Zaurus 5600

Hey all,

I am looking for a new PDA. My old Handspring Visor Edge is finally dieing.

Well I had been looking at the Sharp Zaurus 5600. I like the idea that it runs linux, but I want to know how reliable it is. I plan to have it to mess around with from an linux stand point, but I still need it to do basic PIM/email. So if anyone out there has one does it work for the simple stuff?


Also if anyone has any other ideas for a PDA let me know...I mainly want to stay away from MS based ones. And I dont see the point of buying a MS one and voiding the warrenty to put *nix on it.

Well thanks for the info

I use a Sony Clié NX80-V. It is a nice PDA, and has been discontinued by Sony. You could pick one up for about $250-$300 if you know where to look around. I bought mine for about $500 used nearly 5/6 months ago. It does have some limitations, such as Sony not releasing APIs to programmers, but over at www.ClieSource.com a member CliePet managed to reverse engineer it to make most audio programs compatible with it. It is a Palm OS 5 device though, and as you may know the Palm OS 6 devices come out later this year. (Sony won't give us free updates, we have to buy the next model preinstalled with OS6...) Probably it's most notable feature is a 1.3MP camera, which isn't too bad for a PDA. (The NZ-90, an older, bigger, yet more expensive PDA has a 2MP camera with flash and a Sony-crippled TV-output ability - and some battery problems in a few of them)

Unfortunately for you, it isn't yet possible to replace Palm OS 5 with *nix. Although I've heard that there is something for Palm OS 3 devices, but it is an ancient and propriatory replacement and not as good as a vanilla-plain Palm OS itself.

BTW, IIRC, the Sharp Zaurus 5600 is old! (Announced in November 2002) I think someone here on AO has one, and hopefully they might reply. Sharp does have newer and better Zaurus PDAs, but they are only avaliable in the Asian market. Check out http://www.dynamism.com/index.shtml if you want to see a Japanese model with an English-Translated OS. They also translate other stuff that may be of interest. Good luck in your Zaurus 5600 search, and be sure to read reviews. I don't remember for sure but there were some issues in the previous 5500 model, and possibly a few in the 5600 model...be sure to search.

-Tim_axe