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Article archives

Review: Nokia N770 Internet Tablet

Posted by Richard Goodwin on 18:00, 16/10/2007 | , , ,
 
A guilty secret: limited though they were, I used to love working with early Palm and Psion PDAs. Neal Stephonson wrote in his novel Cryptonomicon:
Eb is doodling on one of those little computers that uses a stylus so that you can write on the screen. In general, hackers don't use them, but Eb [...] wrote the software for this model and so he has a lot of them lying around.
...which stuck in my head as it described my situation at the time. Apart from the bit where Eb is an über-hacker and I was a junior Perl mangler, obviously. Screen-wise the Palm V was just low-res black on a sort of olive green, and getting data on to them usually required a precariously-balanced IR-capable mobile phone and a lot of patience (or the foresight to sync everything before leaving home), but a small, omni-present device that responded to the touch always seemed so much more satisfying than the mouse or the glidepoint.
 
Fast forward a few years, and along comes the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet: a small device with a touchscreen, but updated for the 21st century with wifi Internet access, a widescreen, full colour display, a proper Web browser and bluetooth connectivity. I'd looked at the proliferation of Windows-based PDAs over the years and they'd never appealed. Where the Palm and Psion devices felt like they'd been designed from the start with mobile computing in mind, WinCE always seemed like a big OS shoehorned into a little device, and wifi an afterthought if available at all. And don't get me started on small keyboards after the disaster that was the Psion Revo. Maybe this Linux-based device could put the fun back in to computing?
 
Continue reading "Review: Nokia N770 Internet Tablet" | 10 comments in the forums

SDL port of Asylum released

Posted by Jeffrey Lee on 21:30, 9/7/2007 | , , , ,
 
Hugh Robinson has contacted us to let us know that he's converted classic Acorn platformer Asylum to C, using the SDL library. With full support of original author Andy Southgate, Hugh's source code has now been released under the GPL, and is available to download from the SVN repository on the SourceForge project page.
 
Although a quick look at the source suggests to me that it's fully converted, there are still some bugs and compatability issues to sort out, so feel free to send any fixes Hugh's way if you manage to get the game running. Although the source to Asylum has been available on asylum.acornarcade.com for a few years now, this is the first known port of it to any other platform (and could potentially form the basis of a back-port to RISC OS, to produce a fully 32bit compatible version).
 
3 comments in the forums

NetSurf Update

Posted by Michael Drake on 12:00, 4/12/2006 | , , , ,
 

In this article we'll take a look at NetSurf's latest developments and the project's future plans. NetSurf is a collaborative open source project which aims, over time, to bring up-to-date web technologies to the RISC OS platform for free!

In response to users' complaints of failed downloads, NetSurf's web site has moved away from SourceForge to independent hosting donated to the project by Pepperfish. The web site will benefit from increased reliability and faster downloads. The new domain – netsurf-browser.org – provides NetSurf with a more unified presence on the web.


 
Continue reading "NetSurf Update" | 6 comments in the forums

Review - Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000 Palmtop

Posted by Jeffrey Lee on 19:01, 27/11/2006 | , , , ,
 
Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000The Zaurus range from Sharp are fairly unique in the world of PDAs. Not only do they have keyboards - a rare feature for a PDA since Psion left the market - but they also run Linux. Combine this with the high-res screens, fast processors, and copious amounts of memory sported by the latest models and you have a go-anywhere, do-anything personal computer that fits in your pocket.
 
This review will concern itself with the SL-C1000 model - a clamshell design PDA (Or as Sharp call it PMT - Personal Mobile Tool) with 64MB internal flash memory for storage and 64MB RAM (Half of both of these are taken up by the OS however). With practically the same dimensions as a DS Lite, the Zaurus features a full colour 640x480 touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, CF and SD slots, IRDA, builtin rechargrable battery, and a combined USB host/client port. This means you can either connect it to a PC as a client, or connect it to standard USB devices such as keyboards or mice as a host. The wealth of USB drivers available for Linux allow you to connect it to pretty much anything. Out of the SL-C series, the SL-C1000 is the lower-end model. The current high-end model, the SL-C3200, is essentially identical in design except it sports more memory and a 6GB internal hard disc.
 
 
Continue reading "Review - Sharp Zaurus SL-C1000 Palmtop" | 9 comments in the forums
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