Sharp Bringing Out Clamshell Zaurus without Microdrive

Last fall, Sharp released the SL-C3000, a Zaurus model with a built-in hard drive. Today, this company has announced a version of this device without the microdrive.

Like many other Sharp models, the Zaurus SL-C1000 will use a clamshell design with a color screen on one side and a keyboard on the other. In addition, the screen can rotate and then be closed down over the keyboard. This will allow the unit to be used like a typical handheld.

It will have a 3.7-inch, 640-by-480-pixel (VGA) display that supports both portrait and landscape modes.

This device will run Linux on a 416 MHz Intel XScale PXA270 processor. It will have 64 MB of RAM.

Trolltech's Qtopia environment will provide the user interface. This comes with a suite of PIM software, plus there are a good number of third-party applications for this, and more are coming every day. Still, there are far less than are available for the Palm OS or Pocket PC.

It will not include Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, but the SL-C1000 will have an SD card slot and a CompactFlash Type II slot, allowing the use of wireless networking cards.

When closed, this Zaurus will be 4.9 inches wide, 3.4 inches tall, and 1.0 inch thick (124 mm by 87 mm by 25 mm). It will weigh 9.8 ounces (278 g).

The SL-C1000 will go on sale in Japan on March 18.

While Sharp hasn't introduced any of the clamshell Zauruses in the United States, companies like Dynamism buy them in Japan, convert them to English, and re-sell them in this country.

Thanks to andreas for the tip.

Related Links

• Sharp Announces Zaurus with 4 GB Microdrive