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Filesystem Problems with the Treo 650s
Kaisa Tarasov writes "It turns out PalmOne's new Treo 650
is shipping with a major problem that's causing first adopter users and
developers to cancel
their orders in droves. The new Treo, along with the Tungsten T5,
utilizes a new FAT based
nonvolatile file system. Not only is the new system much slower, as
the data has to be loaded into a SDRAM chip before running, but in this
filesystem PalmOne switched from using directly addressable storage, to
storage addressed
in 512 Byte blocks. This has caused many files to swell in size - up
to 500% in some cases (such as the address book). Users,
already flustered with the small 23 MB of available memory, when trying
to sync their old data onto the new device are discovering that their
old data does not fit on the new Treo. What does PalmOne do?"
I think this new item is a bit too negative. I just upgraded from a 600 to a 650 and I think it's a great product. I didn't even know about any of the filesystem "issues" before reading this news. While, I guess this may be an issue for some users, I have not had any problems myself. Also to note:
:)
- the 650 loads programs at least 3 times faster than the 600 from my experience (likely due to the faster processor, but still!)
- the 650 has 4X the resolution of the 600. It can be argued that the 600 should have had 320x320 to begin withy, but either way, it's worth the upgrade by itself.
- Also, one of the benefits of the new memory is that you don't loose data when you loose power completely. Making the removeable battery system feasible.
- Finally, it's the first sprint phone (to my knowledge) to have bluetooth. I love my jabra
Well, just my $.02, I thought palmOne was getting a little too harsh of a rap, the 650 is a very good product in my opinion.
Given this scare with the 650, I did a search on eBay to see if people are unloading their treos. What I found was a lot of listings for people selling COUPONS to get the Treo 650 at a discounted price of $349. I noticed that some people were obviously mistaken and bidding upwards of $300 for this coupon, rather than the actual device. Does anyone have any information on this coupon?
I don't know, I've owned one Windows CE device and two Palm OS devices, and I have to say I much prefer the Palm OS devices. Longer batter life, clean simple interface, easy to use and understand.
No matter where you go... there you are.
Each piece of contact data is not in a seperate file, they are each a seperate record in a database. In the past, each database record took up (size of record+8) bytes. It looks as if that it is now (size of record+8) and round up to nearest multiple of 512 bytes.
All the current applications for PalmOS use the database way of accessing files. So there's no real workaround for it, except rewriting applications to combine records into one and use their own database access wrapper.
This will affect the program I develop for Palm OS too, as it stores small (~100byte) macros in seperate records of a database.
"Longer batter life"
This is simply not true anymore. It may have been true in the days of the Palm III, but it's not true anymore. Many PocketPC devices will go for 12 hours of *continuous* use. The Treo 600/650 is good for less than 8.
"clean simple interface, easy to use and understand"
This is highly subjective.
Here's why PocketPC devices make Palm devices look dated:
- Multitasking
- A *real* FAT FS for the entire device; not the "half-and-half" split of FAT and the proprietary Palm FS
- Lots of memory that can be used by programs. Even the new Tungsten T5 only allows around 5MB of heap. PocketPCs can use 64MB+.
- High-res. 320x320 or 480x320 may seem high, but the new high-res PocketPCs have 640x480 resolution; that's more than double the resolution of the Treo 650.
- Speed. The Treo is decent, but new Pocket PC devices use the XScale at 600+ MHz.
- Graphics. Many new Pocket PC devices have hardware accelerated 2D chips from ATI or Intel. This lets them play back high-resolution video without dropping frames.
- Sound. Every Pocket PC ever made can play MP3s and WMAs. Every Pocket PC has removable flash storage. Since these capabilities existed from the start, they are implemented in a standard way. Every app can take advantage of them. Many Palm apps still aren't high-res, and those that are frequently don't take advantage of the soft input area on some Palm OS devices. Every Pocket PC has a soft-input area.
Palm hates Open Source software. Last time I worked them, they opted to spend $100k+ for a proprietary Windows-based bug-tracking system instead of open-source Bugzilla (and Bugzilla covered their requirements better).
If you read the threads, this isn't something that is going to affect most users. This guy is trying to put 22,000 contacts on his phone. It is taking up over 11 MB. Not good but we are talking an edge case here. I can't believe that this is a normal usage pattern for a phone!
I have about 100 contacts on my phone and I don't know who many of them are. They were added during business meetings or various introductions. How can anyone keep track of 22,000 contacts?
The supposed problem with the Treo 650 seems to be completely overblown from what I can see.
It's not quite out yet, but the Motorola MPX looks like it's going to be a great combination of PDA and phone. It's got a snazzy dual hinge clamshell design which will allow it to open vertically to function as a phone, and then open horontally to function as a Pocket PC PDA.
It's supposed to be out sometime in the next three or four months.
--
RumorsDaily
as an owner of the Treo 650 for a few months now (yes, i got it early) - it is definately the best phone/pda combination that exists; it gives users everything that the Treo 600 users have always been asking for.
as for this being a problem, its not.
palmone can get an update out for this to use the memory layout for its file system much more efficiently and then users can run a simple rom updater application (direct from SD card) to get the latest rom image flashed to the device.
if the device had mask rom, it would be an issue. but, i've been updating my treo 650 every week with new rom images. its a small issue, the developers should fix it quite quickly and then its just a matter of getting the flashable SD card image out to normal users to fix the problem.
Dude, the internet is your friend. You can use it to look up all sorts of interesting information. The reason why you can't figure out how to get Graffiti to work on a Treo is because Treos don't support Graffiti. (Well, according to those official specifications they don't.)
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
No. Graffiti works just fine on the treos. It just doesn't have the input area. If you want to enable graffiti, just install the GraffitiAnywhere package (free). It enables graffiti on the full screen area, and also works on older palm models.
Or go back to the PalmOS 5 way of storing data.
I prefer the Palm database model to the desktop file model for use on handhelds, as it fits in nicely with how the majority of handheld applications want to work.
As someone who's used Palm and PocketPC devices (and developed my own programs for both) I definitely preferred the Palm approach. Which is why my Tungsten C gets carried around and my HP Jornada is at the bottom of a box somewhere.
Of course the main reason is that my jornada used to crash a couple of times a day, whereas my Tungsten C has crashed a couple of times (both when an 802.11 connection got dropped by a faulty access point).
Phil
I guess today is a passable day to die.
As found by this search on google (4th link from top): "what do we do" "we die".
Now we can all be part of the club!
From Tigerdirect.com
1G CF: $75
1G SD: $69 /w rebate or $79 w/o
The price advantage for CF is quickly dissapiring
Nah, probably not so bad. If they handle it the same way previous Treo upgrades have gone, it works like this:
1) You sync all your stuff to a desktop/notebook (back everything up)
2) Load the firmware upgrade application to the device and run it
3) Firmware gets updated, effectively erasing (or at least rendering useless) the contents of memory
4) Device restarts, "virgin"-like, with new firmware
5) You re-sync your stuff back to the device
6) "And there was much rejoicing" "yay..."
If they do it the same way now for the 650, and manage to fix/patch the filesystem, reloading the data back onto the device will just automatically put things in memory in a more efficient way. Should clear up the problem with ten minutes' work (three minute sync, four minute flash, three minute re-sync).
Read my stuff.
like here
here
and here
No thanks, I'll deal with the memory issue easier than I will a slow-ass pda.
I had a steady B+ in my AI class until I failed the Turing test...
The story was about Lee Iaccoca, who had an automotive Engineer cost the company $17 million - When asked if he intended to fire the Engineer, Lee said "Hell, no - I just paid $17mil for his education!"
Which is a bit different with this case, in my opinion. Someone will take the fall, of course, but that's all we will ever know...the details will be buried in someone's memory, I'm sure.