Sharp Zaurus SL-5600 Handheld

Just got the Sharp SL-5600, Linux-based PDA (more like a full blown computer) recently and been playing with it a lot. It's incredible.

Basic functionality-wise, the apps that come with it are well designed, much better than the Palm I traditionally have gone with.

The SL-5600 also plays MP3s although I haven't tried that out yet. It also has a built in voice recorder which works very well.

The web browser is Opera and so far has handled a lot of stuff including logging into secure (SSL protected) sites. Because it's a PDA the screen's a little small, but it'll scale it down for you to a level of your choosing, which is really helpful.

The Zaurus comes with two memory slots, a CF and a Secure Digital slot. I'm using my CF slot for devices only because I already have several SD cards. They mount to the Linux file system just like any other drive.

The thumb keyboard is very useful and if you don't like that there are three other input modes. One is letter recognition, kind of like Graffiti on the Palm but based entirely on real letters and much easier to learn. It has a great training program that shows you how to do it also.

The screen is well lit and protected by a clear plastic cover.

I'm a bit of a Linux geek so last night I telnetted into my Zaurus from my laptop through the wireless network (I've bought a Linksys 802.11b Compact Flash card also), then installed OpenSSH and secure shelled to my firewall PC. Incredible. You can also install an Apache server and thousands of other free (as in freedom) as well as pay-for applications.

Most places sell the Zarus SL-5600 for around $500, but Amazon's got it for $289 at the time I wrote this review. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, by the way.

Everyone here at work has PDA envy. If you saw it you would too.