My collection also includes the Sharp Zaurus SL-C3200 pocket computer. It’s Linux pocket computer (it uses the Qtopia for the GUI) and it is quite nice.
This machine is no longer produced (about 2008 the Sharp abandonet its line of Linux handhelds). It is somewhat similar to the NanoNote, but not too much. It’s more sophisticated (it has a touchscreen, a convertible screen – it can be used in a tablet mode, it has a full SD slot and a PCMCIA slot and it also has an infrared interface). The building quality and the used materials are better that these used in the NanoNote (it was of course much more expensive and even today an used Zaurus costs at least two times more than the new Nano). Of course it is somewhat bigger and heavier.
The hardware of the Zaurus is still somewhat better than NanoNote’s: RAM 64 MB, 6 GB harddisk (and 128 MB of a fash memory), 640×480 screen and 416 MHz ARM CPU. It also has an USB host support. It also has a proper suspend mode – it can survive weaak or more on battery (as you probably know, the NanoNote can’t do this – it must be turned off when not used).
The problem of this machine is that it is less or more abandoned today: the software is mostly not developed (I use the Cacko ROM which is from about 2008) so there is a limited support for new pheripherals and services (for example I’m not able to make work my CompactFlash WiFi cart and use of SD card bigger than 1 GB causes system errors).
Also some pieces of software, that were ported to the Zaurus, are no longer available (LaTeX distribution, for example) and it is sometimes quite hard to compile them.
Anyway, it still is a usefull pocket computer. It can be used for light office work (it has onboard – but limited – a word processor and a spreadsheet), as a PDA, e-book readed (the FBReader is of course available) and there are some other applications and games. The gcc is still available so light software development is also possible here.
Of course, I have no plans to replace my NanoNote by this machine.
Jirka's notes 