krow's Journal: Zaurus

The Zaurus is damn cool for those who are interested. The wireless works wonderfully and its apt-get like system for finding new applications is a killer idea. This was always one of my biggest complaints with my Palm. It does IMAP directly so I don't give a shit about it syncing with my copy of evolution. The handwriting recognition is actually pretty nice and even though I find myself using the keyboard quite a bit, the other does work quite well.
I have owned Wizards, Newtons (three different kinds), and a palm pilot.
The Wizard was limiting (it worked), the Newton was great but just too damn heavy (and its hand writing recognition was only so-so), and the palm pilot worked but was very limiting.

Thus far, this is the best of them all :)

reluctance...

[MousePotato]

I really want to buy a palm class device. Been eyeing the Clie as it seems very nice. I have been very relucatant to buy any of these devices because they seem to be perpetually in the loop of Moore's law and I've been burned by that on a few 'handhelds' before. I bought one(actually two, one for the mrs.) of the tandy(casio) Zoomers when it first came out and really enjoyed it until it came time to sync it with my machine. That really sucked, about $100 for their kit and the software sucked. Even worse, the pcmcia slots didn't take devices not specifically made for the unit(imagine my surprise when I laid out the ~200 for a modem back then and it didn't work). Did the newton thing too, nice idea but not really a great device and your handwriting recognition comment is right on the money.

I dunno. Part of me really likes the idea of not having to lug around my Inspiron7500 everywhere but part of me says tough it out until these devices have several hundred megs of memory, a rockin cpu and are built in to a cellphone. I hear they are on the way from friends in Japan but we are so far behind them in the gadget race that some of those advances may just be discountinued before the telcom industry here finishes its milking of the pcs system and upgrades to real world cellular phones like the Japanese and Euro toys.

Re:reluctance...

[krow]

I assume a certain lifespan for handhelds, basically two years. Cell phones are getting to the point where they will truly merge with PDA's but I just don't think that anyone is doing it well enough yet.
This will last me the next three years, I hope.

It *is* cool

[panache]

I've had mine for a couple months now- it's got a few quirks and problems, but for the most part, it's the best handheld I've had to date. I'm not really too happy with the built-in applications (the datebook et. al. are quite basic). They are sufficient for now, however, and there is a lot of work being done in that arena. Not by me, unfortunately, as I'm still being way too damn lazy.

Newton HWR

[pudge]

The Newton OS 2.x still has the best HWR in any consumer device. Before 2.x it was pretty weak, but 2.x was a major leap forward, and as good as or better than anything else out there today, in either print or cursive mode (I used it primarily in print mode, which isn't as good as the cursive mode, and it was nearly perfect, with my below-average handwriting).