In my freshman year of highschool (many many moons ago), one of the organizations I was involved with worked in conjunction with Apple to facilitate PDA?s, more specifically Newtons, in the classroom. By in large, the project was a colossal failure, like many public education initiatives. The select few that had Newtons were both teased and envied upon by other students, creating unnecessary rifts and otherwise straining student relationships. It would be like giving 10% of the student body a Gameboy and telling everyone to go about their day.
In the classrooms those with them (myself included) would dink around, play Tetris or send ?I think Jessica is hot? and ?I?d tap that? messages to one another. The teachers weren?t too thrilled because most of the students that used them didn?t actually bother to take notes with them (the primary reason for having the Newton in the first place). By the end of the school year few, if any, took them to school. Besides the distracting games and applications the Newton itself was unpleasant to use:
- It was bulky. If you are familiar with the graphing calculators from TI or HP, it was about twice that total volume.
- It bled batteries. Fortunately for the school Apple had the foresight to place rechargeable batteries in the Newton?s (on some of them at least). Leaving the Newton on for any extended period of time or using the backlit display (that was really cool) was not in your best interest if you disliked down-time.
- Terrible handwriting recognition. This, despite the advances in Apple?s Skunk works R&D facility (the cafeteria) and despite the supposed ?customization? level for each user (each user is prompted with several screens with little X?s you tapped and despite your best efforts somehow the OS generated results similar to those poorly aimed guns at arcades).
By in large the Newton experiment failed. By the end of the next year the school (or Apple or both) cancelled that PDA program ? at around the same time Apple (Steve Jobs) also canceled further production of the product itself.
Since then, I have never actually bothered to purchase a PDA, despite several friends and family members owning them. Last year I worked for a software firm and among other tasks was given the instructions to rigorously test their software on a couple of PalmOS-based PDAs.
Palm has had an interesting history; they came out of nowhere (well, originally the US Robotics Pilot product) and won accolades based upon their slim design, easy-to-use and accurate Graffiti system as well as longer battery life. With the Newton it seems Apple tried to shove all the amenities of a desktop into something the size of a small book, including a sound card (hehe, those were a blast). Several years ago Palm started licensing it?s Operating System (like Apple did for 3 years) and it has since then fallen in disrepair (somewhat)
They hit that wall so many successful start-ups do and are suffering a similar problem that Sun in having a clear definitive vision for future products. Last Christmas in fact, I purchased a Palm m105 for my mom (my older sister actually uses it) and compared its feature set with competing products - afterwards. What enticed me to purchase it: its low price tag and the fact that the Victorian Holiday was the very next day.
Anyways, feature wise most of the competition had color-based screens, more RAM, faster processors and were often even cheaper than Palm?s lineup ? a continuing trend.
Which brings me to the Zaurus, a newer Linux-based PDA a friend of mine is now a semi-expert with - his synopsis is as follows:
In the second year of his reign, King Sharp had dreams; his mind was troubled and he could not sleep. So the king summoned the mathematicians, engineers, source-morphers and astronomers to tell him what to do, they replied: Find the Zaurus.
In the four and twentieth day of the first month, as the King was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel, he lifted up his eyes, and looked, and, behold, a PDA clothed in open source, and yea, upon it was a Secure Digital slot, but one which was free of the taint of proprietary device drivers.
The Zaurus that you saw, which grew, and was strong, whose Wi-Fi connection reached to the sky, and the sight of it to all the earth, brought with it peace and comfort to all who by happenstance touched and used it.
It is you, O end user, that hath grown and become strong; for your freedom is grown, and your Wi-Fi connection reaches to the sky, and your dominion to the end of the earth.
Then King Sharp went to his house, and made the thing known to Bill, and to Ballmer, and to the RIAA, and its companions: that they would desire open source drivers concerning this proprietary format; that Linus and his companions should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.
Linus answered before the king, and said, The secret which King Sharp has demanded can neither hackers, vendors, OEMs, nor even IBM, show to them; but there is a coder in Megog who reveals secrets, and he has made known to the end users what shall be in the latter days.
And the Angels sang: You, O RMS, are king of GNU, to whom the God of MIT has given the root access, the power, and the strength, and the glory.
And wherever the children of RMS dwell, the threads of the system and the daemons of inetd has he given into your hand, and has made you to rule over them all: The Hurd that Stallman has created shall be strong as iron, because iron breaks in pieces and subdues all things; and as iron that crushes all these, shall it break in pieces and crush.
The Zaurus SL 5 series (pdf) marked Sharp's entry into the Linux market, using an Embedix kernel that was derived from a former Caldera/SCO offshoot called Lineo. A developers-only version, the SL-5000 featured a 200 Mhz Strongarm processor and 32 MB of RAM was sold at Java developers conventions by Sun and Sharp, and later the SL-5500, which sported a full 64 MB of RAM. The Zaurus offers expandability using both a CompactFlash and SecureDigital slot. It uses Qtopia, a GUI from Trolltech instead of XWindows, and also supports Jeode, an embedded Java 1.1 machine. Theoretically you can add 2 GB of storage to the Zaurus with a 1.5 GB cf microdrive and a 512 MB SD Card. Of course, if you put a Microdrive in the CF slot you'll get almost no time out of the battery.
Now tell me that doesn?t sound geektastic? The newer models (SL-5600) use Intel?s Xscale processor which is not only faster but consumes less power. Some geeks I know even thought about somehow building a cluster of these chips to use in rack mounted servers (those can get hot inside) ? but the expenses and time associated with developing motherboards and chipsets for such clusters translates into: it ain?t gonna happen anytime soon.
Despite the biblical proportions that the Zaurus is presented in, I?m actually holding out on buying any new PDA until they?ve all merged into one nice and neat fully-featured package with cell phones ? Richard Giles has some good information regarding Wi-Fi, check him out. And check out Jason Ditz?s prophetic tales of Prince Zaurus.
Posted by Tim at April 25, 2003 11:22 PM | TrackBack