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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.
What does PalmOne do?
File for bankruptcy?
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.
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.
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...
IntechHosting - Free domain, 2GB, PHP, £4.95/$8.95
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.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.
--
make install -not war
Ah, FAT. The cornerstone of any modern operating system...
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?
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
--==[ AOL YIM ICQ : Levendis47 : levendis47@yahoo.com ]==--
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
"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.
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.
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...
FSCK IT!
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
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.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.