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Handspring Hides Flash ROM in Handspring Treo
miradu writes: "TreoCentral has just posted an intriguing article about how the Handspring Treo has Flash ROM - something that Handspring claims it doesn't. They've worked with Brayder Technology to create applications to utilize this newly discovered feature. It brings up the question, Why do developers lie about features in a device - especially if they are features that are wanted? Does anyone know any other examples?" Strange -- hardware manufacturers don't often underestimate their products' capabilities, do they?
This isn't _standard_ on all of the Treo's and is only used in certain manufacturing runs, so some of the things tried here could fail, or screw up the system you have. So in the specs they don't mention it as the use of FlashROM was down to a costing decision on a paticular run (maybe they bought in bulk to support other products, or had left over elements that could be incorporated).
This is like assuming that just because one PC has a paticular motherboard with paticular tweeks that every PC has that.
The Treo is still butt ugly mind.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
I think at least in Handspring's case, they've had a philosophy of planned obsolescense by building their products with hard ROMs.
Obviously, they can't be upgraded that way, so in their all knowing marketing minds, they're hoping users will continue to upgrade to newer products from Handspring.
Originally, they claimed that the lack of a flash ROM was a price saving measure, but I tend to think that in some cases, a flash rom would actually be cheaper.
Now that the treo has a flash rom, and they're lying about it, what do they expect? Of course users are going to make use of that 'hidden feature' now!
Handspring, you ought to 'embrace and extend' now that the gig's up.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
It has been my experience at least that companies regularly hide things I would consider features because they don't want to deal with customer support issues surrounding those features. This more often happens, so it seems, when the feature involved is either complicated or delicate (or both for that matter).
Sometimes Hardware (or Software) manufacturers include features that are either experimental or transient and they don't mention them because they don't want to provide support for those features. If it something that the system uses, but application software shouldn't, then they probably won't mention it in the specs.
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
they aren't publicizing it possibly because their licenses for the palm os don't allow upgrades. I don't know the whole issue behind licensing and whatnot, but I think I remember something about it being cheaper for them to go the ROM route and not offer upgrades per device, but the buying in bulk issue is also a possible one, perhaps more likely.
cyn, free software and *nix operating systems enthusiast.
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
On the original Rev.A iMac, Apple included what was known as a "mezzanine" slot. While Apple never used this slot for anything, some people did. I believe someone even rigged up a floppy drive into it. (This was before the HUGE boom in bondi blue USB peripherals)
Supernaut
Take a look at the cars with the 1.8 Turbo engine.
By changing the ECU programming, they can add power by adjusting boost pressure, air/fuel/spark maps...
The car can magically gain 10-20hp between model years, all with the click of a mouse.
Aftermarket ECU tuners can get the same results out of the cars that are just a few years older.
But, "15 more HP than last year" is a great selling point for a car.
When the Visor first came out Handspring made a point about how they didn't use Flash ROM in the device and how that was a cost saving to the consumer (ie made the device lower priced). They made a big deal about it in their marketing materials.
Now, what happens when they reverse their position?
Whats the chance they license Palm-OS on a reduced rate because it isn't 'upgradable'?
It's common for the aspirations of engineers to be lobotomized a little by the larger marketting beast. I've read several articles on the web where a Celeron motherboard could be greatly sped up by placing celophane tape over a single pin of the Celeron's card edge connector. But then we stray into the area of overclockers...
THE EARLIEST EXAMPLE that springs to mind is on Radio Shack's TRS-80 Color Computers. There was some story about doubling the RAM by bending two pins on a socketted IC chip. The story was that the onboard capacity was crippled for the sake of easy in-store upgrades.
Happens all the time. CPU's are one extreme example. Early Intel celerons had the hidden capacity to be used in a multi processor setup. This was only changed when Intel noted that a lot of users where opting to buy two dirt cheap celerons rather then the overpriced PII(I) they wanted you to buy. Same with overclockin. It is easy enough to accomplish with an AMD chip, don't have Intel myself anymore so couldn't say, but AMD sure as hell ain't telling users about it. I started my IT career on the PROGRESS platform, RDMS and 4GL in one. Their monitoring tool had a "secret" section I only learned about when a rep visitid for some testing.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
After the development of the VAX (1977-78 with large wire wrapped boards), VAXes on chips were developed (early to mid 80s), a small system was eventually developed: the microVAX. It had two bus board expansion slots (a proprietary DEC bus - was it Q-bus?) originally. The platform was wildly popular and sold well, yet they wanted to sell even more. They tried to do so by cheapening down the box and lowering the sale price. One thing they did with the cheaper version of the microVAX was to provide only one bus expansion slot, keeping the price point for the two bus slot system higher. The cost to re-tool the box fab plant would have been rather high, hence for the cheaper box the same mother boards were used and the second bus slot was filled in with epoxy rendering it unusable. Some enterprising customers, with access to chemical stockrooms filled with appropriate epoxy solvents, found that with a bit of dissolving, scraping, and cleaning; the cheaper microVAX could be made to have two bus slots just like its more expensive older brother. The VAX hardware hack went down in history as a legend.
>Do you seriously thing that an automaker would
>advertise their engine as having only 140 hp if
>with a small software change they could get 160
>hp? I mean come on.
Single brand (Porsche, BMW) companies usually don't - but those who have luxury brands and ordinary brands (Toyota, Honda, VW, Nissan, Ford, GM...) do. They want to share parts to reduce cost, but have to intentionally downtune the cheaper brands to prevent it from competing with its own luxury brands.