- Sharp Zaurus: should I buy 5500, or 5600?
- Posted by Joe Long on February 14th, 2004
I'm thinking of buying a Zaurus to get my feet wet in Linux. The
SL-5500 is available new for $225, and the SL-5600 for $289. Which
should I get?
* I know the processor speed is twice as fast on the 5600, but does
that translate into substantially faster performance?
* With the benefit of hindsight, is the memory structure of the 5600
(32 meg RAM + lots of flash) preferable to the 64 meg RAM of the 5500?
* What difference in operating time on a charge?
* Assuming I flash the 5500 with the latest Sharp ROM, can it do
everything that the 5600 can do (albeit slower)?
* If I want to use Opie or another non-Sharp ROM, does one model
provide more flexibility on ROM choice than the other?
* I would want to use a Wi-Fi card. Any difference between the two
models in this regard?
Any other pluses and minuses of either model would be welcome
information.
Joe
- Posted by Bjørn Tore Sund on February 14th, 2004
On 14 Feb 2004 06:41:06 -0800, Joe Long wrote:
No. The 5600 cpu has a bug which means it doesn't actually run
much faster. Not that you'd notice, unless you do strange stuff
with it - there's very little cpu requirement on most stuff you'd
run on a PDA.
The 5500 has 32MB Ram and 32MB flash. The 5600 is simply more
of the same in this respect.
The 5600 has a lot more battery life.
In my experience, yes.
No idea.
No. Not if you flash up the 5500.
My experience is limited. I have a 5500, my boss has a 5600 which
I've spent some time helping him with. Both gadgets are excellent
for the same types of use, less so for others - in particular on
the PIM software. I'd say the memory and battery time on the 5600
makes it worth the extra 64 dollars - if you really want a good
item the new 6000 should be coming out real soon now - but not at
$289, I fear.
Bjørn
--
Bjørn Tore Sund "When in fear, and when in doubt;
bjornts@ii.uib.no Run in circles, scream and shout!"
Interaction! - Anonymous
http://www.interaction.worldcon.org.uk/
- Posted by Paul Rubin on February 15th, 2004
joelong@tds.net (Joe Long) writes:
If the price difference is that small, get the 5600. Wow, I thought
the 5600 cost somewhat more.
No not really.
Um. Keeping user data (phone numbers) in ram is bad, because sooner
or later the battery will go flat and the data will be lost. Also,
64mb of ram needs more battery power than 32mb. On the other hand,
32mb of user flash isn't all that much, so you may be happier with
64mb of ram plus an SD flash card.
Substantial, since the 5600 has a bigger battery. This is a
significant advantage of the 5600.
I think the 5600 has a built in microphone.
- Posted by Colin Pinkney on February 16th, 2004
"Paul Rubin" <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> wrote in message
news:7xisi9nki4.fsf@ruckus.brouhaha.com...
It does, plus a real speaker (not just a buzzer like on the 5500) so you can
play mp3, movie and game audio through it and it sounds quite nice.
I have a 5500 and 5600 and I would also say that the 5600's screen is about
25% brighter than the 5500. With the extra large battery I find you can keep
it at 100% brightness too and it will last all day with heavy usage.
The internal storage of the 5600 on flash memory is also compressed so you
can actually fit about 64MB of stuff in the 32MB of flash, depending on what
you are storing of course.
Regards,
Colin
- Posted by Colin Pinkney on February 16th, 2004
"Bjørn Tore Sund" <bjornts@ii.uib.no> wrote in message
news:slrnc2sn0j.33j.bjornts@dyret.mi.uib.no...
Actually there have been several 5600's coming from HSN and Amazon that have
the fixed PXA255 CPU. The problem is you cannot guarentee which one you will
get. With the 5600s with the buggy PXA250 you can restore it to almost full
speed though, so it doesn't matter. Look here:
http://www.zaurususergroup.com/modul...ownload&sid=53
For the most part I found the 5500 fairly responsive anyway. Where you may
notice improvments is with graphic intensive games and videos.
Er, no. The 5500 has 16MB of flash ROM, which is all taken up by the read
only ROM. With the latest ROM 16MB was not enough so they had to give you
several apps, like the JVM, separately as installable packages. The 5500
then has 64MB of RAM, which loses all data if your battery goes and this is
where internal storage is located. By default the 64MB of RAM is split half
and half as file storage and normal operating RAM, but this can be changed
by flashing other ROMs with different configurations if you run lots of
memory hungry devices.
The 5600 has 64MB of flash ROM, half of which is taken up by the ROM (which
is read only by default but can be turned read/write if you need to tweak
anything without a reboot). The other half is used as safe file storage, so
even if the larger battery is used up you do not lose all your installed
programs or data. The 32MB of RAM in the 5600 is used as normal operating
RAM and a bit is also used for /tmp.
It works out as twice as much in reality I find
Not really anymore. And with the larger ROM memory of the 5600 you in theory
could have more choices or at least ROMs with more stuff in by default.
Regards,
Colin
- Posted by Mike on February 16th, 2004
Colin Pinkney wrote:
What else is the 5600 using RAM for?
By default, as reported by SysInfo, around 13-14 MB is in use while
"idling" in Qtopia. By turning off fastload in all of the standard
apps, I was able to drop it to about 12 MB, and get Opera to run for at
least an hour instead of 5-10 minutes before running out of memory.
Mike
