My Zaurus SL-5500 Review

[bhursey]

Well one thing I did this semester was device analysis in Human Computer Interaction. This is a device analysis I wrote for the SL-5500 I decided before I publish it out on my site yall should read it.

Tell me what you think. If my conclusions are wrong tell me why. I tried to be as unbiased as I could. I still can add to or brush up the paper. Before I publish it out side of school.

http://www.thebattlefields.com/images/sofa/zaurus_review.pdf

[benplaut]

bah... forget that!

pdaXrom on C1000 rocks :D

Abiword, Firefox, XFCE, and all the other goodiesrun just fine :D

[bhursey]

Well lets see i dont have 400+$ to spend on a pda, and I dont need a laptop replacement.. So the SL-5500 was perficet for me. I got it for 120$ pluse 30$ for the wierless card. I tried pdaXrom but it was not mature enough on the 5500 for it to be use full.

[erikpiper]

Blech. 320/240? I have a 860. VGA rox!

All I wish I had is USB host :(


EDIT- PdaX is the best!

[dravine]

Aside from a lot of gramatical errors, I have to disagree with you on a few points. Namely the use of openzuarus as your basis of review. The current version is not a stable release, many aspects of it are still in development so some quirks are to be expected. Sharp has discontinued new releases, however there is a fairly recent rom V3 available on http://www.myzaurus.com/downloads3.asp. It's much more end user oriented than openzaurus is, and would be more in line with what you were expected from an end user standpoint.

It seemed to me that most of your complaints were with the default PIM applications, which I won't dispute, most of them have issues, however there are a ton of replacements available for them if you know where to look. http://killefiz.de/zaurus/ is probably the best source I can think of. In the PIM section they have 107 applications. There's 222 apps listed in games.

Personally, I've been very happy with my sl-5500 for the past year and a half that I've owned it. My only complaint is the battery life, which as you noted can be resolved with the higher capacity battery.

[jsgotangco]

I used to have a Zaurus before and was pretty active in the early months of OZ. The time the clamshell models came, Sharp USA dropped support and it really pissed me off. I still have my Zaurus but I don't use it that much anymore :-k