amiga-news.de - New pictures and report from the 'Japanese Business Show 2001'

25.May.2001
Ralph Ewers

New pictures and report from the 'Japanese Business Show 2001'
As already reported, Sharp Corporation presented the Sharp Zaurus pocket computer with AmigaDE as application for the first time at their booth at the 'Japanese Business Show 2001' in Tokyo. Ralph Ewers, an amiga-news.de reader currently living in Tokyo, has visited the show for us and sent us more pictures and a small report.

Ralph Ewers had the chance to talk to Sharp's planning manager and obtain the following information:

The Zaurus is supposed to be available in America this autumn running Linux (in English) instead of the Japanese ZaurusOS. The American version will most likely contain some improvements: in the same case, a faster CPU may be built into (the current CPU was at times indeed slow running the DE), a battery with longer life and a keyboard with larger keys is planned as well. Whether AmigaDE will be included depends on the licence fees which are currently not decided yet. A first prototype of the English Zaurus may be seen at the Java-One taking place in early June in America.

At least, Bill McEwen (here only called "Mister Bill" since it's easier to pronounce for the Japanese) has had some successful meetings with a Sharp manager (these personal meetings are very important!). He's at least in e-mail contact with the "planning manager" I spoke to.

Amiga is definitely seen "only" as "content provider". A native DE hasn't been thought about so far. (At least that's the official reply!)

Other "highlights":

The color display of the Palm m505 is at least in the default configuration rather ugly and strongly reminds of the PalmIIIc. It also reflects awfully (it has that - sadly - in common with the Zaurus). Regarding this, the Cassiopeia s700 (or was it i700) impressed me very much. Subjectively not any heavier than a Palm V (slightly deeper) and a great display with higher resolution.

Logitec plans to release a DVD-R/RW (yes, "R") drive with FireWire in June, the price is interesting: 120,000 Yen (plus 5% tax here in Japan).

Bluetooth was a big topic. Panasonic for example has presented miscellaneous hardware; some kind of Gameboy, headphones, expansion cards for the memory card slot and so on, and there's also a lot of choice for the Zaurus.

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(ps)

[News message: 25. May. 2001, 23:33] [Comments: 0]
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