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Limitations in Current Breed of Palm Handhelds?
JabrTheHut asks: "Having been a Palm user for over two years now, I've upgraded to a Tungsten T3. While the features I'm used to using have not changed, I have become increasingly frustrated by what I see as a lack of progress. It doesn't seem to want to deal with text files (there is no import feature for the Palm Desktop notepad or memo pad, for example). Also there seems to be no way to copy arbitrary files to the Palm - all files must be "owned" by an application. With a 256MB SD card I expected to use it to copy files between work and home. Has anyone else noticed these or other shortcomings and have figured out ways around them?"
The Palm desktop application sucks. You can work around some of the issues you mentioned though. Moving text files is pretty straightforward if you just copy and past the content. There are file size limitations though. A better way is to write to your SD card directly, and use (on the palm) an application (like FileZ or UniCMD) to access it.
In Palm Quick Install.. Click on "Add" then select files of type "All Files (*.*)".
:)
Alternatively, get a SD card drive, its faster
Documents 2 Go can handle text files, alternatively, you can use the Palm Desktop to copy/paste things into memopad.
There are various shareware/freeware utils that act as very basic file managers for the palm, with hexedit capabilities. (They can also be used to edit/delete your preference files - which can come in useful)
Third party applications are really the only solution to this problem, here's one I used a while back: http://www.tealpoint.com/softmovr.htm
Some Palms (and Palmish devices.. I have a Sony Clie) come with a gateway-type program you can use to put random files on the memory card. If yours doesn't have one built in, you may be able to find a third-party one.
mrg
You can install anything to a SD card by selecting "Install to Card". Alternatively, you can install anything to ram using a program such as RAMDisk. Palm uses a very efficient database file system, and they don't want it cluttered up with your MP3 files (just look at the problems they had with the T5 when they tried to allow any files to be stored in RAM).
File Link|Create New Link|Application (Memopad) | File Path (Select your file -- even a
It will sync the file to the palm EVERY time you sync. Works great.
You can EASILY install ANY file to ANY palm with an SD card using either a USB card reader OR install-to-card on the palm quickinstall menu.
This doesn't even begin to address 3rd party solutions available, too. I have a LOT of problems with palm -- but what you are complaining about isn't a weakness in palm, but a weakness in your knowledge of how to USE a palm.
My current palm is a Zire 72 -- and I'm quite happy with it. Aside from the paint peeling off (DUH PALM!), it's VERY stable. My few work-mates who have PPCs crash almost daily.
I eventually found out from talking to the developers that version 0.12.0, currently in CVS, supports the uploading of arbitrary files to the memory card on the palm.
I downloaded 0.12.0-rc4 from CVS and it compiled cleanly. There's a new option to pilot-xfer, -D, to install arbitrary files to the filesystem on the memory card.
This worked perfectly, but I found it a bit slow for transferring lots of MP3 files, so I bought a cheap USB2 card readed, which I can mount like a drive, and use cp to copy the files across. The card readed only cost UKP9.95+VAT and is really worh it for convenience and ease of use.
Stick Men
>Ever heard of PocketPC?
Can I be so bold to suggest that this lack of innovation might be due to the lack fo significant competition for Palm!
It doesn't seem to want to deal with text files (there is no import feature for the Palm Desktop notepad or memo pad, for example).
I found the lack of a decent text editor so annoying that 18 months ago I started writing a text editor for PalmOS: SiEd. It opens text files straight from SD-Cards, as well as Palm DOC files in main memory. You can use it to convert between the two as well.
...with the Tungsten T5 and the Treo 650. Each of these handhelds has two types of memory built in - the usual RAM that we've had for years, and non-volatile memory where all of your user data, programs, etc are stored. This memory is formatted with a standard FAT filesystem, and can be mounted on the desktop with no special tricks. Essentially, this NVRAM acts as a "hard disk" for the Palm, and should be every bit as flexible as one.
From the T5 spec sheet:
256MB (215MB actual storage capacity: 160MB internal flash drive, 55MB program memory for applications and data.)
And from the Treo 650 spec sheet:
23MB user-available stored non-volatile memory [doesn't list program memory - I believe it's 32MB]
See the following for more details:
How does the Treo 650 memory system work (NVFS)?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I saw a few comments requesting SSH clients and Text Readers so I thought I point some out.
First some free stuff:
plucker - Ebook reader. Really only supports it's own format but is very robust. iSilo is a non-free ebook reader that supports other formats including txt, but with the plucker tools you can convert almost any document into plucker format.
pssh - There are other SSH clients for palmos, but this one doesn't crash my treo.
palmvnc - Very neat, but less than practical on my low-res, low-speed treo.
soundrec - Simple sound recording application, export to wav (usefull with Bhajis Loops) designed for the treo 600 but may work with other palm devices
Now some non-free stuff:
Pocket Tunes - Turn your palm device into an ipod only better with ogg and wma support. Worth the price.
Bhajis Loops - Turn your palm device into a music studio. Also worth the price
Not too mention the countless games, calculators, calendars, and other knick-knacks.
There are limitations in hardware obviously. There's only so much stuff you can fit in such a tiny device. But I must say that my treo 600 does way more than I ever expected when I bought it.
Especially when you consider the vaccum features on the Zaurus SL-6000L :-D. Check the features on the following eBay auction out, hilarious:
e gory=38331&item=5737274915&rd=1
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&cat
Heiko
but get a PDA with Windows Mobile 2003 Second Edition. My Dell x50v has it and I still can't belive the stuff I can do with it. It mounts as drives in WinXP, I stream TV/DVDs to it, I mount my home network and can play any file I own. Well, expet for my HDTV stuff - then again what's the point of a 1280x720 video on a 640x480 display? I guess the Linux ones can do some of this too...
Second, because Palm apps used to do that - when you entered an app it put right where you were when you last left it. Strictly speaking they never launched or terminated, they were just active or not.
PalmOS lost it's focus a long time ago, it's very depressing.
Clear, Dark Skies
Things I am missing from the current generation of Palms, but I find as built-in features on my [tr]usted HP-100LX are:
- A rechargable battery that runs for about three weeks.
- The ability to plug in standard AA bateries when the rechargable battery runs out.
- A plain vanilla 12V charger port and a backup batery when the two options fail. (In 12 years I have only lost data once, when the machine fell from my bike in a shallow water ditch).
- Real (though not preemtive) context switching. When I enter one application, the other one is suspended in the state it was, and will be resumed at exactly the same state when I return to it.
- An industry standard file system (FAT), and support for cheap standard PCMCIA memory cards.
- A complete spreadsheet (not just a viewer) that includes macros, and graphs.
- A customizable database supporting complex queries and a visual form builder.
- Customizable calendar, phone book, and note-taking applications, based on the above database.
- A scientific and financial calculator with an equation solver, and graphing capability.
- Locale support for Greece (fonts, keyboard, sorting) out of the box.
- A sturdy design that can withstand 12 years of (ab)use.
The flexibility and stability of the machine's software is legendary. Over the years it has adapted to a change in the daylight savings time rule, Y2K, the introduction of the Euro symbol, and a number of phone renumbering exercises (it contains a world city database with a dialing prefixes and a map). The software is fixed in ROM; all needed changes were made via configuration files.Main advantage of database abstraction is that HotSync could incrementally backup and synchronize your data without knowing about its internal structure. In cases when it should know about record structure, it could be extended on PC-side by something called "Conduits" - essentially plug-ins responsible for synchronizing certain kind of database records.
In more recent versions of Palm OS they realized that they could not get away without good old file system abstraction (for example for accessing network drives or compact flash cards) and they introduced Virtual File System manager, in short VFS. VFS is certainly step ahead, but data stored on VFS does not have advantage of HotSync - it is not backed up, not synced on per-record basis, not purged then application owning it is deleted.
Other systems, like PocketPC and Symbian already have just one data storage model - File System. PalmOS now have two, incompatible ones.
VFS abstraction is more flexible than database, since it offers multi-tier data organization (nested directories) versus two-tier in database (database and record). Interestingly, old model could be mapped into VFS model. One could write VFS library representing databases in main memory as VFS directories. Each record will be shown as file in appropriate directory. This would allow to access with old data structures via new API. Databases modified via this VFS API are still valid PalmOS databases and could be backed up via HotSync. Now developers could gradually shift to new VFS API and old database API could be eventually phased out.
I hope somebody will develop such VFS implementation.
(copied verbatim from my june 2004 blog entry)