[plug] linux-friendly pda

[Brad Campbell]

Fred Janon wrote:
> The Treo 600 were known for their hardware issues, Palm worked through
> them and the 650 didn't the same issues. Palm was very aware of the
> problem and what impact it had on them. The subsequent models should be
> even better. I met some venture capitalists in the Silicon valley who
> went through 4 Treo 650 (broke one after the other) and they still
> loved them, simply because there was nothing else like it. and these
> guys are not models of patience and forgiveness! They just dumped their
> laptops for a Treo.

I love my 680 thus far.. but like the VC's.. went through loads of 650's and 600's..
The worst was when I was on a 3 week trip in the US, my backup phone was only dual-band and would 
not work on those networks and my 650 went "yellow screen" 4 days into the trip.. yay..

> The battery will be an issue on all these devices, need to cram more
> and more hardware (phone, speakerphone, microphone, USB interface, ram,
> flash, card reader, GPS, camera, bigger LCD screen, touch screen,
> keyboard, antenna (internal, hey, I don't want this thing sticking out
> of my pocket!:) ) and all running for a week without seeing a power
> plug. The Treo has actually a very sophisticated power management, some
> parts go to sleep automatically when not used.

It's improving, but as new as the 680 is, it's renowned for a naff battery life.
Some guys in the US are trumpeting 4 days battery life, but they turn off the GSM module overnight.. 
what's the point? If I make no calls and leave the GSM module on I get about 1 - 1.5 days at most.. 
which seems about standard at the moment. Pretty awful really, but then my iPAQ's are not much 
better with similar usage patterns (in WinCE) and they don't have phones in them!

> I am not affiliated with Palm anymore and I would not buy one, just
> because the thumb keyboard is too small for me, but lots of people
> swear by them.

I'm rapidly getting used to it. I quite like the thumb board, and I like it a whole lot better than 
the competition (excepting perhaps the blackberry's), but I'd love the ability to use graffiti also.

> I would be curious to know if any of the new iPaq would run linux,
> someone pointed me to a Dev Works article about it but dated from some
> years ago.
> 

I've only got older iPAQ's here. 3870, 3900, 5550 all running linux.

They have linux running booted from hARET and an MMC/SD on the new HP iPAQ phones but they still 
have power management issues that make it pretty much unusable as a daily driver. (I seriously 
looked at it for a while, but it's too much of an unknown for serious usage)

Brad
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