Saturday, October 16, 2004
Zaurus SL-C300: First PDA With Hard Disk
Posted by Jonathon Watkins in "THE COMPETITION" @ 03:30 PM
Sharp has just announced their new Zaurus SL-C3000 PDA. (Hmmm, catchy name. ;-)) It should ship in the Japanese market on the 10th of November and will be the first PDA with a hard drive. The Register has the details:
"The new model is based on a 416MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor backed by 64MB of SDRAM and 16MB of Flash ROM. Crucially, the unit also features a 4GB hard drive - the first PDA to do so. The Sl-C3000 sports a 3.7in 640 x 480 LCD mounted above a QWERTY keypad with a five-way navigator control. There's written text input too, with Kanji and Western character recognition. Unlike Sony's PDAs, there's no wireless on the Sharp model, only infra-red. There's an SD and a CompactFlash card slot for expansion, so there's scope to add Bluetooth or Wi-Fi later on. There's also the usual USB port for connecting the device to a PC, and an earphones socket."
As you can see, the SL-C3000 has a flip-round display similar to some of the Clié models. The weight is just under 200 grams, which does seem on the high side You can find more photos of the unit at PC Watch Japan. We've discussed the pros and cons of having hard drives in PDA a fair few times, but now someone has actually gone and produced one, so we should be able to find out how well it works in practice. Personally I still hope to own a Pocket PC with a large hard drive at some point. What about you guys?
"The new model is based on a 416MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor backed by 64MB of SDRAM and 16MB of Flash ROM. Crucially, the unit also features a 4GB hard drive - the first PDA to do so. The Sl-C3000 sports a 3.7in 640 x 480 LCD mounted above a QWERTY keypad with a five-way navigator control. There's written text input too, with Kanji and Western character recognition. Unlike Sony's PDAs, there's no wireless on the Sharp model, only infra-red. There's an SD and a CompactFlash card slot for expansion, so there's scope to add Bluetooth or Wi-Fi later on. There's also the usual USB port for connecting the device to a PC, and an earphones socket."
As you can see, the SL-C3000 has a flip-round display similar to some of the Clié models. The weight is just under 200 grams, which does seem on the high side You can find more photos of the unit at PC Watch Japan. We've discussed the pros and cons of having hard drives in PDA a fair few times, but now someone has actually gone and produced one, so we should be able to find out how well it works in practice. Personally I still hope to own a Pocket PC with a large hard drive at some point. What about you guys?
