[Gllug] Sharp Zaurus

Mike Brodbelt mike at coruscant.demon.co.uk
Mon Mar 31 19:14:32 UTC 2003


On Mon, 2003-03-31 at 12:03, Richard Cohen wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, Andy McGarty wrote:
> 
> > > Hmmm, I was looking at these things. AFIR the 5600 uses an intel processor
> > instead
> > > of ARM. Does anyone have comments comparing these 2 - battery life would
> > seem to
> > > be an important criterion.
> >
> > The 5600 battery is meant to be bigger, but I don't know if the new
> > processor sucks more juice.
> >
> > I'd say the battery life of the 5500 is the only thing I hate about it.  My
> > palm would last for weeks, but the Zaurus gives up the game after what seems
> > like an hour or so!
> 
> Assuming you're talking about an older model Palm, try running it at 200MHz
> with an actively-lit, significantly larger screen and a chunk more
> newer-generation RAM, and see how the battery lasts :-)

Hardly fair. But the, the latest Palm, the Tungsten T, is a 144Mhz ARM
based PDA with an actively lit 320x320 screen and bluetooth. The quoted
battery life is 1 week, same as the m515. My m505 lasts more like 3
weeks, and I think it was quoted as a week also.

Battery life is one of the big things I like about Palm. It's hugely
important to make a PDA actually useful, and not just a really cute toy,
and it's an area where Palm have consistently outperformed everyone else
by a mile. That they've manged to go to an ARM cpu with backlit screen
without sacrificing this says a lot. The Zaurus/iPAQ machines, while
cute, are more like mini laptops than PDA's. Noting against them, but if
I was in that market, I'd probably just bu a really small laptop. The
latest Centrino based one has a 4.5 hour quoted battery life, which is
actually relatively competitive with the Zaurus/iPAQ, if I'm not wrong.

I'd love a Zaurus, just to play with. For a PDA though, I still think
Palm make the best device on the market. There's a lot to be said for
simplicity....

Mike.


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