Re: to zaurus or not to zaurus
On 2007/08/25 00:04, Nick Guenther wrote: On 8/24/07, frantisek holop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: i am planning to go on a longer trip and i am considering buying a sub-sub-sub notebookish thingie... i know openbsd support zaurus quite well, and i have found a promising sale of a C3200 for around 500 euros... the things is, it's surprisingly hard (for me) to find any details about these beasts like what can i use it for in comparison with a notebook, how is battery life, and you know, just how does it fare in everyday usage For a trip? Just don't. The battery life is 7 hours (12 if you pull magic hax of making the screen turn off when not in use and compulsively put it in standby most of the time) and a lot less with a wifi card in. Battery life is not too good, but can be extended quite easily at the expense of extra space - same voltage, connector (incl polarity) as Sony PSP so there are plenty of battery packs, solar chargers etc that will work. Given the obvious general limitations (not much ram, not much disk), the things I most dislike are: always running from the internal battery (if you flatten it you can't just plug in another source and go, you need to let it recharge a bit first), and the limited precision of the battery level monitoring. If you can identify how you want to use it that might make the decision easier. Mobile web+ssh, there are probably better choices, but you won't find much else to run a full unix OS without going to 3-4x the size and probably a higher price.
Re: to zaurus or not to zaurus
hmm, on Sat, Aug 25, 2007 at 12:04:29AM -0400, Nick Guenther said that The battery life is 7 hours (12 if you pull magic hax of making the screen turn off when not in use and compulsively put it in standby most of the time) and a lot less with a wifi card in. 7h is not that bad compared to a notebook (e.g. on a plane). What's your usage like? It's too slow to run anything graphical reasonably, though you can if you absolutely have to. I mostly keep it in console with screen running a bunch of different windows with mg running, for various note takings. slow for graphics? but the default system is all grahic, isn't it? and some reseller ad said it can do divx's... It doesn't work for every day usage. I'm getting used to it but it's still too flakey to be trusted. I'm slowly hacking in things that make too flakey to bu trusted? what's that mean? the problem is that 7-13 (sub 2 kg category) stuff is just starting to emerge and is either not possible to buy yet, insanely expensive or both.. i would be perfectly ok with an OLPC kind of notebook but they just started this ball rolling for the competition. -f -- if you live long enough, it will kill you...
Re: to zaurus or not to zaurus
On 8/25/07, frantisek holop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hmm, on Sat, Aug 25, 2007 at 12:04:29AM -0400, Nick Guenther said that The battery life is 7 hours (12 if you pull magic hax of making the screen turn off when not in use and compulsively put it in standby most of the time) and a lot less with a wifi card in. 7h is not that bad compared to a notebook (e.g. on a plane). What's your usage like? It's too slow to run anything graphical reasonably, though you can if you absolutely have to. I mostly keep it in console with screen running a bunch of different windows with mg running, for various note takings. slow for graphics? but the default system is all grahic, isn't it? and some reseller ad said it can do divx's... With the original linux yes, I had it do that. but it was kind of choppy; doing divx is really pushing what it can do. I haven't had as much success with OpenBSD. I chalked it up to OpenBSD generally being slower because of the extra memory security or whatever. It doesn't work for every day usage. I'm getting used to it but it's still too flakey to be trusted. I'm slowly hacking in things that make too flakey to bu trusted? what's that mean? As in, it panics, freezes, or just mysteriously stops on average every other day. the problem is that 7-13 (sub 2 kg category) stuff is just starting to emerge and is either not possible to buy yet, insanely expensive or both.. i would be perfectly ok with an OLPC kind of notebook but they just started this ball rolling for the competition.
Re: to zaurus or not to zaurus
The default system can run graphics adequately. So can pdaXrom, and OpenZaurus/Angstrom, or the Cacko ROM. These OS's burden the Zaurus less then OpenBSD does. There are ways to improve speed, however.d If you're expecting to run KDE or GNOME with 10 open windows, good luck with that. If you use much less minimalistic, smaller Window managers (like cwm), however, it becomes much more bearable. It can play movies. I'm not sure how well they play in OpenBSD/zaurus, as it's been a while - I used to encode them perfectly for the Zaurus, at just the right settings for ideal playback - it would stutter a bit, but it was bearable. AKA, it can play movies, but you'll need to re-encode them if you want playback performance to be decent. The built-in keyboard is wonderful. However, it is quite obviously too small to type with in regular fashion, and it's slow going. If you're comfortable on the command-line and are willing to put up with some annoyances here and there, it's a decent choice. I certainly don't regret purchasing mine. I recommend dual-booting it, as well - OpenBSD installs to the hard drive, leaving the flash empty as well - may as well put the flash to use, and install Cacko on it. It'll give you essentially the built-in Linux, only improved, along with OpenBSD as boot options. Instructions are on oesf.org/forums. I also recommend poking around in there. It's a great purchase - just keep in mind the low hardware specs. On 8/25/07, frantisek holop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hmm, on Sat, Aug 25, 2007 at 12:04:29AM -0400, Nick Guenther said that The battery life is 7 hours (12 if you pull magic hax of making the screen turn off when not in use and compulsively put it in standby most of the time) and a lot less with a wifi card in. 7h is not that bad compared to a notebook (e.g. on a plane). What's your usage like? It's too slow to run anything graphical reasonably, though you can if you absolutely have to. I mostly keep it in console with screen running a bunch of different windows with mg running, for various note takings. slow for graphics? but the default system is all grahic, isn't it? and some reseller ad said it can do divx's... It doesn't work for every day usage. I'm getting used to it but it's still too flakey to be trusted. I'm slowly hacking in things that make too flakey to bu trusted? what's that mean? the problem is that 7-13 (sub 2 kg category) stuff is just starting to emerge and is either not possible to buy yet, insanely expensive or both.. i would be perfectly ok with an OLPC kind of notebook but they just started this ball rolling for the competition. -f -- if you live long enough, it will kill you...
to zaurus or not to zaurus
hi there, i am planning to go on a longer trip and i am considering buying a sub-sub-sub notebookish thingie... i know openbsd support zaurus quite well, and i have found a promising sale of a C3200 for around 500 euros... the things is, it's surprisingly hard (for me) to find any details about these beasts like what can i use it for in comparison with a notebook, how is battery life, and you know, just how does it fare in everyday usage i would be most grateful if the zaurus users around here chimed in what's it to have one of these.. thanks. -f -- oxymoron: american english.
Re: to zaurus or not to zaurus
On 8/24/07, frantisek holop [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: hi there, i am planning to go on a longer trip and i am considering buying a sub-sub-sub notebookish thingie... i know openbsd support zaurus quite well, and i have found a promising sale of a C3200 for around 500 euros... the things is, it's surprisingly hard (for me) to find any details about these beasts like what can i use it for in comparison with a notebook, how is battery life, and you know, just how does it fare in everyday usage For a trip? Just don't. The battery life is 7 hours (12 if you pull magic hax of making the screen turn off when not in use and compulsively put it in standby most of the time) and a lot less with a wifi card in. What's your usage like? It's too slow to run anything graphical reasonably, though you can if you absolutely have to. I mostly keep it in console with screen running a bunch of different windows with mg running, for various note takings. It doesn't work for every day usage. I'm getting used to it but it's still too flakey to be trusted. I'm slowly hacking in things that make it more friendly, but it's very slow going. Some day I'll collect them all up and publish them, and maybe someday there will be libraries of tips and scripts from zaurus users the world over, but we aren't there yet. It's very much a hacker toy, despite the personal mobile tool still scrawled along the right edge of the screen. -Nick
