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AnchorDesk

Patrick Houston
The handheld that will make you like Linux

Patrick Houston
Editorial Director, AnchorDesk
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
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As much as I've followed the open-source software movement over the years, I'd never tried Linux. I'm a business user, not a geek, and groping through the labyrinths of a foreign operating system just isn't my idea of fun.

But last week I finally dipped my toes into open source by trying out a Sharp Zaurus SL-5600, a handheld that made its U.S. debut in April. To any of you who (like me) loathed the thought of trying Linux, I've got to say: Come on in, the water's just fine. In fact, it's downright refreshing.

AT $500 OR SO, the SL-5600 delivers a lot of bang for the buck, especially if you use your handheld more for work than for play. Sharp, a consumer electronics maker, has designed the Zaurus with the corporate customer in mind. It's Wi-Fi ready. By July, Sharp officials tell me, it'll have a VPN client, as well as drivers that will allow it to hook up to high-speed, 3G mobile voice/data networks from the likes of Sprint and Verizon.

That's not to say the Zaurus doesn't have some notable shortcomings. At 7.8 ounces it's heavy for a PDA. The reflective color display could be brighter. Though it runs Linux and Java, it can't match the list of thousands of personal applications you'll find for a Palm or Pocket PC device. And one final peeve: When you turn it on, you have to wait for five seconds or so before the Zaurus responds.

But, after using the Zaurus, I found that the pluses outweigh these negatives--especially for business users.

GOING INTO MY TRIAL, I had some deep reservations. I figured the Zaurus was so far from the mainstream that it just couldn't be worth the bother. It has a fraction of Palm's 25 million users. It doesn't have the connective DNA that Pocket PCs share with Windows's huge installed base. I anticipated an experience akin to a traveling abroad, figuring I'd face a host of foreign--and frustrating--customs.

But instead of winding up somewhere in China, the Zaurus was like a stroll through San Francisco's Chinatown--different, but not that different.

For example, while the Zaurus didn't synchronize with my Microsoft Outlook as smoothly as a Pocket PC, I was able to export my contacts, calendar, e-mail, tasks, and notes to it without suffering acid indigestion. The Zaurus comes with all the main applications you typically need, including two utilities (Hancom Word and Hancom Sheet) that allowed me to work with my Microsoft Word and Excel files.

Teamed with the Intel PXA250 400MHz processor and 96MB of memory (64MB flash, 32MB SDRAM), the media player was more than adequate for handling MP3 audio files and MPEG video files. The closest thing I had to a foreign experience came from working with the Opera Web browser.

IN A FEW notable ways, the Zaurus SL-5600 betters its main rivals. It has protected  flash memory, which means data files and programs don't die when your battery does. (I consistently suffer this setback with Pocket PCs.) The Zaurus provides a nicely hidden QWERTY keyboard. And thumbing out an e-mail doesn't disable the touch screen; you can type and still use the stylus.

The Zaurus also accommodates two types of expansion memory: It has one slot for a CompactFlash card and one for an SD memory card.

As I said, I'm not a geek. But I have associates who are. One is a programmer, and he loves his Zaurus. He claims he uses it less like a handheld and more like a little Linux desktop. He can program it. He can program with it. And therein lies the reason that the Zaurus also deserves serious consideration from business users.

Because the Zaurus uses Linux, companies can readily adapt their enterprise-level apps to work, if not on  it, then with  it. While nobody would actually want to do so in real life, Sharp has run heavy-duty applications such as Apache Web server and the mySQL database on the little Zaurus, just to prove it can be done.

That's also why the Zaurus has made Sharp Electronics one half of a very odd couple. The other half is none other than IBM, which has embraced the Zaurus as a key mobile component for its sweeping Linux-based enterprise middleware solutions.

Before my test drive, I didn't take the Zaurus seriously. Now I do. Because of its power, flexibility, and potential business uses, you should, too. Linux shouldn't be a stopper, but a starter, in your PDA deliberations.

What do you think? Would you ever try a Linux-based PDA? Have you tried one already? What did you think? TalkBack to me! 

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