For those of you that do not know the history of the creation of Akihabara News, let me tell you some things about my past. For professional reasons, I have been using a lot of PSION (Potter System Instrument Or Nothing) PDA's from the start (a little hello to Thérèse Rieul aka MISS PSION in France). When the first Pocket PC PDA's emerged on the market, I got out of the keyboard PDA's and got into the virtual keyboard ones, and I spent quite a lot of time on sites like Gerlard A (Epoc Boulevard), Ludipocket, ... . Using PDA's all the time, living in Asia and make you drool with my news snippets on the forums drove me to the idea of creating Akihabara News (thanks again to Sorobangeeks and Torgamm, who was the first person to motivate me to develop Akiba). So what has all this to do with a review of the new ultra sexy Zaurus 3000? It's the keyboard! Since my Psion 3A/C/MX, Siena, 5/MX, Revo, ... I have been somewhat mourning the loss of the keyboard on a PDA of this size. The first Zaurus 7XX, already presented on this site in the past, had keyboards, but they were NEVER as good as the PSION's. But that era is over, as I have found my new and beloved PSION in the form and shape of this new Sharp SL-C3000!!!
Sharp SL-C3000 on video
First of all, let's have a look at the technical specifications of this beast.
The first thing that strikes on this PDA are the 4Gb of storage, and this is the first PDA with an integrated 4Gb Hitachi MicroDrive (Image courtesy of Impress).
But let's not get ahead of things, let's see what we can find in the box of the Zaurus 3000.
So, as you can see, it's rather small and only the bare necessities are present. Not displayed on the pictures but in the box is a (Japanese) CD and (Japanese) manuals. These Zaurus machines are meant for the Japanese market only, so you won't get a 100-240 power adapter, which is a shame, because the chances of using a PDA outside of this countries' boundaries are quite high. You'll have to foresee a travel charger like the
Sharp Zaurus SL-C3000/7XX/860 World Battery charger (100~240V).
There she is, "MY PRECIOUS", and as you can see, the design has been reviewed by Sharp compared to the 7XX and 860 series. The 3000 is prettier and has a very classy look to it.
Let's have a small tour of the device and look at the device from all angles.
A good reference point to have an idea about the dimensions of the Zaurus SL-C3000 is my old iPAQ 2210.
As you noticed, the dimensions of the Zaurus are similar to those of the iPAQ 2210, but the Zaurus is about twice as thick as the iPAQ. It is a lot thicker indeed, but the 1700mA of the battery should give it a battery life of 8 hours as opposed to the 900mA and 4 hours of the iPAQ. There's also the keyboard and even a SD and CF slot and let's not forget the 4Gb Microdrive. If you like to get your hands dirty, you can always replace this Microdrive by a CF or another Microdrive.
Now, let's look at the keyboard. To my (very) big surprise, while using the Zaurus for the very first time at CEATEC and WPC Expo in Tokyo, the keyboard had a very nice feel to it. You have to keep in mind though that this keyboard is not designed to type a full Word-document with your 10 fingers on the keyboard, but we can safely say that using it on the train or standing upright, typing an email or a url or even a note with your thumbs only was perfectly feasible, just like on the Psion 3/A/C/MX-series.
The Zaurus SL-C300, just like any other PDA from Japan, is in Japanese, but the model we have tested is in English. All this thanks to the GeekStuff4U-crew, that borrowed us this unit for this review.
One of the MAJOR advantages of the Zaurus is that (like any PDA on PocketPC 2003SE) you can pivot the screen from landscape to portrait mode, with or without the screen. As you can see on one of the previous pictures, you can use the Zaurus in 2 ways. Another advantage of this Zaurus is that it has a native VGA resolution (640x480). Because of this, surfing on the web becomes a very agreeable experience. We also stress that this VGA mode is a real VGA mode and not some bastard VGA mode like on the PocketPC 2003SE. Finally, you also need to know that the Zaurus comes with a Liquid Crystal Silicon screen that is an absolute marvel!
Let's move on to the first point we discussed, the 4Gb MicroDrive. At first, you do not have 4Gb but rather 2.7Gb of free space as the memory of this HDD is shared between different applications like the system files, the English-Japanese dictionary (that comes preinstalled on this unit), ... . Personally, I would ditch this dictionary immediately and have the space available to store some nice DivX videos
.
Another very important point on this model is that you have a Direct HD function (like on all other Sharp portable PC's). You can hook up your SL-C3000 to your PC with the supplied USB cable and you get a new external HDD on your computer that is nothing less than your Zaurus. Ok, the connection is not USB 2, so copying a 698Mb DivX movie onto the Z's MicroDrive took 15 minutes, but it's still very nice anyway (and probably not something you would do every day anyway).
To finalize:
PDA Portrait Mode
Once your Zaurus is set in portrait mode (keyboard hidden and useable as a PocketPC), you'll have a scrolling wheel at your disposal on the left that can be used to navigate in the menu structure, and you also have two action buttons, which are very practical and they should be present on ANY PDA!!! Small hiccup for some users might be the thickness of the device in portait mode.
The keyboard pad
This little pad is situated on the bottom right corner of the keyboard and it has a central OK (Action) buttom that is very well designed and that can be used to replace touching the screen in a lot of cases. This might also represent a big plus for game developers like the
infamous Int13-team.
System Info
For all the fans of Zaurus/Linux, this is a picture of the beast's system.
Thanks again to GeekStuff4U.com for the device during the testing period.
0 Comments
