Monday, July 07, 2003

My first impressions of the SL-C760 are good. It's a fast machine with plenty of memory (128MB). I got a 512MB SD card with it so I've got plenty of storage. The PDA functionality is pretty good and the screen is amazingly clear. I've setup both wireless networking (using a Buffalo AirStation CF card) and access via GPRS and my Nokia 3650 phone via infrared connection. All with no problems. It's even powerfull enough to run a full image of Squeak Smalltalk. 11:07:56 PM

The Sharp Zaurus SL-C760 runs a cut down Linux as the operating system. There's is the capability to install a 'Pocket Debian' version of Linux which gives you a fully working Linux, including X Windows, if desired. I followed Paolo Sarpi's instructions to do the installation and it worked fine. The Zaurus now dual boots either Debian or the original Qtopia desktop. 11:02:47 PM

Conics delivered my Sharp Zaurus SL-C760 on the weekend. The interface was entirely in Japanese so I spent a few hours localising it to english. I found an existing thread on a Zaurus Forum outlining how to do this. Basically it consisted of following a series of steps to change remove Japanese language information from some configuration files. The Hancom Word fix it talks about is explained here. I also followed the instructions in step 2 to change the input method to allow english handwriting recognition. Parts of the interface are still in Japanese (like the network setup wizard) but most everything else is now English. Updated 9 Jul 2003: The 'ln' commands in the document for changing the input method to english are the wrong way around. They should be reversed ('ln' takes source followed by destination), something like: ln -s libqpickboard.so.1.0.0 libqpickboard.so.1.0 ln -s libqpickboard.so.1.0.0 libqpickboard.so.1 ln -s libqpickboard.so.1.0.0 libqpickboard.so 10:58:47 PM

Issue 10 of 'Your Symbian', a newsletter for people interested in Symbian based devices, has an interesting section about the Sony Ericsson P800 phone. In the article the author describes having a faulty phone and sending it in for repair under warranty. But it was returned unrepaired and the author was told that because un-certified third party software had been installed on the phone the warranty was void. Considering that 90% of the software for the phone is un-certified, and the big advantage of it is being able to install software, this seems to indicate that you warranty is worth nothing. Something to be aware of when you buy one. Confirm that you may install un-certified software on it. 10:50:25 PM