As you may knew, I have got the Sharp Netwalker mini-laptop. It's a computer
which is somewhat bigger than the Sharp Zaurus, which also uses an ARM
processor and which also runs Linux. Unlike the Sharp Zaurus (I meant the
SL-XXX line of Zauri which runs the Linux) is does not use a PDA-optimized
system and GUI but it runs (almost) stock Ubuntu.
It also lacks of some PDA-style features like special keys, display
transformable to portrait mode and so. But it has touchscreen (the traditional
one which require a stylus).
The device itself is bigger and heavier than the Zaurus but the screen is not
that bigger (5" vs 3.5") albeit it have great resolution (1024x600).
So this was the machine everyone dreamed about: a small Linux computer (there
is an Ubuntu up to 9.04) with a long battery life which is not limited by
cramped Linux setup (PDA-style systems with Qtopia, Android-based things...).
Or not?
Well, as always, the devil is in details. The hardware has quite nice specs
(for 2008):
* 800 MHz ARM CPU
* RAM 512 MB (note that the best Zaurus was 64 MB and the Nokia N900 had 256 MB)
* internal flash drive 8 GB
* 5" screen with 1024x600 (no worse resolution than on any netbook)
That's all excellent, but such specs are not enough to smoothly run full GNOME
2.0 desktop. System boot takes ages (that's not a big issue because it can be
done infrequently and the sleep and resume is instant). But starting of
programs takes time, too. And there are the normal desktop applications: the
Firefox, the OpenOffice and so. And yo know that they are slow...
But this is still acceptable. The bigger issue is that after a start of an
bigger (read: anything GNOME-based) program the system does not accept text
input for several seconds. It simply ignores it. After that time everything
works... until one starts another program or simply switches to any other
running one. Then it is necessary to wait several seconds... And there is no
indication that one have to wait. It might be a minor issue but it is extremely
annoying. By the way, switching to lighter environment and tools seems to help
but it cannot be expected from typical customers of such machine...
And then there is one hardware-related problem: the keyboard is weird. In order
to write a character one have to carefully press the key on a keyboard and take
care that the key had traveled its full path. If not then probably nothing
happen. Well, I can accept on a Soviet MK-90 computer which was more a
prototype than a final product but it surprised me on a Japan-designed end-user
device. And such behavior is very annoying and (especially with the issue
described above) makes use of this keyboard a random process. To be exact: the
keyboard is useless.
The explanation can be the fact that the device was designed in Japan but it
was manufactured in China. The older Zauri computers were made in Japan.
It is interesting that it's tiny touchpad is much better than I ever dreamed.
It is a small place (less than 10x10 mm) at the right-top side of the
keyboard. It actually works and it is quite easy to use it as an pointing
device. The buttons (left and right one) of the touchpad are located on the
top-left side. Their location might look to be irrational but it is actually
very practical. Still, the trackpoint would be much better here...
A cannot say anything about the WiFi (which is integrated) because it is not
working in my machine. So I use USB Ethernet adapter which works perfectly.
To be less negative about the device I must confess that I was able to install
here almost anything that I wanted: the Vim, the XFig, the sc, the Gnu Octave
and the Gnuplot and more. The compiler has here already so it was possible to
compile some of my Gtk+ (2.0) programs here. Even the OpenGL sort of works here
(it is software-only and thus slow and witch some glitches). So, sans the
keyboard, I can imagine that it is possible to use it sometimes as an small
Linux/UNIX workstation. I cannot discuss the battery life here but no one has
problem with that (I read about 6-8 hour of use for the new machines).
Conclusion: it is a small and cute computer. It's nice to have one. It was
probably meant as a replacement for the Zaurus line but it was not able to
replace them (I assume that the problems listed above were also experienced by
the customers who bought it when it was new). Too bad that the Netwalkers were
the last Sharp's Linux-based portables.
Oh, I had to write this text on my GPD pocket. It has soo much better
keyboard...
