I supported the pdaXrom project to the tune of about $1,000 so I really wanted to see the project move the Zaurus (and Sharp, of course) into the mainstream. Sharp just doesn't get it, of course, so for someone like me who wants to sell a device into a vertical market there is simply no way I can take the product, or the company, seriously when it comes to the kind of device I need.

Nokia is, on the other hand, deliberately embracing the free software movement for all that it's worth and is making the product freely available in the US and so many other countries, too, so for my purposes there is no comparison at all between the value of the two devices. One is worthless, the other is invaluable.

I've also been watching some real heavyweights working at handhelds.org to make it possible for Linux to run on various PDA's that were built only to run just about anything BUT Linux. Truthfully, you can't build a plan to enter a vertical market with such devices as these, either.

The only thing that will take the Free Software communities worldwide into the future in a big way beyond what the analysts have predicted so far will be a device such as the 770 (a family of devices, actually). It will do so because it is fully supported by the company that's manufacturing the device to be a device that is both widely available and freely exploitable by the Free Software dynamic.

Where it really matters, in the judgement of history, the 770, and not any other mobile device ever manufactured, outside of the world of cell phones, will be the one that 'finally got it right', and it will be one that all devices from this point on will have to surpass. It's been explicitly stated by Nokia that VOIP is on the way, soon, and at that point any comparison of the 770 to any other device, including the Zaurus devices, will be no contest.