Linux-based PDA is pretty Sharp
 
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Your joy or disappointment with Sharp's Linux-based PDA will depend on whether you've ever used a PDA before.
If you are brand-new to the world of PDAs, you'll find the Zaurus SL-550 a great combination of personal productivity and fine multimedia entertainment, integrated into a sleek package. If you are graduating from a Palm or Pocket PC, you might find nothing earth-shattering with the new device.
Either way, the PDA has some first-generation kinks that need to be worked out, so it's tough to say that Sharp hit a home run with this product. Let's settle for a ground-rule double.
On the hardware side, the Zaurus is a gorgeous device - it features a pretty bright screen that can display more than 65,000 colors. The Zaurus has 64M bytes of internal memory, a 206-MHz Intel StrongARM processor, expansion slots for Compact Flash and Secure Digital cards, and an integrated keyboard that appears when you slide out the bottom part of the PDA. Peripherals that can be attached to the Zaurus include an 802.11b card for wireless LAN connectivity, a Compact Flash-based digital camera and other cards such as extra memory and Ethernet connectivity. Navigation buttons on the front of the device are easy to understand with icons for home page, e-mail, contacts and calendar, as well as a four-direction button for scrolling.
It's on the software side where some of the kinks arrive, especially with synchronization. The synchronization button on the charging cradle only works after you've placed it in the cradle and have run the synchronization software from the desktop. After that, the sync button should work, but a few times we had to hold the button down longer than with a Palm or Pocket PC. Also, we discovered a bug when the synchronization software didn't recognize the change to daylight-saving time.
We also saw some odd behavior in the calendar application, and when we installed the drivers there were a few crashes. But we feel Sharp will address these problems in future software updates.
The other software applications are pretty good - we especially enjoyed the Media Player, which plays MPEG-1 video clips and MP3 audio files. The device comes bundled with the Hancom Office Suite, which includes applications for viewing and editing Word and Excel files, and for viewing PowerPoint files. Other applications included an Opera Web browser (which we didn't test because we had no Internet connections) and an image viewer. We also enjoyed a better variety of bundled games on the Zaurus than on other PDAs, although we think the computer cheats at the Scrabble-like game.
Navigating through the programs is not too difficult, similar to a Pocket PC. Multiple applications can be opened at the same time, or you can close them before starting another one. A button on the lower left part of the screen is similar to the Windows "Start" menu system.
The rechargeable lithium-ion battery gave us 1 hour and 42 minutes of battery life with constant usage (we kept repeating the same five songs on the Media Player and disabled all the power management features). However, with power management on, the battery should last much longer.
At the time of testing, there were 52 software products available through www.myzaurus.com, which has a partnership with the Web site Handango. That number pales in comparison with software available for Palm and Pocket PC devices, but you would expect that with a new device. Because the device runs on open-source Linux and also can run Java applications, it shouldn't take too long before developers make applications for the Zaurus.
If Sharp can address some of the software bugs on the synchronization side, the Zaurus is a fine first entrant into the PDA market.
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