-650w, SerialIO ZThin T3.
