Palm Memory Maximum Increased
Trillan writes "PalmSource has announced that it has developed a technology for increasing the maximum RAM on a Palm handheld from 16MB to 128MB. Hopefully new devices will come out soon to take advantage of it." This looks to me like Palm's plan for remaining competitive against handhelds like Sony's that can add more memory in via memory stick. As more and more multimedia apps are written for PalmOS, more storage space only makes sense.
more ram = more room for bloat
Not to mention battery life going from weeks to hours.
I have a HP-28S that will go for a year without a change of batteries. Real shame that handhelds need a power grid nearby these days.
Different devices for different needs. I still have an old (or better: now antique) Palm IIIc for my PDA needs. It does everything perfectly. I can download mail, I can even browse the web in a limited way, I have my phone numbers and even a game or two, and some ebooks to read. I want that device to be usable when I'm away from the grid. For a whole day. To effectively work with a keyboard, type this article, do some scripting and java programming, I have a notebook with all possible gadgets and softwares that will fit on a 40 GB disk (with Linux, as we know, an "awful lot" (c) by mousse-man 2003). I can watch multimedia stuff on it, can use Mozilla and other memory hogs, and I have a second battery in the DVD-ROM bay when I'm away from the grid, giving me approx 4.5 hours of work time. That's why I keep my old Palm and haven't bought a Sharp Zaurus - it won't work more than 3 or four hours at a time without recharging. Just one advantage the Zaurus has is all that fancy free software. If somebody makes a Zaurus that lives on little power, a smaller footprint than the current model, I might be tempted to test it since I'm a bit of a Linux zealot... :)
Getting a Palm to have more than 8 MB of RAM won't have any benefit for me as I don't even use 6 MB. And I use my palm as calendar, address book, and a for a few other applications and references.
Does this mean that they can finally port Nethack to the Palm?