I finally did it, I purchased a Sharp Zaurus SL - 5500 a couple of weeks ago and have not been able to put it down since it arrived at my doorstep! I had been researching Linux based PDAs for quite some time and discovered that the Sharp Zaurus models were the best on the market and easiest to use straight out of the box (a.k.a no twisted OS removal/re-install hack required). My Zaurus came with the Linux kernel version 2.4.8 for the ARM processor. Sharp labeled this version 2.3.7 of the ROM image. The only problem I had was connecting to my Windows XP laptop using TCP/IP over USB networking. More of a problem with my "instructions??!! we don't need to stinkin' instructions!!!" attitude. Once I removed all the Zaurus PC software and USB drivers a couple of times and actually followed the instructions, all was beautiful in the land of Zaurus.
I purchased my Zaurus on Amazon's Electronics website. I absolutely LOVE the New & Used section Amazon offers. The dealer I used packshipandsell2 had an estimated delivery date of 7 - 14 business days. The acutal turn around time was somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 business days. And even though I purchased a "used" model, it was actually new and came in the original box with all manuals and accessories. If you are going to purchase a Zaurus I highly recommend Amazon and packshipandsell2.
Now I am not your standard business or end user type, I am a Linux Admin and Oracle DBA. AND I have this uncontrollable desire to figure out how stuff works. Hence, my reason for purchasing the Zaurus. Leading up to the time I slapped down my CC# on Amazon I did quite a bit of research to determine just what I and how badly I could screw up my new PDA. I found that the Zaurus is the darling of the embedded linux home/garage tinkerers. If you google on the Zaurus an incredible amount of hits come back, however the one that immediately caught my attention was the Open Zaurus Project. This project aims to replace the original Sharp Embeddix ROM image with a custom Linux kernel. I have read pretty much all the documentation available on their site (and several others) about how to install the OZ/Opie image, but I have not moved to it yet. The main reason is that I still need to purchase a CF card. And here in lies my quandry, I want a WiFi card and a CF card but can realistically only afford to purchase one at a time. So which to purchase first...
First, let's start with why I am considering not going with the CF card first. Initially I wanted to hack up my new Zaurus and drop on OpenZaurus (a.k.a. OZ) from the get go, but I changed my mind. To get a feel for the upgrade / ROM flash process, I upgraded to version 3 of the Sharp ROM image. This was fairly straight forward and I did not have to perform the twisted yoga move of hitting the C and D keys while pressing the "Full Reset" button in the lower right hand area of the battery compartment. From all my research, this manuver seems to be the most challenging part of the whole process. I do still plan on migrating to the OZ version soon though. The main reason I opted for v3 was I wanted to get a feel for my new Z before screwing it up. Secondly, with a dial-up connection at the house (I've got 2 kids...so no comment on the dial-up, it's free) I wouldn't be able to quickly google a problem and/or download a patch or new ipkg. What I have done in the interim is to download all the ipkg's I'm interested in to my laptop and burn them off to CD as a backup measure. One of the nicest aspects of going to v3, is that it does not install all the Hancom Mobile apps and all the games (it does install its version of solitare) that eat up storage space. So this leaves you with approximately 27M of free space to play with.
Now why am I considering going with a WiFi card first? Hmmmmm, maybe because it's PHRIKKEN COOL!!! Using the builtin Intel WiFi card in my Centrino laptop and my trusty Windows version of NetStumbler, I have located four hotspots/access points in range of my house. Unfortunately, all the cool WiFi tools work best on Linux. Do you see where I'm going with this??? So in the end it I am going to purchase either the Netgear MA701 802.11b CF card, the Linksys WCF11, or the Linksys WCF12 cards. I am actually leaning towards the Netgear card after reading the customer reviews and researching compatablity with various WiFi tools.
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