Filesystem Problems with the Treo 650s

What do they do? by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-21 05:14 · Score: 3, Insightful

Easy. Palm should write a efficient 512 byte FAT block mapping layer.

Re:What do they do? by WillerZ · 2004-11-21 07:59 · Score: 4, Informative

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

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I guess today is a passable day to die.
Re:What do they do? by shokk · 2004-11-21 14:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

As explained during the recent Treo 650 roadshow, the reason they chose this type of file system use is that, with the low low price of flash memory cards, you are expected to use that expansion port for something like a 1GB memory card to store files in.

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"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."

I know, I know! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-21 05:14 · Score: 5, Funny

What does PalmOne do?
File for bankruptcy?

Re:I know, I know! by SenatorOrrinHatch · 2004-11-21 05:23 · Score: 2

Lets just hope they release all their documentation and open source their OS and drivers before they do, so that at least their hardware will have some use in the world.

Otherwise, we may as well just throw them straight in the recyclotron. My next palmtop will have a full strength OS, either a true windows box (like the OQO) or a linux box from Japan.

--
The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'

Ouch! by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-21 05:15 · Score: 4, Interesting

Who gets fired for this? Q&A? The engineers? Managament?

It's too bad that such a glaring problem got missed in production. Hopefully they will be able to fix it.

Re:Ouch! by baywulf · 2004-11-21 05:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.
Re:Ouch! by Simon+Lyngshede · 2004-11-21 05:34 · Score: 4, Insightful

Firing people isn't always the solution.
Re:Ouch! by baywulf · 2004-11-21 06:06 · Score: 4, Insightful

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"
Re:Ouch! by smittyoneeach · 2004-11-21 07:01 · Score: 4, Funny

It was Joey, in the Conference Room, with the Marketing Plan:
"How can we drive up sales of the memory cards," inquired Philo, VP of Marketing, "and make room for XML, AFU, and the TLA host?"
"Well, my broker is E.F. Hutton, and he says," all eyes on Joey "that FAT is all that."
Bipperton Fusslebeak could wait no longer: "But that's so inefficient! What are we, the government? We can't just pick people's pockets like that! You'll kill the product!"
Philo responded calmly: "I don't even know why Engineering shows up at Marketing meetings. I'm a little surprised the relocating of your position to Bangalore didn't affect your attendence, Mr. Fusslebeak. You looked surprised...received you not the memo? Engineering does such a poor job of communicating with its...people. Joey, your ideas, and your bonus, are splendid..."
</clue moment>

--
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Re:Ouch! by scribblej · 2004-11-21 08:01 · Score: 2, Insightful

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!"
Re:Ouch! by djupedal · 2004-11-21 14:52 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

an excellent product by pbrinich · 2004-11-21 05:17 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

Re:an excellent product by IO+ERROR · 2004-11-21 05:42 · Score: 2, Insightful

I dunno what PalmOne does, but I go shopping for another PDA.

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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Re:an excellent product by MadBiologist · 2004-11-21 05:43 · Score: 3, Informative

Second phone from Sprint to have Bluetooth... they released the Sony Erricson t608, but only through Telesales, and it sucked... so it may be better to say that it's the first good Sprint phone to have Bluetooth :)

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'Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?'
Re:an excellent product by samantha · 2004-11-21 12:38 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

I think PalmOne is right by aldoman · 2004-11-21 05:17 · Score: 4, Interesting

I think that PalmOne is right in choosing to use a block based filesystem. There is obvious limits on the the old method, and while this has some problems, from what I gather they could easily solve them by instead of having each contact data in a seperate file, moving it to one file (or having a 'zip folder' which could expand and look like a normal folder when opened).

The main problem is that PalmOS is looking very dated compared to WinCE and Linux, and it's going to require serious pain that I don't think PalmOne can take to modernize it fully. This is just one step.. think how much it's going to hurt to get proper multitasking in etc...

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IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95

Re:I think PalmOne is right by DoctorPepper · 2004-11-21 05:30 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

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No matter where you go... there you are.
Re:I think PalmOne is right by BenjyD · 2004-11-21 05:38 · Score: 4, Informative

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.
Re:I think PalmOne is right by ForestGrump · 2004-11-21 05:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

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.
Re:I think PalmOne is right by rudedog · 2004-11-21 08:02 · Score: 3, Interesting

I think that PalmOne is right in choosing to use a block based filesystem.

Except that they haven't really. They've moved from storing their databases on battery-backed RAM to NVRAM. Their implementation uses a block-based filesystem, but the API continues to be the same as it always was (DmQueryRecord, DmWrite, DmReleaseRecord, etc.).

The backing store uses FAT, but I believe that each database is still stored in a single FAT file, that the programmer never sees or knows about.

PalmOS uses a cache to arbitrate between the NVRAM backing store and the Dm* functions. For performance, their cache implementation pads records up to the nearest 512B block, which is why databases with small-sized records seem to bloat.

The solution to me is simple: add a new header flag to the database that tells PalmOs not to pad records on that database. This would go back to the way that PalmOS exports databases to normal flat files without padding each record.
Re:I think PalmOne is right by TheHonestTruth · 2004-11-21 14:39 · Score: 2, Informative

According to every review I've read, the iPaq 6315 also runs dog slow because they're using an 168MHz processor in it.
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...

ARGH by Andy+Dodd · 2004-11-21 05:18 · Score: 4, Interesting

Dammit, yet another possible replacement for my Kyocera 6035 proves to be insufficient.

I was hoping for the 7135 to drop in price, but Verizon outright pulled it instead.

None of the current batch of smartphones appeal to me in design. They're all more PDA than phone, the Kyos were EXCELLENT phones. I *need* tactile feedback when dialing my phone, and all of the current smartphones use on-screen dialing.

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retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?

Re:ARGH by mordors9 · 2004-11-21 05:24 · Score: 4, Funny

Hmmm, it says it is slower and has less space, what's not to love.
Re:ARGH by Doc+Ruby · 2004-11-21 05:29 · Score: 4, Interesting

I went from a Kyocera 6035 to a Treo 600, and I've been extremely pleased - smaller, but not too small (like many phones), smarter, but not too smart (like a palmtop PC with all its problems), acceptably good Internet connection, color, stereo music, 1GB SD cards, camera, keyboard + stylus, yeah! I might not go for a 650 so fast, since they're delaying PalmOS6 (multitasking), and skipped the 1.3Mpxl camera (though the new VGA camera seems much better). But this FAT issue seems fairly trivial, especially with 1GB+ SD cards and Bluetooth. Maybe the next iteration sometime in 2005 will have all that, plus the hirez camera, plus EV-DO/EDGE WAN (>130Kbps, up to 1.5Mbps) which is the threshold for the mobile multimedia terminal the Treo 600 almost became.

Frankly, I chucked my 6035 beneath the wheels of an oncoming train to stop it (the phone, not the train :). Its many bugs and inconsistencies made using it like shaving with a nicked razor. Treo 600 reinspired my love of Palm - once again, Pilot is my co-god!

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make install -not war
Re:ARGH by gessel · 2004-11-21 07:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.
Re:ARGH by Doc+Ruby · 2004-11-21 11:32 · Score: 2, Insightful

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
Re:ARGH by ikea5 · 2004-11-21 12:27 · Score: 2, Informative

4) CF would be a bonus. I hate SD cards, too expensive for the capacity.
From Tigerdirect.com
1G CF: $75
1G SD: $69 /w rebate or $79 w/o
The price advantage for CF is quickly dissapiring

Step backwards into a FAT hole by Doc+Ruby · 2004-11-21 05:21 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

What do we do?..... by Shikoten · 2004-11-21 05:24 · Score: 2, Funny

We die

Re:What do we do?..... by the_skywise · 2004-11-21 05:36 · Score: 2, Funny

>sigh I'm probably the only other person that's going to get that quote...
Re:What do we do?..... by belarm314 · 2004-11-21 06:05 · Score: 2, Funny

No, you're not the only other one.

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When moderating, assume I have not yet had my coffee.

FAT by vijayiyer · 2004-11-21 05:26 · Score: 4, Funny

Ah, FAT. The cornerstone of any modern operating system...

What does PalmOne do? by Mike+Rubits · 2004-11-21 05:28 · Score: 2, Funny

If it's anything like me, it'll go home and cry.

Treo 650 Scam on eBay by bumbobway · 2004-11-21 05:30 · Score: 5, Informative

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?

Re:Treo 650 Scam on eBay by bumbobway · 2004-11-21 05:34 · Score: 5, Interesting

Here's an example: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cate gory=38331&item=5732298193&rd=1
Re:Treo 650 Scam on eBay by Ianoo · 2004-11-21 05:46 · Score: 3, Insightful

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!
Re:Treo 650 Scam on eBay by mrmeval · 2004-11-21 05:54 · Score: 2, Informative

It's a common scam done with anything some crook thinks will sell. It's all fully disclaimed but that will not stop some state prosecutions.

--
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty

Palm Reach Out to The F/OSS for Help? by Levendis47 · 2004-11-21 05:31 · Score: 5, Interesting

Call me wacked but sometimes the best way to wipe egg (or in this case, a whole omlette) off your face is to ask someone to wipe for you (eek...).

Palm could reach out to the OSS community for help in dealing with this...

1) Rapidly turn around a six-month trial developers kit and a limited-licensed SDK for OS development.
2) Make it extremely easy to find/download/bootstrap.
3) Setup a contest... List the top five major issues/flaws in the software at any given moment with corresponding prizes for the individual/team that develops a viable solution for a given issue/flaw.
4) Filter solution entries though a rapid in-house QA and system testing process.
5) Release patches in "leap frog" pattern (i.e. say four-month cycles overlapping for bi-monthly update releases).
6) Build and distribute a Palm Desktop conduit for System and Application updates. Call in "pa1m OneUpdate Utilities" or such.

Just an idea... Run with it at will...

I have a Treo 600 that I waited for two update cycles to occur before I bought... I've been burnt by Palm and WinCE before. And while I loved Handspring products, I can't think of a single one that didn't have some odd problem (shiver, the Visor Edge...).

cheers,
Levendis47

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--==[ AOL YIM ICQ : Levendis47 : levendis47@yahoo.com ]==--

Perhaps it makes some things easier... by SuperKendall · 2004-11-21 05:32 · Score: 4, Interesting

One advantage I could see is that the FAT filesystem is well understood and supported by a lot of things - it might make it much easier to mount the device as portable storage and make direct modifications.

--
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley

Re:Ouch! WRONG by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-21 05:37 · Score: 5, Insightful

"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.

reiserfs by wotevah · 2004-11-21 05:37 · Score: 4, Interesting

They should have licensed reiserfs. It uses a block system but small files can share a block:

http://www.namesys.com/v4/v4.html#sharing_blocks.

You can get a special license to include it in your own proprietary OS.

What does PalmOne do? by TheSHAD0W · 2004-11-21 05:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

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?

Bad testing all round... by ccage · 2004-11-21 05:41 · Score: 4, Funny

I know that at least two of the major cell phone manufacturers provide beta test units to their employees. Even though you hear of some problems being corrected (like a camera whose lens protruded too much and was easily scratched) there seem to be 10 major problems for every one corrected. Are the employees just not USING the devices? Or are the companies just not listening?

At least Palm isn't alone:

- How could the original Nokia nGage get into consumer's hands with the game cartridge located UNDER the battery?

- Why didn't Motorola figure out that their beautiful smart flip phone had to run for more than an hour or so on a charge?

The list goes on...

Re:Do Do by ccage · 2004-11-21 05:46 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

We don't need no stinking file system by mysterious_mark · 2004-11-21 05:48 · Score: 2, Insightful

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

FAT? by kasperd · 2004-11-21 05:51 · Score: 2, Insightful

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?

Simple... by Philzli · 2004-11-21 05:54 · Score: 3, Funny

FSCK IT!

Not As Big an Issue as it seems by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-21 05:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

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-

Eating the dogfood by ratboy666 · 2004-11-21 06:02 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

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Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061

Re:FAT [Off-Topic] by ThePhilips · 2004-11-21 06:03 · Score: 5, Funny

You do not know what you are talking about.

Another day I have heard screams in computer room. I went there just to find my friends literally laughing to death. They were trying thru laughing point to the screen of WinXP with error message.

As soon I have taken a look at screen - I have joined them laughing to death under table.

"Invalid MS-DOS function"

For sure, we had over-reacted, due to couple of M$ Zealot who tried to persuade development department that WinXP is complete rewrite of Windows from scratch. And it has nothing to do with MS DOS.

As a person who switch to Linux & Apple long time ago I find bit fuzzing insistence of some companies on using technology from 80s. If you haven't noticed, all external hard-drives are shipped formated with FAT.

No-one yet came out and proposed read-write file system for hard-drives supportable by all OSs. File systems are not standard - I'll love to see OpenGroup/POSIX/ISO having standardize some file system in order for interoperability between OSs. Just like it was done for CD/DVD media.

P.S. Message in our case was showed when one guy tried to delete file with name 'nul' with Explorer. Who remember DOS times - it is reserved name which is presumably impossible to give to a file. Some tools do allow to create/delete files with such name under WinNT/friends.

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All hope abandon ye who enter here.

Palm OS vs. Copland by TimmyDee · 2004-11-21 06:11 · Score: 5, Interesting

As I've been monitoring the discussions of the 650 at TreoCentral (I'm thinking about getting one myself when the GSM version comes out), I couldn't help but thinking that PalmSource and PalmOne seem to be in a position very similar to Apple a few years ago. I know, they're two separate companies where Apple was (and is) one and their new OS is actually off the ground, but bear with me.

A few years ago, Palm/PalmSource probably realized that their OS wasn't going to cut it in the New World of modern computing. They were making the transition from 68k processors to the StrongARM/Xscale series much like Apple made the switch from 68k to PowerPC. All arguments aside, I'd say this was the right thing to do for both companies, but it left them in a bit of a predicament -- legacy code. The only option for both companies was to develop an emulation system so the old could be run on the new. They both work really quite well, but everyone knows you can't run on a hack forever. The time to break with the old had come.

So, Palm decided to start developing Cobalt and Apple started to develop Copland. Preemptive multitasking, protected memory, better multimedia handling -- the calls to arms were the same. Yet where Apple failed with Copland, Palm didn't. Sort of.

Copland was a nightmare. Years of legacy code had turned the Mac OS into a bunch of spaghetti and for some reason the Copland developers thought they could use that spaghetti and bake a tieramisu. It didn't work. Drained of billions of dollars sunk into development, Apple started shopping around in 1996. They looked at BeOS (to what degree of seriousness is a matter of debate) and NeXT and some others, thankfully settling on NeXT. Palm, too, had likely started from the bottom up, found themselves a bit stuck, and then stumbled across the devalued Be, Inc. Purchasing Be, they gained huge strides in the multimedia area and were on their way. They also created PACE, an emulation environment similar to Classic in our beloved Mac OS X, for all that legacy code.

Cobalt should be a runaway success like Mac OS X is. But it's not. You could say that Cobalt is like Mac OS X when it was new. Everybody thought it had great promise, but even Apple was afraid to use it because it just wasn't finished. Now, I'm not sure how "unfinished" Cobalt is at this point, but it could be in the same boat. There are also issues of licensing fees (which I hear are significantly higher for Cobalt compared to Garnet) that cause the analogy to break down a bit, but for the most part it holds.

So in the end, Palm OS 5 is starting to look a lot like Mac OS 9. It works well, but man does it have its problems. Adoption of Cobalt will be key, but PalmSource needs something killer to drive that. It's a shame for PalmSource/PalmOne that they didn't pick up Dominic Giampaolo with the Be acquisition, but I'm also a Mac user and I'm sure glad he's on our team now.

--
Per Square Mile, a blog about density

Will break existing applications by iamacat · 2004-11-21 06:25 · Score: 2, Interesting

On regular Palm devices, you can read from and write to database records directly. It goes something like this:

MemHandle mh = DmQueryRecord(db, recNum); void *p = MemHandleLock(mh); MemSemaphoreReserve(true); // write-unprotect storage memory // Do some access to database record here MemSemaphoreRelease(true); // Restore protection

Granted, MemSemaphore calls are undocumented and Palm asks you to use DmWrite to update a database block instead. The trouble is, Palm devices used to have 36K(!) of regular heap and for recent ones it's around 256K. And C++ compiler wants like 30K for each program/shared library (which is another sorry tale) for virtual functions, exceptions and jumps between 32K segments that you need to partition your code into. Finally, say your database record is a list of stuff >36K and you want to sort it. Imagine how good 2 DmWrite calls to do every record exchange will be for your performance and code readability.

So if you want to do some good stuff in your program, you just allocate "database" pointers and use them as your regular heap. I doubt it would for with Flash on Treo 650, since it will not even know which records are dirty. Even if they still support these calls, performance of your heap being swapped out to flash in 512 byte chunks would be dreadful.

The trouble is, programs that needed to use MemSemaphore calls are probably the ones that do something worthwhile. Try business applications, 3D games, VM-based programming languages... They are going to cripple the most cool programs written for their platform. Should have just included a rechargable backup battery just enough to swap out RAM on power failure.

Re:Will break existing applications by mclove · 2004-11-21 07:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

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.

Who has 22,000 contacts on their phone? by jdb8167 · 2004-11-21 06:25 · Score: 5, Informative

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.

Are you trying to troll? by WIAKywbfatw · 2004-11-21 06:35 · Score: 4, Insightful

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

Re:Are you trying to troll? by WIAKywbfatw · 2004-11-21 07:26 · Score: 2, Informative

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
Re:Are you trying to troll? by nneul · 2004-11-21 07:45 · Score: 3, Informative

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.

It should be managers by jinushaun · 2004-11-21 06:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

They ultimately approve the specifications, so they're responsible for why the filesystem is the way it is.

Motorola MPX by DoorFrame · 2004-11-21 06:50 · Score: 2, Informative

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

Re:Stupid Stupid Stupid... by Grishnakh · 2004-11-21 07:11 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

not really a big problem by ardiri · 2004-11-21 07:22 · Score: 4, Informative

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.

the real story behind this by Anonymous Coward · 2004-11-21 07:53 · Score: 2, Interesting

I'm a third-party Palm developer, so let me shed some light on why this has happened. Or at least on my theory as to why it has happened.

OK, first of all, the current shipping version of Palm OS is 5.x. PalmSource (the software company that makes Palm OS -- Palm was recently split into PalmSource for software and PalmOne for hardware) has been working on OS 6.x. But, OS 6 is not out yet. They're basically done with it, but no devices running it have yet been released.

Now, OS 6 adds many great things (like threads, security, and graphics tools), but one of the big features is the ability to run everything out of flash (with a RAM cache). This is supposed to be a great feature for cell phones since people are always running their cell phones until the battery is dead, dead, dead.

BUT, there have been big delays with OS 6. So, my theory is that the T5 was originally intended to be an OS 6 device. But OS 6 wasn't ready, so PalmOne decided to just stick with OS 5 for it. And the thing is, they had already designed a flash-based device (the T5) but OS 5 doesn't have this flash-based feature, only OS 6.

So what did they do? They (PalmOne, the hardware company) added their own support for flash-based storage heap to OS 5. And they did it hastily, and it kinda sucks. Although it does basically work, but it's just not a good design because it's wasteful and stupid. (They probably didn't want to put in lots of engineering effort since they know it's only a stopgap thing anyway.)

Perhaps PalmOne will redeem themselves by making OS 6 available for the T5. Then it will have a proper implementation of the flash-based thing instead of this temporary crappy implementation that exists right now.

(I can't say definitively, but there are reasons to believe OS 6 does the flash-based thing by using the actual MMU. OS 5 almost certainly does it all in software (by shoehorning it into the system calls), which makes for a bad implementation because you can't really determine which pages are least-recently accessed to get good performance. If you do an actual paging system like I think they've done in OS 6, then you could easily pack small records into a 512-byte block of the backing filesystem instead of just mapping every single record to a list of blocks.)

So, to recap: T5 designed by PalmOne with OS 6 in mind; OS 6 (by PalmSource) delayed too much; PalmOne needs to release T5 so decides to go with (older) OS 5; OS 5 doesn't have flash feature necessary to even WORK on T5 hardware, so PalmOne has to add it at the last minute; OS 6 flash feature could/should be MUCH better.

Re:he is absolutely not a troll by uncadonna · 2004-11-21 07:57 · Score: 2, Funny

the only two problems of the pocket pcs are quite short battery times and the somewhat instable operating system

and the only problem with my car is that it gets six miles to the gallon and that it stalls out on the highway all the time. Oh, yeah, those and that it's pig ugly. Otherwise I like it fine.

--
mt

Why is Palm so cheap with the RAM? by jchristopher · 2004-11-21 08:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

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!

Re:FAT [Off-Topic] by ctr2sprt · 2004-11-21 08:49 · Score: 4, Informative

Who remember DOS times - it is reserved name which is presumably impossible to give to a file. Some tools do allow to create/delete files with such name under WinNT/friends.

Try \\?\path, e.g., \\?\c:\nul.

C:\>echo Hello, world! >\\?\c:\nul C:\>dir \\?\c:\nul Volume in drive \\?\c: has no label. Volume Serial Number is 2007-5968 Directory of \\?\c: 11/21/2004 03:38 PM 16 nul 1 File(s) 16 bytes 0 Dir(s) 0 bytes free C:\>type \\?\c:\nul Hello, world! C:\>del \\?\c:\nul C:\>dir \\?\c:\nul Volume in drive \\?\c: has no label. Volume Serial Number is 2007-5968 Directory of \\?\c: File Not Found

Think of it as an issue of escapes. Remember the days of files called "-rf"?

% echo 'Hello, world!' >"/tmp/-rf ." % echo rm * rm -rf . sess_c22cc906b82ec003d96a0c9aae5158cf

Ditch FAT, use a flash file system by EmbeddedJanitor · 2004-11-21 10:31 · Score: 3, Insightful

FAT, in embedded devices, is the worst way to save data that you care about. FAT is also veeeerrrrryyyy slow relative to some other options. For anything you care about, they should use a well proven fault tolerant file system like YAFFS or JFFS2.These file systems are designed for use with flash storage which makes them far more efficient.

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.

Re:A Fix? by willfe · 2004-11-21 12:34 · Score: 2, Informative

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.

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