Sharp Zaurus
[citation needed] Sharp continued to make advancements in display technology; the Zaurus gained additional multimedia capabilities, such as video playback, with the introduction of the MI-E1 in Japan in November 2000.
The MI-E1 was also the first Zaurus to support both Secure Digital and Compact Flash memory cards, a feature which would become standard on future models as well.
Although the MI series sold well in Japan,[citation needed] it was never released in either the USA or Europe, and the Japanese user interface was never translated into any other language.
[citation needed] Sharp has continued development of the SL series in Japan releasing the SL-C700, C750, C760 and C860 models which all feature 640x480 VGA screen resolution.
There was a joint project with IBM;[citation needed] the 6000 did not gain mass popularity and Amazon sold off their remaindered stock.
It featured a similar hardware and software specification to the earlier C860 model; the key differences were that it only had 16 MB of flash memory yet gained an internal 4 GB Hitachi microdrive, a USB Host port, and "lost" the serial port (in some cases the components were not fitted to the motherboard or were incapable of driving the regular serial adaptor cables).
[citation needed] In March 2005 the C3000 product was joined by the SL-C1000 which returned to the traditional 128 MB flash memory but lost the internal micro-drive.
The kernel gained a vital tweak to the Sharp proprietary SD/MMC module and allowed 4GB SD cards to be used (and this was quickly borrowed by 3000 and 3100 owners).
There are also companies in the US, UK and DE who are unofficial resellers; one notable example is Trisoft who prepare and certify the device to "CE" standard compliance.
Their later units were the WS003SH and WS004SH which, whilst adding wireless and cellular phone and data features, ran the Windows Mobile 5.0 operating system/application suite.
There's also a special "rescue" mode NOR flash (or P2ROM in newer models) in all Zauruses since the 5xxx series which allows recovery from a corrupted OS.
For the Sharp and Cacko ROMs, there are third party and somewhat experimental kernels such as "Tetsu's" (a Japanese Zaurus expert) which offer interesting optimisations and drivers for unusual hardware.
It is possible to replace only the Linux kernel which can give better performance while maintaining compatibility and retaining installed software that comes with a "stock" ROM.
[12] With the switch to the Linux operating system the Zaurus became capable of running variations of a wide variety of proprietary and open source software, including web and FTP servers, databases, and compilers.
One popular - and free - alternative that runs on the Sharp ROM and OpenZaurus as well as Windows and Linux is the KDE PIM/Platform-independent set of applications.
