[mikhael]

Steak, its 14cm by 7.5 cm by 2cm and about 185g including battery. (a little more with memory cards and CF card).

Corsair, the idea here is that the box with the Z on it serves a purpose: its an electronic text reader based on a simple PDA design. Think of it as a prototype for a product to be put on the market.

Originally posted by Odyssey
Okay, my misunderstanding. I didn't realise that you were intending the device to be used in landscape orientation. In that format, the D-pad makes perfect sense, as does the cantilever (since it'd be very uncomfortable to hold it in the palm of the hand while it's landscape).

Glad I finally made myself clear. I guess having the logo and the 'Zaurus' script printed portrait adds to the confusion.

Does the Zaurus, or the reader software you use, have any capability for something similar to Microsoft's "ClearType"? While the feature annoys me in most aspects of a PDA, when it comes to e-book reading I'm glad the reader has it turned on - it smooths the edges of fonts in order to make it seem like a much higher resolution is being used than the screen can actually handle. It starts making less and less sense to have as physical screen resolution goes up, however.[/color]

The Zaurus (stock) doesn't have FAA (Font Anti-Aliasing, or Font Smoothing as it is properly called). I suppose if I boot into X-windows I could use the X server's FAA extension, if I wanted. I wouldn't do that though, since that would be a drain on the limited system resources. If I had one of the Zauri with a 400mHz XScale processor, I might consider it. On the new version of the Zaurus, this won't even be an issue. Its a 640x480 screen (instead of 320x240) but the physical dimensions remain the same.

[edit]
YOU AND THAT DAMNED COLOR TAG, ODYSSEY!
[/edit]

[Odyssey]

[color=cc9900]What can I say, I'm a colourful character.

I'm not too sure what you mean by FAA being a drain on limited system resources. My XScale 400mhz (PXA250, hence not that much faster than the old 206mhz StrongARM's anyway), underclocked to 100mhz, still renders pages fine with ClearType on. I can't imagine many OSes would conduct FAA slower than PocketPC, so platform isn't much of an issue either.

That is, unless you mean booting X-Windows being a drain on resources. Still, I see no reason not to, as you don't seem to be hinting at using a particularly slower processor for this job. If you just ran everything console you could probably get away with using one of the Motorola Dragonball's of yore.[/color]

[mikhael]

I don't even want to think about running pure console on my Zaurus. Sure its got a great keyboard, but its not optimal.

FAA does eat a few more CPU cycles than running without it. X Windows is also a bit more resource intensive (but not much) than QTopia. Either way, I've got a lowly 206mHz ARM and indeed, I try not to put too much of a load on it, more from superstition than anything else.

Now, if I could underclock that thing back down to 100mHz, we'd be in business. The power savings alone would rock my world, I'm sure. As it is, with the sidelight down to minimum (which is perfect for me in most situations) I can get around six straight hours of continuous use. I would love to see how much more I could get with the processor underclocked.

As for the reader design, I'm going to swap the logo and the signature and put them both landscaped. I'm also going to get started on that damned surfacing.

[Setekh]

Originally posted by mikhael
Steak, its 14cm by 7.5 cm by 2cm and about 185g including battery. (a little more with memory cards and CF card).

Hmmm, okay, I can picture it better now. That thing's pretty stylish, Mik. Maybe I'll get one of them these days so I can read Honorverse without printing out swathes of paper.

[mikhael]

Funny you should say that, Steak. That's EXACTLY what led to me throwing this model together.