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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?"
Easy. Palm should write a efficient 512 byte FAT block mapping layer.
It should be the management getting fired because if it was successful you would see quotes praising the leadership effort of the management in making the project a success. Since they are calling the shots and credit they should take the blame.
Why move from the major innovation of *all database storage* backwards to a FAT filesystem that even Microsoft doesn't use anymore? The way to get compatibility with prepackaged Flash storage that unwisely stuck with the ancient FAT system was to include a Palm DB wrapper for the Flash legacy filesystems. Yet another reason Palm should open their PalmOS source, so manufacturers can make it work across platforms, and Linux hackers can make Palm a GUI mode as we take over computing.
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make install -not war
Firing people isn't always the solution.
"It should be the management getting fired".
It should, but unfortunately nowadays "management is another form of politics". In this era, presidents/management take the glory for flasely labeled "Mission Accomplished" and hard workers or people who gave their entire lifes for their jobs get sacked for the failure of the management/president.
I have seen it many times.
Adding an extra couple megabytes to the built-in storage would solve any upgrade problems. As for slower access, I think it's worthwhile considering it makes the memory non-volatile, don't you?
I dunno what PalmOne does, but I go shopping for another PDA.
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Because people are stupid and don't read item descriptions properly? A fool and his money are soon parted. I'd hate to see the face of the guy who's paying $215 for this coupon when he gets it in the mail!
I see where you're coming from, but I think Palm and PPC are just really different animals. PPC is robust and can do all sorts of things, but is a truly lousy organizer. Palm is a great organizer, but really doesn't do other things that well.
As a developer, I traded in my Palm for a PPC a few years ago -- mainly because I was embarassed when a client would ask me a question about the organizer functionality (which I'd never used). After a year of it, I couldn't stand it anymore and happily switched back to a Tungsten E. I realized that I just don't care about my PDA being a remote control, running SQL Server, or having a thumbprint scanner. I just want a good organizer!
Now for enterprise situations where you're developing for them -- different story.
As Palm developer I've never found the lack of file system to be a problem. Moreover the siplicity and compactness of the DB system is quite desirable. The best thing about Palm OS is that it is simple and robust. I tend to think that the file system got added because other operating systems have such.
M
i agree with you.
I started off with a pilot 1000 with 128k of ram.
Then it was a palm V with 2 meg. Wow, 2 meg was ALOT.
Then this summer i got an axim x5 basic. When buying it I thought, gee 32 meg. I'm moving from a 2 meg Palm V...what the heak am I going to do with 32 meg?
So when I first start playing with it, the multi tasking thing got me confused. I was used to one program at a time. Ok, so I figured that multi-task thing out. But to add insult to injury, it would RANDOMLY CLOSE running programs.
Now I know 32 meg of ram is NOT ENOUGH. Geez, I never realized how different the Palm and Windows Mobile architectures are.
But after reading this, I'm glad I went with Microsoft. (yes, I'm glad I went with M$ in this case)
Grump
Is it true that more people vote for the winner of American Idol, than vote for the president? -Ali G.
Who says they use FAT? The linked article does not mention FAT anywhere. Besides FAT is just not a good choice. Other file systems like reiserfs have been carefully designed to avoid the slack problem being described here. Of course it could easilly have been avoided by not storing all data in a bunch of small files.
Just about anything would have been better than FAT. The minix file system is simpler and more efficient, but it doesn't help on slack. Reiser is more complicated, but does solve the slack problem. I don't know if they really need any journaling. It is quite easy to come up with a file system, that is better than FAT, and even one that is simpler and solve the slack problem. It is builtin, and there doesn't seem to be any need for compatibility with anything else.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
I am a expert handheld reviewer and I have to say that its shocking to see what a poorly presented and researched piece this is. Are the real editors sleeping in on sunday morning?
While the lower addressable amount of memory is disappointing this is not a major issue, and I think this article is WAY too over-negative. Sounds like the submitter has some sort of bias on palmOne and the new Treo.
How can people be returning units in droves when only a few hundred have shipped!!!!
Only the most hardcore techie is even going to notice this sort of filesystem procedure, it is not a bug but a symptom of the Non volatile memory architecture.
Give me a break, The Treo 650 will do just fine.
-7L-
Actually, the employees typically DON'T use the devices.
I have engineered features for a set-top & tv box -- and I don't have (probably never will have) that tv.
I have worked for computer companies whilst never owning ANY of their product.
I have just done some engineering work for a printer company, and while I *have* in the past owned the vendor product, I will never own this particular product (and, indeed have never SEEN the product).
I have worked with a major graphics board company, and, though I do own several of their products, I was never given one to "home test".
In other words, the engineers put in the features, but we DON'T actually "eat the dog food". That job is left to Product Managers who probably don't care, and Marketing who probably doesn't either (make sure it meets the requirements).
So, if a "one-hour battery life" was in the requirements (or worse, no mention of battery life at all), that's what gets delivered.
And the justification? The employees/contractors won't BUY the stuff (why would we?); the company feels it is too expensive to build extra prototypes -- and besides, what does the employee know anyway? Stick to engineering; that's what we pay you for.
Does lead to Dilbert moments, though.
Ratboy.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
I have no problem blaming engineers and programmers. I just belive management should go along for the ride. They have to take the good with the bad. If they got $50K bonus for "successfully guiding the development of product abc" they should be fired for "majorly screwing up product xyz"
Man, at least try to compare apples with apples rather than apples with oranges.
Even if you figures are true, which I doubt, "most PocketPC devices" are just PDAs, where as the Treo 600/650 is a phone/PDA combo. What that means is that when you're not using a PocketPC directly it consumes no power but when you're not using a Treo 600/650 directly, it's still consuming power because it's communicating with your mobile phone network.
If you want a fair comparison, use a Tungsten C/E/T3/T5 as your example, not a Treo.
Comparing a Treo to "most PocketPC devices" and then attacking the Treo's battery life is like comparing a swiss army knife to a screwdriver and then saying that the screwdriver is better than the knife when it comes to unscrewing something.
Resolution is another area where you conveniently forget to compare like with like. Of course the Treos don't have 640 by 480 resolution screens: they have built-in keyboards in a similar (if not smaller) form factor, so they hardly need any area for you to write in, do they?
Some of your other points border on ridiculous too. Every PocketPC ever made can play MP3s and WMA files? So what? Every Palm model made in the last two years plus (apart from the cut down, dirt cheap $99 Zire 21) can play MP3s too. Are you really suggesting that playing music on a Palm is a problem?
And as for the size of apps, wow. Again, I'll take your word on the actual numbers but are you really saying that 5MB isn't big enough for any application that you'd want to run on a PDA?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
They already announced a year ago that they'd be breaking MemSemaphoreReserve() in Palm OS Cobalt, so most developers have been aware of the problem for a while now and the good ones have likely already managed to write around it. Which isn't really all that difficult on a fast device - most of the slowness in DmWrite() is not in the copy operation (which is really just an inter-heap memcpy()) but in the bounds-checking that comes before it, so if you need to make a lot of little changes you can simply read out the entire record into a buffer, make your changes and then write the record back.
But this is all moot since I'm pretty sure MemSemaphoreReserve() still works on the Treo 650 anyway. The way the flash filesystem is implemented is that whenever you query a database record, the record is loaded from flash into a portion of RAM (I believe something like 10 MB) sset aside for caching database records. So as long as you aren't accessing 10 MB worth of records at the same time (which would be a pretty dumb idea anyway for any number of reasons) you're OK - some things may be a lot slower but the software should basically still work and you can write around those slowdowns. Remember that even with the memory semaphore you're still limited to editing records that you've locked down, so the OS doesn't have to worry about making the entire database accessible in RAM, just the portion of it that you're currently using.
I'm glad I didn't rush out and preorder this one.
This should be a good lesson for anyone who has. There is almost nothing out there, made by large companies, that is worth rushing out and getting the very first model of. As other posters have noted, these companies don't even do any real usability testing to see if there's major problems with them, and engineers don't ever even see the finished product, or get to try out the prototypes, to see if there's something obvious that was missed. Amidst all this, there's simply no reason for anyone at the company to care one whit about the product itself; engineers just have to worry about keeping their jobs and getting a good review, managers just care about being able to spin things to their managers so they can get a bonus or raise, and executives just care about pushing the stock price higher. In the end, no one in large companies gives a rat's ass about the products they're making. If they don't care, why should anyone else?
If you're looking for products to get excited about, I only see two options: 1) make your own products. MythTV and other open-source software makes it fairly easy to build your own computing/entertainment systems using commodity components, and since you can build it the way you want it, you can leave out crap like DRM, monthly fees, inability to skip commercials, etc., and put in features you really want, like Ogg compatibility, a one-touch slideshow linked to a directory full or pr0n on your home server, or whatever else floats your boat.
2) Look for products from small companies where the engineers run the company, and are building the product because it's something they want. A good example of this is SlimDevices.
I agree with the sentiment. I want a phone first, not a PDA, not a game boy, not a video player. I want something that fits in my front pocket (and doing so doesn't risk grievous bodily harm to sensitive bodily regions when I sit down). I also don't want it to call my friends when I do sit down.
Dear phone people: release a phone with the following features: I promise I will buy it.
1) Flip style smart phone like the i500. Flat phones are too big and I hate making accidental calls.
2) Palm OS. I simply won't let Microsoft into my phone. They've made a horrible mess of my laptop and I'm desperately trying to get my application providers to move to Linux so I can finally end the nightmare of their miserable security flaws and stop supporting their criminal behavior. (PTC: Pro Mechanica Linux Please!). Other options are acceptable, CE isn't. I just won't do that. A real, open source phone with an extensible, repairable, verifiable OS would be very nice - no secret spy features.
3) A camera would be nice. 1.3 Mpix would be nice. A flash would be nice. Seems to be the emerging standard. Short video clips with audio would be nice. I can see the utility of camera features and probably wouldn't buy a new phone without them.
4) CF would be a bonus. I hate SD cards, too expensive for the capacity. Why anybody thought we needed 5 approximately equal removable media formats is beyond me. They should be fired, especially Sony with their stupid Memory stick. What were they thinking? I have lots of CF cards, I'd love to be able to use them with my phone. Plus if the phone could support the 802.11, bluetooth, and wired network cards and other great features you can add via CF that you can't with any other removable media it could address the huge variety of non-critical but highly desired features people complain about.
5) If it's got CF, it should have good quality MP3 playback through a headphone jack. I'd be happy to have MP3 playback integrated into my phone, to play off my CF cards. If one want's, one can get 8GB CF cards now, plenty of music for a long flight.
6) Any phone MUST integrate with TrueSync Desktop (which is why I prefer Palm). I realize it's abandondware, but it is the ONLY PIM that handles time zones correctly. (try setting a full day meeting in outlook then changing your time zone. Which day was that meeting?)
7) Worldphone. Optimally it would be CDMA/GSM/Analog as CDMA coverage in the US is much better than GSM. But I travel places that only have analog service, so I need that (the first purpose of the phone is to get out of trouble even if you're 65km down a dirt road in the mountains of Mexico). I'd be happy with GSM/Analog, but I won't buy another phone without GSM: I'm tired of renting phones in other countries.
8) Hi Speed USB connector: I should be able to see the contents of the CF card on my computer. This is key.
the 650 has 4X the resolution of the 600
uh the Treo 600 has 160x160 resolution, the Treo 650 has 320x320 resolution. Pixel count is quadrupled, resolution is merely doubled. Don't fall for the marketing speak.
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
I read a story - I think it was in an old, old copy of "How to Win Friends and Influence People." The details are fuzzy now; I imagine the story named some rich Oil Baron by name, but I don't recall.
The story was basically that an employee had fucked up and cost his company $10,000 -- and he came in the next day and said to his boss, "I expect you'll want my resignation now." To which the oss replied, "Hell no, I just spent $10,000 on your education!"
Seriously, why is Palm so cheap with the storage in this device? For the (IMO ridiculous) amount of money they ask for this device, users deserve perfection!
For amyone that wants to know more about this hit Google for YAFFS or JFFS2.
Bias acknowledgement: I wrote YAFFS. I quite often get emails of the type: "We tried file system xxx but could not make it reliable enough to ship. Since switching to YAFFS we have no more problems".
Engineering is the art of compromise.
How does a 1.3Mpxl image look insignificantly different from a .3Mpxl image? We're talking 1280x1024 vs. 640x480 - each old pixel gets at least 4 new ones - an order of planar magnitude higher rez.
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make install -not war
It has some nice features but the memory/file problem is a hugely big deal to many of us and to most serious business users. A major screwup that makes many users unable to use the latest model with all those fine features is about as negative as it gets short of blowing up in your hand.