I just read this on www.linuxdevices.com & it is an excellent item (in fact they plan to use it in an editorial.

The more I look at the Zaurus, the more I like it. If I can locate a working CF-Bluetooth card I will ditch my iPAQ 3780 in favour of the Zaurus. Every comment I read about the slidown keyboard says how quickly one gets used to it - this is proving true for me too. I like it but as one reviewer pointed out, it is difficult to access it when the PDA is in its cradle, but I just revert to the char entry but unlike the YOPY (which allows you to flick the char entry sub-window to top or bottom of screen) Zaurus doesn't & sometimes it is just a pain in the bum to enter data in a field under the entry window while Zaurus is in the cradle, in fact the cursor flips to the last char position in the hidden entry field so any mistakes means data entry from the start but not being able to see what you are entering.
Despite that one bugaboo - the Zaurus is really nice - zactly same size as iPAQ3780 (acceptable).

Cheers Doug


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I have a Sharp Zaurus, and I can already see the advantages. Both Palm OS and Windows CE platforms started with a small core of programs. This did not prevent them from success in the marketplace. If the user base develops and the platform is accessible to developers, so will the programs.
I am a software developer: mainframes to handhelds, including MVS, Unix, Linux, DOS/Windows and Palm OS. Although a well engineered Linux PDA appeals on a purely technical and personal reasosn, that is not sufficient for its success and it is not the main market to which Sharp appeals. Instead, Sharp appeared to very shrewdly enlist Sun's assistance and garner a product highlight at the recent Java One conference. Sharp knows that its success with the SL-5500 depends on a commitment by developers to develop the applications that Zaurus users want. Sharp chose platform components, such as Java, Linux and C/C++ that have development based in GNU and open source tools. This creates maximum accessiblility and reliability for application development. Sharp also chose a fast processor, an excellent display, high capacity memory and operating system components to make use of these components in the user interface.

A close examination of the applications on the SL-5500 and the Sharp marketing literature show that Sharp's main target is the productivity user. Absent are applications that exclusively cater to programmers, developers and linux experts. The retail product (the SL-5500) has no installed access to the underlying operating system programs and file structure.

Although Sharp includes terminal and file manager programs, they are on the CD containing the PC synchronization software and not installed. The documentation references them only in an appendix and labels them for expert users only. Sharp expects that its main user base will not be programmers and linux experts, but ordinary productivity users. The two programs are the minimum needed to start development on the retail product.

The advantages Sharp exploits with this strategy are a reliable operating system, reliable, accessible sophisticated application development tools and positive exposure to an application development base. There are no special advantages about the core applications that a competing platform couldn't provide. What is special is the accessibility of development technology and the ease with which reliable, well engineered applications with sophisticated user interfaces may be developed. If Sharp's expectations are correct, this will lead to substantial well built applications driven by user demand that are less expensive and have shorter time-to-market than competing platform technologies.