zaurus

I have been wondering what to do about mobile technology for a while, by that I mean do you buy a telephone that is also a pda and mp3 player? or do you buy a pda that is also a mp3 player and a phone ? I always like to have best of breed products so the key question was do i sacrifice quality by combining all three into one function? For a long time now I have been very tempted to buy a zaurus, but I have put it off rationalising that I should wait for the next model because while the current model at the time didn't have inbuilt bluetooth, wireless and was running a slow cpu. Much to my relief a new zaurus has come out and, lo and behold, it has almost precisely the same specs as the old one except that now it has a pitiful 4gb hd in it! This has really put an end to my considerations about buying a pda for some time, as I am really only interested in PDAs that run linux as that best integrates with my existing infrastructure. I am still in shock though that sharp would bring out a new model, with all its associated costs, with a tiny increase in cpu speed, a pathetic hd, and still no inbuilt wifi or bluetooth. Their official reasoning is that they are focussing on the Japanese market, but this seems rather shortsighted to me, and besides talking to my friends in Japan they say that wifi is important over there anyway!

Now I have to wait for another decent linux based pda (or pda I can make linux run on well, not have to shoe horn it in like a ipaq).