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GCN Home > 06/17/02 issue

Power User: Who needs a Linux PDA? Sharp users, that’s who

By John McCormick, Special to GCN

The fight for market share among makers of personal digital assistants mostly involves Handspring Inc., Hewlett-Packard Corp. and Palm Inc., but Sharp Electronics Corp. has a good claim to creating the first PDA. It’s Zaurus even predates the Apple Newton.

The current Zaurus SL-5500 doesn’t run Palm OS, the Pocket PC operating system or Microsoft Windows CE. It’s a Linux- and Java-based computer, which makes it easy for developers to create new applications or tweak existing ones.

For $500, you get a 240- by 320-pixel, 56,000-color screen, MP3 and MPEG-1 multimedia support, and a built-in stereo headphone jack. The SL-5500 has the usual one-button access to built-in applications as well as the most customizable handwriting recognition I’ve ever seen in a PDA.

If, like me, you can draw most letters correctly but have trouble entering certain characters without using the pop-up software keyboard, you’ll like the way you can customize those troublesome characters. Slide down the bottom cover to use a full QWERTY keyboard. In addition, a word-guessing utility speeds input after you’ve entered your favorite technical terms.

Not enough input options? The Unicode unified character set for software development is built right into the SL-5500. With two expansion slots and a powerful, 206-MHz Intel StrongArm processor, this PDA serves even network managers who need to add wireless and other capabilities. It incorporates an Opera Web browser in addition to the usual array of PDA software.

The half-pound package with clamshell cover is only a bit larger than my far-less-powerful Handspring Visor.

You’ve probably already guessed the Zaurus SL-5500’s big shortcoming: battery life. It’s not difficult to add more memory, a fast processor or headphone output to a PDA, but how do you keep them powered?

You can’t. The weaker Handspring Visor needs only two new AAA batteries every month, but the Zaurus keeps me constantly looking for a place to recharge, especially if I use the wireless capability or play music.