It seems what I've called my PDA for almost seven years (a Sharp PA-X500) is now dead. Well, it's not quite dead, but apparently the touch-sensitive screen is no longer sensitive to touching, and I'm not aware of any other input device for it. So I'm appealing to my fellow geeks, at least to those of you who know about this kind of things; hear my plea, and please provide some advice. People from Japan, I'm especially eager for your wisdom.
First, is there any way I could recover the data that's in it? There's nothing deadly important, it's just to save me the bother of collecting all these phone numbers and addresses again. Some have sentimental value, even if I have totally lost touch with their owners. Before someone suggests deep hackery like removing the memory chip and plugging it into some hand-soldered adaptor then into their old Amstrad, I was more thinking about something infrared, since there's an infrared port. The problem is: can it be activated from outside? I can't switch the thing on the usual way (since the touchscreen is, well, not touchy), I can only get to what's best depicted by this picture of what happens when I remove and re-insert the battery. It's the standard touchscreen calibration tool, from what I understood, but maybe it says somewhere that it can be switched to infrared file-server or so. The manual (in Japanese) mentions Zaurus thingies numerously, but I don't know what they say about them (my Japanese skills are old, and they were never that great anyway). Any idea?
Second part, in the very likely case I'm going to replace it: what should I buy? My specs are: stuff the PDA features, I initially bought that as a kanji dictionary, so the replacement needs to have a kanji dictionary too. One where you draw the kanji on the screen, and it recognises it. I'm clueless when it comes to classifying kanji, and if I have to tell the thing that what I'm looking for is something with 17 strokes and the key for "hand", then it loses much of its interest. A kanji→English dictionary would be nice, but not needed. I've managed to cope with kanji→Japanese then Japanese→English. The other, more normal, PDA thingies (addressbook, scheduler, world clock, alarm, etc.) would be nice, but are not compulsory. I don't care about games.
I'm going to visit Japan in October, and yes I will spend a couple of hours of Akihabara, but I'd like ideas and opinions beforehand. If someone has an idea for getting the data out but it would require the manual, just say so, I'll bring it along.
Why it chose to break down now will stay a mystery. Maximum embarrassment for me because I'll be dictionary-less for a few days in Japan? Or longing for some well-deserved rest since I'm soon going to have the opportunity to replace it? No idea. In any case, it sucks.
