Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 Handheld

(minor update on 2003-02-03 due to request)

If you're like me and find fault with most commercial apps, then you will never be satisfied unless you have the capability of fixing it yourself. Since the Zaurus runs mostly open-source software and the compilers and development tools are freely available, you have just this capability, never mind if you never use it.

For a PDA, it is adequate, but not exceptional. I was able to "beam" a file to a Sony Clie with no problems, and it syncs with Outlook via the USB cradle at work just fine. Its best PDA app is the calendar where you can enter appointments and meetings and it will beep like an alarm clock when its time to go. My favorite games are Backgammon and Spades (free downloads) - very nice for waiting rooms, etc. Scrabble is cool but seems impossible to beat the computer. It has text editors, word processors, web browser, and spreadsheet programs which can load most MS-Office documents with no problems. There are several new commercial games for the Zaurus which look pretty fun but I haven't tried them yet.

That being said, the Zaurus is much more that a PDA. As a gee-whiz mini Linux computer, it is one of the neatest toys ever built. The device has both a Type-II compact flash slot and a SecureDigital/MMC slot, so it is a good companion to a digital camera. You can shoot pictures on the digital camera, pop out the card and stick it into the Zaurus and show your friends the pictures you took on its nice LCD screen or use the slideshow function. I loaded a 256MB SD card into the SD slot to use as a pseudo hard-drive and use the compact flash card like a floppy disc as my camera uses a CF card. The stealth keyboard is great for dropping to a BASH shell prompt and typing some commands, and is much faster than the handwriting recognition or pickboard. It also has an mp3 player, and a commercial o99 player is also available, so one nifty app for this gizmo is a car audio player. Just get one of those cd-to-cassette adapters and plug it into the sound port on the Zaurus and you have an auto mp3/o99 player! You can store a whole bunch of mp3's on a 256MB SD card...

With a PC running a newer Linux kernel and the USB cradle, there is hotplug TCP/IP support which brings up a PPPoE connection to your Zaurus automagically so you can ftp and telnet to the thing just like it was some mainframe halfway across the world. The advantage of doing this is either easily transfering files via FTP or remotely accessing the Zaurus using your PC's big keyboard to edit configuration scripts and otherwise use it just like any unix shell account. You have to rebuild your PC's Linux kernel from source to play with this so this is not for gnubies. The hotplug Zaurus support is somewhat buggy though (as of kernel 2.4.18) I should probably make a new kernel and update this review. Anyways, I have a cheapie SanDisc SDDR-9 USB CF reader which works great with Linux so I usually just use the CF card like a Zip disk.

With Windows the sync program is quite stable and is as easy to use as with any CE device, works much like MS ActiveSync. I also own an IBM Z50 and a HP 320LX so I have used WinCE and ActiveSync and can say with authority that the Zaurus software is quite comparable in the Windows world. It works flawlessly with MS Outlook and Windows 2000. In the Linux domain it functions quite differently -- it simply appears to a Linux box to be another ethernet connected Linux machine and is accessed via whatever servers you enable; i.e. OpenSSH, Telnet, FTP, etc. You could easily run the Apache webserver, but I question why you would want to do so on this tiny system.

Hardware wise, it is quite snappy and responsive. The screen is very bright, looks great, and actually works under direct sunlight outdoors. As I said, the stealth keyboard is one of the best features and is very handy and easy to get used to. The device body is fabricated from some type of metal and seems to be fairly rugged. It comes with a flip-up plastic screen protector which it would probably be well advised to not remove owing to the overall excellence of the screen. Battery life is somewhat limited -- you get maybe 4-hours of use with the backlight fully on. This normally isn't a big deal as PDA's are usually used for quick notes and entering appointments into your calendar, but if you install Backgammon or Spades (see above) then you might want to invest in a couple extra docking stations and power plugs so you can put it to recharge whether at work or at home.

There is a considerable body of software available which is continually improving in both quantity and quality. If you have a Linux PC, then this is the PDA for you. If you are a relative computer newbie, then I would suggest a PalmOS device as you will probably never appreciate the advanced features that this machine provides.

As for the hidden Linux foundations, it is a somewhat peculiar setup which has been optimized for use on this miniature device. Unfortunately the filesystem tree does not conform to POSIX recommendations, and is somewhat unique with lots of strange symlinks and such. The machine uses the "busybox" program which provides ls/cp/mv etc. It does have a BASH shell as default. Plenty of additional utilities have been ported to the Zaurus, so if you are a big shell user you will want to download and install some of the enhanced open-source utilities. Personally, I find that it is quite usable as-is, and I have just learned the ins-and-outs of the Zaurus Linux system. I only infrequently load a shell on the machine so the default system is good enough for me.

You will want to upgrade your ROM image. This is very easy to do if you have the CF dongle for your PC. Just copy the ROM to the CF card, insert it, and give it the secret Vulcan Nerve Pinch, and it will upgrade its brains.

I will probably never buy a laptop ever again as this cool thing can do the job and it fits in my pocket. Some of the new Japan-only Zaurus's look amazing, but the SL-5500 is still a very solid performer and its price will likely be dropping soon. I bought mine brand new because I am a Linux d00d and I wanted to support Sharp with the bold move. I'm not disappointed, it is a very capable little machine in the right hands, and I just happen to have such hands ;-)

I have been using Debian Linux for about ten years now, and a Debian distro is available for the Zaurus. It is a modified version of the Debian-ARM port which is tailored to run on PDA's and utilize the QVGA framebuffer, touchscreen, and embedded chipset. I have a Netwinder computer which runs Debian-ARM, it is my webserver/router/firewall for my home network and I assure you that Debian-ARM is a very high quality port which is nearly as complete as Debian-X86. Most Debian-ARM binaries will run as-is on the Zaurus, although the Zaurus GUI is QTopia rather than the X-Window System. If you install Debian on your Zaurus then you are replacing QTopia with the X-Window System. As of yet I have not loaded Debian onto my Zaurus, because its default software is still pretty good for what I use it for. QTopia is a fast light GUI which is appropriate for the Zaurus rather than X11 which is a real heavyweight. The Debian Zaurus project intends to address this but I leave the research up to you. That said, it is very obvious when you shell to BASH that the Zaurus distro is very inferior to Debian. Debian provides about the most stable, coherent, and functional variant of any Linux distro that I have ever tested, and the system that comes with the Zaurus is like a toy compared to Debian. At some point I will surely switch over, but probably not for a year or so. It's just is not that big of a deal because it does what it is supposed to do well enough that I see no need to abandon the QTopia environment as of yet.

For what it is, it is the absolute best of class "Linux PDA". Five Stars!