Review on Sharp SL 5500 Zaurus PDA by Tony Wilson

I've been trying to use the Zaurus for about a week. The product was contradictory. The good ones: 1) This is without a doubt the ideal programmer's PDA. 2) You can program, compile and run on Zaurus (hard to believe but true). 3) There is some good free software including Neocalc which is a great calculator. 4) Revain.com had an excellent deal. 5) Contrary to some reviews I've seen, the screen looks very nice. Not so good: 1) PC sync software (Win2K in this case) stinks. It crashes, freezes, intermittently refuses to connect, and requires special knowledge that isn't in the manual. to make it work. I've tried both Intellisync and Qtopia Desktop. Intellisync seems hopeless, but I was able to get Qtopia Desktop working as long as I didn't have too many files on my CF (too many files causes a nasty crash on the PC side). Too bad I have to sync with Outlook.2) I was able to fry a 128MB SD flash and leave it on during a full Zaurus reboot. It shouldn't have happened, but it happened. 3) Hancom Suite (MS compatible word processor, spreadsheet and presentation viewer) is weak but usable. 4) Battery life is short (especially with WiFi adapter). 5) The MP3 software didn't play any of my variable bitrate files. I do not think so, that there is something terribly unusual about them (apart from being encoded with LAME). 6) MP1 video is very slow and choppy at Video CD bit rates (e.g. 1 fps). I've struggled to find a bitrate that works well for me when trying to take full advantage of screen resolution. Perhaps the DiVX decoder under development will solve this problem. Despite these serious issues, I still think it's a great tool for a programmer and give it 4 stars. For those who aren't a programmer I would give 1 star. when I try to take full advantage of the screen resolution. Perhaps the DiVX decoder under development will solve this problem. Despite these serious issues, I still think it's a great tool for a programmer and give it 4 stars. For those who aren't a programmer I would give 1 star. when I try to take full advantage of the screen resolution. Perhaps the DiVX decoder under development will solve this problem. Despite these serious issues, I still think it's a great tool for a programmer and give it 4 stars. For those who aren't a programmer I would give 1 star. Despite these serious issues, I still think it's a great tool for a programmer and give it 4 stars. For those who aren't a programmer I would give 1 star. Despite these serious issues, I still think it's a great tool for a programmer and give it 4 stars. For those who aren't a programmer I would give 1 star.