PDA Buyer’s Guide has a typically in-depth review of the latest Sharp Zaurus, the SL-6000L, and while they are impressed with it relative to its other Zaurus siblings, it’s easy to see that Sharp has aimed this model for a very specific niche. It’s huge, for one thing, dwarfing most PDAs—even other Zaurus—but at least some of that is due to its ‘ruggedization’ and top-notch 4-inch VGA (640 x 480) screen. Sharp’s decision to use a separate 64MB of NAND storage that retains its data even when power is lost is a great feature, one that I’m sure many PDA users would be happy to have, even given the performance hit of loading programs and data from NAND to RAM to execute. USB Host is nice, too (it’s even USB 2.0), but the lack of SDIO (there is basic SD/MMC) seems behind the times. I don’t know, it’s not like the SL-6000L is a bad machine, but its clear that for $700 this is only going to be sold mostly to open source hackers who want a PDA powerful enough to stand up to their tinkering, but not to basic users who want a lot of software options or integrated wireless solutions.
Read [PDABuyersGuide]
Related
Sharp Zaurus SL-6000L Hits The States [Gizmodo]
https://gizmodo.com/sharp-zaurus-sl-6000l-hits-the-states-9024
