gedansky
04-17-2005, 09:18 AM
I was a Palm user since 97, switched to PPC for a few years and came back to Palm this year, for the Treo 650. In terms of daily use, my experience has been virtually identical. The Treo 650 does everything my IPAQ 1900 and 4000 series units did and more.
With one HUGE exception... PPCs will store and run any and all applications on the SD card, regardless of who wrote them, leaving main memory free for PIM. Most useful Palm based applications either won't load and run on the card (Avantgo, Vindigo), or, if they do, immediately copy themselves into main storage upon first use (i.e., Docs to Go), so you have a copy on the card and one taking up main storage space. If you delete it, it comes back every time you fire it up.
The only alternative is to use programs like mydigo (www.mydigo.com) exclusively for use with Vindigo, or LinkStart, which seems to work with most apps. These store apps on the card, leaving an icon in main memory. Upon activation, the program is temporarilly opened into main memory for use. Opening and closing takes a significant amount of time (sometimes 30 seconds or more) but, once open, apps work just fine and run at full speed. I recommend this as a compromise for anything non-mission critical, that you still must have on your unit.
So... when is PalmOne, it's partners and anyone who writes software for Palm going to write their software so it can be stored and run universally in main memory or on a storage card, just like the PPC folks? That would eliminate all concerns over how much onboard memory the unit has, because 32MB would be a virtually inexhaustible amount if left for just PIM managment.
At this point, I would be willing to go the old fashioned route, and pay a company to crack open my Treo (once the warranty is expired) and put more memory on the board, the way they used to before SD cards came into more regular use.
Thanks for your time.
With one HUGE exception... PPCs will store and run any and all applications on the SD card, regardless of who wrote them, leaving main memory free for PIM. Most useful Palm based applications either won't load and run on the card (Avantgo, Vindigo), or, if they do, immediately copy themselves into main storage upon first use (i.e., Docs to Go), so you have a copy on the card and one taking up main storage space. If you delete it, it comes back every time you fire it up.
The only alternative is to use programs like mydigo (www.mydigo.com) exclusively for use with Vindigo, or LinkStart, which seems to work with most apps. These store apps on the card, leaving an icon in main memory. Upon activation, the program is temporarilly opened into main memory for use. Opening and closing takes a significant amount of time (sometimes 30 seconds or more) but, once open, apps work just fine and run at full speed. I recommend this as a compromise for anything non-mission critical, that you still must have on your unit.
So... when is PalmOne, it's partners and anyone who writes software for Palm going to write their software so it can be stored and run universally in main memory or on a storage card, just like the PPC folks? That would eliminate all concerns over how much onboard memory the unit has, because 32MB would be a virtually inexhaustible amount if left for just PIM managment.
At this point, I would be willing to go the old fashioned route, and pay a company to crack open my Treo (once the warranty is expired) and put more memory on the board, the way they used to before SD cards came into more regular use.
Thanks for your time.