Screaming Penguin - Source Does Matter

Well, I noticed NewsForge has a review of the new Zaurus SL-5600 on their site today, so I thought it was time I posted about my experience with the 5500 I recently picked up.
First off, the Qtopia/Zaurus stuff that comes with the box is pretty lame across the board. OpenZaurus is a complete distro for the Z, including the Opie QPE environment (compatible with the Qtopia stuff), and it is MUCH nicer across the board. Better look, works better, more drivers. The only place where it is slight advantage to the stock Zaurus is the package manager. The OZ AQPkg is a little clunky, but it works.
I now have a ton of great software -- more, I think, than I have ever had on a WinCE box. Emulators for the Gameboy and SNES mean you can carry hundreds of cool games. There are PDF readers, VNC clients and Servers, SAMBA, XMMS all the stuff you would expect on a basic Linux desktop. Plus, the Z comes with the Hancom Office suite of MS-Office compatible software.
The one place I have yet to find a good solution, though, is an email client. The Opie one doesn't seem to work. The one that comes with the Z is heinous and tkcMail from thekompany.com works, but it subscribes every file/folder in your home directory on your IMAP server (which is a giant pain in the ass).
Let me get this out of the way. All the software from TheKompany.com SUCKS ASS. Don't pay for it like I did. I bought their Video player (which doesn't work as well as Opie Player), their Audio Player (which has problems), their stream player (which flat doesn't work), and their Email client (see above). In each case, there is a free package that is MUCH MUCH better. Sorry guys, but you gotta do a hell of a lot better than that.
All in all, I got the Z, a 256mb SD to run as a HD and an 802.11 CF card for ~$350 -- a steal IMHO. The good points are many, the downsides are few, but notable. I would say, though, I have been more impressed by the Z than any WinCE device I have ever seen. It impresses me greatly that the OSS community could put out such a slick, user-friendly, consumer-ish package like Opie that gives all the big companies such a run for their money.