C860: Best handheld money can buy?

[nexxusone]

I'm going to be buying a Zaurus clamshell in the near future, though I personally have never owned one before. Here are my observations, as an outsider. Please dispute them (you'll prevent me from making an expensive mistake) or confirm them. Thanks!

It seems to me that by adding a 2gb SD card to a Zaurus c860, I'd be getting a better (though slightly more expensive) machine than the C3000.

The C3000 has only 64mb of SDRAM, while the c860 has 128.
The C3000 has a mechanical harddrive. The battery life WILL be inferior to the c860.
The C3000 looks to be significantly heavier and larger than the c860

Would it be possible to configure the SD card to mount as /? If not, couldnt you move most of the system folders to the SD card later and replace them with symlinks? Would this be undesirable for any reason?

Since the SD cards rotate which areas they write to, and you get 100k writes for the life of a SD card, if I were able to keep only 100mb free, it would take 100,000,000 MB (1TB) of data being written to start destroying sectors on the card, right? If so, this 'limit' isn't really a concern.

People say that the I/O performance of the Z's SD port isn't very speedy, but if most of the 128MB of sdram were available for use as RAM (and not as a ramdisk), wouldnt you be able to leave most of your programs open all of the time (thus alleviating the slow load time for something like Firefox)?

I've read of a few problems people had with SD cards becoming read-only when waking the Zaurus from sleep. How often does this sort of thing happen?

Thanks!

[bluedevils]

The 860 and 3000 both use 64MB for memory.  The 128MB on the 860 is used for user storage.  The 3000 will use 4GB for user storage.

[bluedevils]

The 128MB on the 860 should also be quicker than the 4GB HDD of the 3000, but obviously able to store alot more.  The supposed power saving of the newer CPU might offset some of the HDD higher power requirements.

[iamasmith]

Actually the 860's 128Mb of Flash is usually split into a read only root partition and a user partition. Traditional Sharp ROM is about 50-50 split.

Currently Cacko 1.21b gives you 96Mb of actual user storage on the 860 whilst something like PDAXROM gives you the whole thing but I think you will find the runtime libraries larger so you end up with slightly less user space than something like Cacko. But the choice here is what you want it for not the amount of space that PDAXROM gives you.

FYI: The SL-C3000 has only 16Mb of flash space, reliying on the HDD instead of the user flash partition.

Both units have 64Mb SDRAM so at present the question is do you want a 4Gb HDD all the time.??

If large SD cards are good for you then possibly the 860 is a good choice.

- Andy

[nathanwms]

I would look at it this way, can I add 4GB of storage to an 860 for less than the price of the 3000?  If not, then I'd go with the 3000.  Also, if you are one that needs or could benefit from having access to large amounts of storage while a wifi card is installed, I'd go with the 3000.

[rikiya]

except the insides and all that....

Maybe it depends if you like pearl white (barbie...) with shiny silver thing or normal silver altogether???

lol  

[kopsis]

Since the SD cards rotate which areas they write to, and you get 100k writes for the life of a SD card, if I were able to keep only 100mb free, it would take 100,000,000 MB (1TB) of data being written to start destroying sectors on the card, right? If so, this 'limit' isn't really a concern.

Not entirely true. You can't write a single byte to an SD card. The writes are done on a sector by sector basis. Using your example of 100MB free and assuming 512 byte sectors (typical), that works out to about  2,000,000,000 write operations.

How that translates into number of bytes written depends on how spread out the writes are. If you were to write the same location (let's say an access time in a directory sector) over and over, you could be looking at as little as 2GB of actual data written. If the writes are to sequential locations (like you get when saving a big file) that number goes up to around 1000GB of actual data written.

Reality lies somewhere between the two numbers. Exactly where depends on how you use the storage. Mounting -sync or without -noatime or using a swap file will push you towards the low end numbers. Using it as a simple filesystem for saving large files will push it towards the high end numbers.

In either case, your assertion that the "limit" isn't a big concern is true. And if you want to be really safe, buy an SD card with a lifetime warranty and routinely back up your data and you'll have no worries.

[tumnus]

The 128MB on the 860 should also be quicker than the 4GB HDD of the 3000, but obviously able to store alot more.  The supposed power saving of the newer CPU might offset some of the HDD higher power requirements.

I'm not sure if this is exactly true. The flash memory used in the Zaurus is quite slow. I think you'll find that both constant read and write speeds are better with the 4GB HD. The only time where the flash memory might be quicker is where you are writing lots of little files with large periods of inactivity in between because of spin up delays with the HD if it has spun down.

Flash memory also requires a lot more juice to write to than RAM. That combined with the fact that the JFFS2 filesystem used on flash memory uses compression (read: uses more CPU power) may mean the power consumption of the HD may be about the same.

[ScottYelich]

I would look at it this way, can I add 4GB of storage to an 860 for less than the price of the 3000?  If not, then I'd go with the 3000.  Also, if you are one that needs or could benefit from having access to large amounts of storage while a wifi card is installed, I'd go with the 3000.

er, weren't people adding 4GB for < $200 ?

:->

Scott

[bluedevils]

I'm not sure if this is exactly true. The flash memory used in the Zaurus is quite slow. I think you'll find that both constant read and write speeds are better with the 4GB HD. The only time where the flash memory might be quicker is where you are writing lots of little files with large periods of inactivity in between because of spin up delays with the HD if it has spun down.

Flash memory also requires a lot more juice to write to than RAM. That combined with the fact that the JFFS2 filesystem used on flash memory uses compression (read: uses more CPU power) may mean the power consumption of the HD may be about the same.

Thanks Tumnus,

That's good information to know.

[nathanwms]

I would look at it this way, can I add 4GB of storage to an 860 for less than the price of the 3000?  If not, then I'd go with the 3000.  Also, if you are one that needs or could benefit from having access to large amounts of storage while a wifi card is installed, I'd go with the 3000.

er, weren't people adding 4GB for < $200 ?

:->

Scott

Yes, I was one of them who bought a 4GB Creative Muvo2 MP3 for $200 + tax.  However, if I were trying to decide what to buy now, I would buy an SL-3000 based on the current prices displayed on the Conics website:

3000   $749
860     $649

Even if you could get a 4GB CF for $100, the 3000 would be better because it is internal and the upgraded processor.  When or if the price of the 860 drops significantly, then the 860 would be a better deal, in my opinion.

[mussi]

What I'm still pondering is whether Sharp will produce a HD-less 3000 which can still fit into a pocket, with the form factor of a 860, with more flash ram.

[Omicron]

Personally, I look at the internal HD as a major minus.  

While it does save the CF slot....a second CF slot would have made it cheaper and user replaceable when the  hard drive fails.

The enitre Z is pretty much solid state (not an engineer, so I use that term loosely), and also an INTERNAL HD not puts a very finite lifetime on the unit.  If my 4GB drive fails: I yank it, get another , restore and I am back in business.  If I owned a 3000....well let's just remember this thing is warranteed from japan...'nough said.


Non-user servicable moving parts are always a bad idea for the life expentency of electronics.

I imagine we all own PCs.....How many Hard drives have you replaced due to crashes/failures.? .....Now how many motherboards? (besides for obsolesence reasons).

The thing is the MD has a specific G-forcce rating that while writing is not all that tremendous.  Much better than a notebook drive, but worse than flash (I would imagine).

Now two CF and two SD (both with SDIO) would have been a great improvement....and at a lower cost.

Sharp has never listened to thier (non japanese) users...I don't recall a siingle post about the need for a built in hard drive....now I heard of built in GPS, WIFI, BT, GPRS, USB HOST, etc...  but never hard drive.  

What gets me is that it took them a YEAR to make the SL-3000??? What did they do after the first day wiring the MD in......I guess that is when they decided a new processor was in order giving us another 25 Mhz....WooHoo

Need more room, pull some flash out.  Then I guess they spent 9 months on the new keyboard (which admitedly looks nice).

I must admit it ain't bad for the price diff from the C860.  But  I could not see a single 860 owner REALLY needing this (beyond the latest gadget fever thing we all probably share  ).


my 2 cents.

 

[ev1l]

Sharp has never listened to thier (non japanese) users...I don't recall a siingle post about the need for a built in hard drive....now I heard of built in GPS, WIFI, BT, GPRS, USB HOST, etc...  but never hard drive.

The 25mhz difference is not the only thing. The new proc has higher IPC, and added functionality (unused on the 3000  )
I agree that a second CF slot (even if it came with a 4GB mdrive) would have been much better. SDIO that works and is supported would be nice too.
The lacking aspects of the Z are in communications: most mobile network cards are hard to use, and telephony is not possible yet.
If I was buying a new one, I'd definitely get the 3000, but you won't find many people upgrading, I think.

[nexxusone]

I went against most of your recommendations, and bought the C860 anyway =)
I was able to get a pretty good deal from http://www.lolzer.com/ and he's selling them even cheaper now ($538.27 shipped). Part of the deal is that if you ever need warranty work done, he will facilitate the process (this is the big downside to buying from pricejapan as I understood it).

Anyway, I've installed almost every app I want, and there's still plenty of memory free. So I'm going to go start a new thread about IMAP mail clients. If I could cache my IMAP folders to my zaurus, that'd be the perfect excuse to buy a 2gb SD card ;-)

Thanks again for all of your help everyone!