To all the hard drive naysayers!! PDA with built in 4gb HD and 7 hour battery life.

[spinedoc]

http://engadget.com/entry/9534321442142743/

Of course it is Linux and not Windows Mobile, and it is probably a tad bigger than a pocket PC, but not much bigger. It has all the goodies built in.

I dont think a Pocket PC with a built in hard drive and decent battery life is as far off or unforseeable as some like to think.

[Deus]

Does look big but I must say mmmmmmmmmmm! I wonder what the price will be? Too much I and I would say just go OQO...assuming the reviews are good! Whay pay mucho for a cmpanion when you can have the whole gabanzo!

[Stephen Beesley]

Form factor wise this is probably just about the perfect PDA for my needs. I have always been very impressed with the Sharp range of Linux PDAs. If only they had proper HWR (Decuma just does not cut the mustard for me I need to be able to write anywhere on the screen) and didn't cost so damn much then I could really see myself going this way.

[Fishie]

They are not that big, around the size of an Ipaq 4700 at most id say.

[szamot]

Ok let me ask you this? Truly people are you really that desperate to be jumping up and down with joy with every left over scrap that falls off the “designers table”? First of all, it is 4 gigs, second it has moving parts, third most likely a power hog, and forth as anything with moving parts not very reliable and not as fast as solid state. Now considering these things do suffer from allergic reaction to concrete, they do slip out and fall you know, this is a reliability nightmare. The same or better can be easily achieved with a simple CF card. I can appreciate the concept, I can appreciate the forward thinking and “innovation” but honestly that’s like saying hey look we have made a car and it has an internal combustion engine. WOW!!! Great thanks!!! But we live on Mars and air is kind of hard to come by, so we use electric, thanks for nothing.

Perhaps if we all cheered less for the mediocre, the unreliable and the pointless, manufacturers would eventually come to realize that only something really good could impress us and that would perhaps force them to be truly creative and inventive.

[spinedoc]

I beg to differ. I dont think this new Sharp PDA is "mediocre, unreliable or pointless". I also dont think it is a "power hog" with 7 hours of battery life. Sure you may drop it and break the hard drive, but you will also break the screen, etc.

This is an example of how a Pocket PC should be made, possibly with the keyboard being removeable. It is about the size of a thick 4705, which is quite acceptable to many people. I would buy it in a second if it had the WM OS on it.

[Kati Compton]

I beg to differ. I dont think this new Sharp PDA is "mediocre, unreliable or pointless". I also dont think it is a "power hog" with 7 hours of battery life. Sure you may drop it and break the hard drive, but you will also break the screen, etc.

This is an example of how a Pocket PC should be made, possibly with the keyboard being removeable. It is about the size of a thick 4705, which is quite acceptable to many people. I would buy it in a second if it had the WM OS on it.

I'm actually a big fan of clamshell, and if this had WM I'd also have probably gotten it instead of the X50v I ordered. But I have to think, that since manufacturers usually specify the *maximum possible* battery life, that the 7 hours is *without* disk accesses, screen off, wireless off, etc...

[surur]

But I have to think, that since manufacturers usually specify the *maximum possible* battery life, that the 7 hours is *without* disk accesses, screen off, wireless off, etc...

I think of hard drives like I think of wifi. Of course it drains the battery faster, which is why you should only use it when you intend to e.g watching a movie, not just to look up a contact.

A hard drive should be an included peripheral, like wifi, not used as main memory or program storage. That way you could go the whole day without ever spinning up the hard drive, but when you are on the bus you can watch a few episodes of 'dead like me'.

Unfortunately I suspect the device uses the HDD as main storage (it only has 16Mb rom), which I think will drain the battery much faster.

I hope when HDD's get integrated into pocketpc's it is integrated better, and does not remove integrated flash rom.

Surur

[Stephen Beesley]

I really do like the specs of this device and if it were available at the right price I would probably jump at it. That said, I also agree that the HD may not be the right solution to the storage question. I would rather see it with somthing like an internal 4gig CF card if not just a whopping big ram chip. Surely the CF option would work out cheaper than the HD as well as the other benefits.

[Kati Compton]

I really do like the specs of this device and if it were available at the right price I would probably jump at it. That said, I also agree that the HD may not be the right solution to the storage question. I would rather see it with somthing like an internal 4gig CF card if not just a whopping big ram chip. Surely the CF option would work out cheaper than the HD as well as the other benefits.
CFs are more expensive than HDs on a per-MB (or GB) basis...

[Stephen Beesley]

I really do like the specs of this device and if it were available at the right price I would probably jump at it. That said, I also agree that the HD may not be the right solution to the storage question. I would rather see it with somthing like an internal 4gig CF card if not just a whopping big ram chip. Surely the CF option would work out cheaper than the HD as well as the other benefits.
CFs are more expensive than HDs on a per-MB (or GB) basis...

I see. For some reason with the glut of reasonably cheap 1gig CF cards on the market at the moment I figured CF would be cheaper, but now I think about it the higher capacity CF cards I have seen are pretty pricy

[uzetaab]

I'm all for putting HDD into PPC. & I've yet to see a convincing argument as to why they shouldn't.

Someone said that 7 hours would be the maximum you can get from one of these not the minimum or average. So? even in a worst case senario, it'd still probably get more life than my brand new mitac 168 which is listed as 4 hours.

As someone else already mentioned if you drop your PPC your likely crack the screen, HDD or not. Besides I sell Ipods &... um... I forget the name of the creative one, but my national retail chain isn't being flooded with 'HDD failure returns' on these products or we wouldn't be selling them. so portable device HHD obviously work in the real world.

As an aside, someone came up with the idea of adding an auto-park feature to HDD on notebooks when it senses that the device has been dropped (something to do with acceleration) from table height & parks the drive before it hits the ground (heheh, testing that would be expensive). Lets hope it works & they put them into future PPC HDD devices.

[jkendrick]

This new Zaurus is basically the same as the SL-C860 which was released last year with the addition of the microdrive. A very nice review of the 860 was done by PDA Buyers Guide which you will find here:

http://www.pdabuyersguide.com/sharp_zaurus_C860.htm

In addition to being a clamshell the screen pivots back so the device can be used as a normal PPC type slate. It comes with far less memory than the Windows Mobile devices because it runs Linux and doesn't need it. The 860 was not released in the US and is only sold by the importers such as Dynamism for about $850 and I suspect this new device will be the same. Price is unknown yet but it will be a far cry from the $2000 of the OQO.

[PetiteFlower]

I think it takes a lot more force to crack a screen then it does to wreck a hard drive. I've dropped my PDA numerous times and never cracked the screen. I like (need) my device to be a little more rugged. Plus flash memory has a longer life expectancy in general then hard drives. Average lifespan for a microdrive around here seems to be about a year, 2 if you're lucky. I've kept my PDA for almost 2 years so far!

[spinedoc]

I think the whole "will the hard drive break" issue is pretty moot. There are hundreds of thousands of ipods and other hard drive based mp3 players out there, which arguably get much more jostling and rough handling than PPC's do, and I have yet to see an article or outcry on broken hard drives. Heck I abuse the crap out of my Microdrive and it has never missed a beat.

[Cybrid]

But I have to think, that since manufacturers usually specify the *maximum possible* battery life, that the 7 hours is *without* disk accesses, screen off, wireless off, etc...

I think of hard drives like I think of wifi. Of course it drains the battery faster, which is why you should only use it when you intend to e.g watching a movie, not just to look up a contact.

A hard drive should be an included peripheral, like wifi, not used as main memory or program storage. That way you could go the whole day without ever spinning up the hard drive, but when you are on the bus you can watch a few episodes of 'dead like me'.

Unfortunately I suspect the device uses the HDD as main storage (it only has 16Mb rom), which I think will drain the battery much faster.

I hope when HDD's get integrated into pocketpc's it is integrated better, and does not remove integrated flash rom.

Surur
(Surur, this is probably oversimplified, If I misunderstood. Sorry. :roll: )

Ummm....16Mb ROM simply means a smaller possibly more efficient OS. It does have 128 MB RAM. I'd like to see anyone fill that with just PIM data. It's the apps, web temp pages, media files that really eat up your RAM.

I think you rely on your Built In Storage too much and are on a single slot device...and as such don't realize that with the SD and CF slots it also carries, You could easily install the apps and save to SD/CF any files.....you could easily manage without the 4Gb.That makes having it....well...gravy.

From my own experiences...My Dell X5 BIS acted crazy right after the warranty expired. Musta been on a timer :evil: . Well anyway, I've managed quite nicely with a 256Mb SD as my "BIS" leaving the CF for other stuff. That 256Mb works quite nicely. And I've got the 70 or so odd apps installed there. The CF is where my GPS, WiFi or media rich microdrive go. With a 4Gb, integrated...I'd load all my media and maps there. this would leave my 256Mb SD only a third full. More apps!! CF card would be permanently allotted to GPS card and WiFi....I forgot if it had integrated WiFi... :?

[Cybrid]

I think the whole "will the hard drive break" issue is pretty moot. There are hundreds of thousands of ipods and other hard drive based mp3 players out there, which arguably get much more jostling and rough handling than PPC's do, and I have yet to see an article or outcry on broken hard drives. Heck I abuse the crap out of my Microdrive and it has never missed a beat.
Well, You might be abusive to your microdrives but I'm on my third one. Go Figure. :devilboy:
I just hope that should it die, it is an easily replaceable part. I mean if it was on a internal CF slot, where you could yank it out and put in a new one. Perhaps even upgrade to a 8Gb CF... :mrgreen: