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Handhelds Upgrades Hardware

Palm Memory Maximum Increased 161

Posted by CowboyNeal from the more-to-remember dept.
Trillan writes "PalmSource has announced that it has developed a technology for increasing the maximum RAM on a Palm handheld from 16MB to 128MB. Hopefully new devices will come out soon to take advantage of it." This looks to me like Palm's plan for remaining competitive against handhelds like Sony's that can add more memory in via memory stick. As more and more multimedia apps are written for PalmOS, more storage space only makes sense.
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Palm Memory Maximum Increased More

Palm Memory Maximum Increased

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  • Erm... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by lingqi ( 577227 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @04:40AM (#5758165) Journal
    So, - what in the world does RAM size has to do with application storage? Last I checked applications / data / whatever are stored in ROM?

    And it's interesting that Palm would be able to handle that much RAM - I mean, I still know some full blown computers straddling around with 64M... I won't even talk about the time when 8M was a lot, or when some idiot thought 640k was enough for everyone, and before that when stuff were represeted by holes on paper, and before even that when wooden beads on a frame were used in asia.

    anyhoo... can't imagine anything that will take advantage of that much RAM (right now), though, it'd be interesting what comes of it if they tried - Palm don't have the processing power, but if it did, much more powerful software can be written for it.

    Otoh - DRAM (I am assuming they are using DRAM for the extra RAM)needs to be refreshed which means that even in standby / whatever, they still draw a non-insignificant amount of power. I am seriously hoping that RAMTRON will get the density up so we can have some MRAM action.

    (side note - SRAM draws more juice when operating but uses nearly none when in standby (only leakage current - which on modern cmos is equilavent to counting electrons) - I wonder how does manufactures of PDAs determine which ones to go with, if cost wasn't a issue (with cost an issue DRAM-or-SRAM is not even a question))

    Okay, end rant.

    • Re:Erm... (Score:3, Informative)

      by DiscoOnTheSide ( 544139 )
      Not sure if it's changed since I took a stab at programming for the Palm platform, but there's no RAM/ROM division like PocketPCs/PocketLinux PDAs. Programs are run straight from the storage memory, no RAM needed.

      • Close, but note quite. (Score:5, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18, 2003 @05:16AM (#5758229)

        On the Palm, there are essentially four kinds of storage:

        1. There's the system ROM. The system boots from this. It stores the whole operating system. It's actually flash, but then what isn't these days? Except in rare circumstances, the Flash is never updated. The one exception is that you might once or twice during the life of the system do a major OS upgrade by rewriting the whole system ROM. The system ROM is CPU-addressable memory, meaning it can issue load instructions against it. (Or actually on 68k, they're "move" instructions...)
        2. The dynamically allocated memory that's available to applications. This resides in RAM, of course. I'm lumping the stack, the heap, global variables, etc. together here. Also directly CPU-addressable, otherwise how would you have variables in your program? :-)
        3. The "databases". The Palm doesn't have files, or actually it does, but it doesn't use them for much and they are an afterthought. Instead, everything is in a "database". This is taken so far that even applications are databases. Their records contain code and other resources they need to run (GUI objects, bitmaps, etc.). Also, the user data is all in databases. Your phone list is a database, your datebook is another, etc., etc. These databases are, for the most part, surprisingly stored on the very same RAM chips as the dynamic data that programs use. Interestingly, the Palm has hardware write protection for this data, though, so even though it runs the good old 68000 instruction set, which is too old to support memory protection in the modern sense, you're still protected if a program goes haywire. It can't accidentally write over your phone list. In order to modify a database, you must go through an API call. Also of interest is the fact that, because important data (applications, all your phone numbers, etc.) is stored in this portion of RAM, when you reboot the Palm, the RAM is not erased. Or at least not that part of it. (Unless you do a cold boot.) So, yes, strange as it may seem, all your important data is stored in plain old RAM for months or years on end.
        4. Some Palm models also have removeable flash media. These are much more like a traditional filesystem, with files, directory names, etc. In fact, they are a normal filesystem -- they're good old (!?) FAT. Palm doesn't really have great support for these devices, in that everything for years and years has all been designed to work with databases instead, so the idea of real files is a foreign concept, and most apps can't access them. Of course, there is a complete API for accessing filesystems on the flash if you want to build an application that calls it. Also, the OS does allow you to store read-only databases on the Flash, which means you can store applications there. (Remember, applications are stored in databases. In Palm terminology, a PRC is sort of just a special case of a PDB.)

        So, to sum things up, yes, programs are run straight from storage memory, but storage memory happens to be RAM, although the operating system goes to a lot of trouble to mentally keep that RAM separate from the "regular" RAM (used in the traditional way), which is important because all that RAM is really coming from the same pool.

        • Re:Close, but note quite. (Score:4, Informative)

          by MythosTraecer ( 141226 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @01:35PM (#5760884)
          Also, the OS does allow you to store read-only databases on the Flash, which means you can store applications there.

          The OS allows you to store both read-only and read-write databases on the memory cards, just like on a disk drive. But in order to write to a file on a card, you have to use the VFS API rather than the standard PDB access routines. Several add-on programs allow apps that don't support VFS to get read-only access to databases on cards. These add-ons can't provide write access because it would be impossible without causing data corruption on the card. But this read-only limitation is the fault of the application for not supporting VFS. The OS will let you freely read and write to memory cards until your heart's content. You just have to use VFS.

          You are right in that apps can be stored on memory cards. But the Application Launcher you're using must support VFS (or you must use another add-on program); otherwise, you won't be able to see the app's icon in your App Launcher!
    • IMHO (Sony Clié SL10) applications are stored in RAM, just the preinstalled apps (datebook, notes, ...) are stored in FlashROM.

    • Re:Erm... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18, 2003 @05:35AM (#5758270)

      On the Palm, apparently the really early models (like the Palm Professional I've had since 1997) actually used static RAM, but newer ones use dynamic RAM. On models that use AAA batteries, there is a circuit that steps up the voltage and a pretty powerful capacitor too, so that when you take out the batteries, your memory contents will stay around for quite some time. (An hour, last I tried it.) Apparently, because of the step-up circuit, the capacitor can be kept fully charged even when your (2 x AAA) battery voltage is waaaay down. So, the Palm devices make a valiant effort at keeping power going to the RAM.

      I think static RAM was a good choice initially, because the Palm's CPU is actually running only a very small amount of the time. Even when the display is on, the device is in a power-saving mode called "doze" mode until you press a button or something. After a few minutes of inactivity, it goes into a different mode called "sleep" mode, in which current draw goes down even more. So, really, the percentage of the time that the processor is running is really quite small.

      • Capacitor Strength (Score:3, Informative)

        by silentbozo ( 542534 )
        I don't know if it is because of variability in the capacitors, age, or unstrength batteries, but in my Pilot 5000 (yes, an original USR Pilot 5000, upgraded with the 2mb IR card), I often lose my main memory if I swap batteries at the 2.3v-2.4v level.

        So, while some palms may successfully hold their charge while you swap batteries, don't count on it. Always remember to hotsync your unit before changing batteries...

    • Re:Erm... (Score:2, Funny)

      by vocaro ( 569257 )
      Last I checked applications / data / whatever are stored in ROM?

      So you put your calendar and datebook contacts into permanent storage... Not much of a social life, huh?

  • Gee, how innovative (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @04:42AM (#5758168) Journal
    ... to add 3 address bits to the Memory bus. wow, that must have been hard...

    When sales slump a little more, and their market research indicates people want more RAM, maybe they'll add another address bit.

    When are people going to realize that technological innovation ISN'T. Intellectual Property law has completely ended innovation. All we can do is expand, complicate, and repackage, the same damn IP that we invented 10 years ago because we're not allowed to innovate anymore. Even if we could, it wouldn't be worth it because we'd just get sued by some jackass that thinks he invented it first and the lawyers would bleed us dry..

    • He's got a point, and this ain't trolling.

      (We can tell some Palm, inc. stockholders have mod points today.)
      (despite that, I still ain't posting anon.)
    • Maybe Palm has the same problems that the Mac and Amiga had for a while when there was 24 bit addressing - dumb programmers using the unused bits in address registers to store other flags.
    • This is totally true. Palm, as a company, is doomed because they have done nothing but sit on their asses and crank out the same products without any innovation. Look at the palms you can buy today versus the ones that came out in the mid-90s. Not a lot of progress is it? Same applications, a little more memory but it is available in several snappy colors! I hate Pocket PC for their upgrade policies (new version -- better buy a new device!) and their "lets-put-a-watered-down-version-of-windows-on-a- h andhe
    • to add 3 address bits to the Memory bus. wow, that must have been hard

      Considering that it probably means re-engineering significant portions of the hardware, yeah it probably was fairly hard. Palms are compact devices... before they can add 3 address lines they have to find room to put them in.

      All we can do is expand, complicate, and repackage, the same damn IP that we invented 10 years ago

      When was this ever NOT the case? All technological innovation, ever, has been based on expansion, maturation, o
      • Considering that it probably means re-engineering significant portions of the hardware, yeah it probably was fairly hard.

        There are lots of things in this world that are hard but straightforward.

    • Dragonball can only address 16M of RAM. Of course now that Palm uses ARM, they probably didn't have to do anything besides insert a larger memory chip.

      Still, they'll need to come up with multitasking and other features of modern OS to use so much memory effectively. Now, it's basically DOS style programming, complete with malloc() limit of 64K. Embedded Linux running old apps in a silver box anyone?

  • i'll invest when (Score:4, Funny)

    by tooninja ( 663018 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @04:45AM (#5758174)
    . Handheld Linux OS + Phone + GPS + Camera + Multimedia Capabilities + Wireless + a frickin' laser = a single device (Flip phone size) ... (okay maybe the laser could be an add on) ... but hopefully within 5 years....

  • It's for competitiveness against PocketPC (Score:5, Informative)

    by fer ( 19182 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @04:48AM (#5758184) Homepage
    This looks to me like Palm's plan for remaining competitive against handhelds like Sony's that can add more memory in via memory stick.


    Palmsource is responsible for the PalmOS which is used by both Sony *and* Palm devices. It has nothing to do with flash memory (which is used by both hardware brands).

    With this development, all Palmsource licensees including Sony and Palm can use up to 128MB internal memory to remain competitive with PocketPC devices.
    • Adding 128M to Palm doesn't make it the equivalent of even WinCE (which itself is nothing to write home about): Palm memory management is, and remains, pathetic.

      Both Palm and Microsoft love churning out these messed up, non-standard APIs because it ties programmers to them and creates a market niche. The messier the API, the better, as long as a company has a captive developer population.

      From a purely technical point of view, both systems should be relegated to the dustbin of history and replaced with

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @07:46AM (#5758563)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • The PalmOS devices continue to be successful because they don't try to cram some variant of Unix or Windows in them and, instead, stick to an OS that is appropriate.

          Actually I don't consider Palm all that successful anymore. Power-hungry colour screens, MP3/voice capabilities, cameras, wireless... They are running into the PocketPC/Zaurus arena and they will fail because their API was never meant to handle these things.

          IMO, my Palm Vx (well maybe the m500 because it has the SD/MMC port) was the pin

        • Re:POSIX/Linux is *NOT* the answer. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:47AM (#5759231)
          Palm's API is clean, intelligent, and well-designed for its intended purpose (a PDA).

          Palm's intended purpose these days is to compete in the consumer and enterprise markets. Even if you could make an argument that its pathetic excuse for APIs was "well designed" for the handful of PDA functions that Palm originally had, Palm OS 4/5 just is a no-go there because programmers aren't going to go back to what amounts to a 16 bit segmented architecture. Even Palm understands this, which is why they are rewriting things.

          A POSIX-compatible kernel is completely inappropriate for a Palm-style handheld. Have you ever tried to write a GUI-based Othello program that's 15K long on Linux? How about a 47K full scientific calculator?

          I used to do graphics programming on PDP-11s; those things had a 64k address space and ran somewhere in the single digit MHz range. So, yes, I have written GUI apps that, by necessity, used that little memory. Of course, why one needs to undergo that kind of self-flagellation on a 175MHz RISC processor with 16M of RAM is somewhat beyond me. I mean, are you planning on running 1000 simultaneous copies of Othello (fat chance that PalmOS wouldn't crash first anyway). And with all that "efficiency", why is PalmOS actually so damned slow? I mean, I could grep faster on a PDP-11 than the search function on my Palm.

          Incidentally, my first personal UNIX machine had a 20MHz processor, 4M of RAM, and ran X11 plus many command line tools we still get today.

          You see, the UNIX APIs were well-designed: they scale from 16 bit machines to 64 bit machines and let you take full advantage of the capabilities. If you give them a Gbyte of memory to play with, users can fill it with applications, images, and other stuff. If it needs to run in a few hundred kbytes of memory, it can do that, too. That is unlike incompetent attempts like DOS, Windows, or PalmOS which need rewriting every time the wind shifts.

          It's that I-have-a-hammer-so-every-solution-involves-a-nail kind of thinking that has ruined many embedded systems. If you Linux pushers had your way, PalmOS handhelds would need faster CPUs, far more RAM, and would drain batteries so fast that Rayovac shares would jump up 50%.

          If "us UNIX/POSIX pushers" had our way, handhelds would get by with a fraction of the power and resources that they are using, and they wouldn't require major OS and application rewrites every couple of years.

          The notion that something like the Tungsten T is a dainty little machine that is too delicate to UNIX/Linux is just ridiculous. I mean, were you born yesterday? The T|T has more CPU power and memory than UNIX workstations from the early 1990s.

          It's only people like you and the PalmOS developers who are completely ignorant of history and keep reinventing the wheel--badly.

          • Yah. I can remember years ago my old workplace used to run a 486/66 48MB novell 3.12 server.

            And it served 50 users. Users were happy with it. In fact when we switched to a 200MHz PPro NT with more ram (192MB?), RAID5, it seemed to run slower. Maybe it was the RAID5. Nah.

            Whatever it is, the PDAs nowadays have lotsa power. So do the phones.

            Maybe Apple should revisit the Newton?
          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
            • So, tell me Mr. Unix, how do you propose running Linux, X11, and storing all of your applications and data in 2MB of RAM?

              I don't know why you keep blabbing on about "Linux+X11". I said Palm should be using POSIX APIs; there are plenty of POSIX kernels. Do you understand the difference between an API and a specific implementation? Oh, wait, no, you obviously don't.

              The Palm Zire, a current, low-end Palm handheld, has 2MB of RAM.

              And why do you think that is? Because it would cost a couple of dollars m

              • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                • You can make up things or quote things out of context till you're blue in the face. But two simple points remain:
                  • Palm is engaging in a complete rewrite of PalmOS and developers have to rewrite their applications to take advantage of the new capabilities.
                  • Whatever justifications there may have been for Palm's design decisions on the original Palm are irrelevant. They are going for a high-end market now, and they don't have an OS to match.

                  The only reason Palm is still hanging on is because of developer

                  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                    • So, you admit that the original OS was suitable for the market at which it was aimed? If so, we've made some progress.

                      Of course, the OS was "suitable" for its original market and purpose--I never disputed that. But there are many ways of writing a "suitable" OS for even the 128k Palm, and Palm picked one of the technically worst ways, a way that requires them to do a major rewrite of the OS and applications to port it to ARM.

                      The problem with PalmOS is not its (lack of) suitability to the hardware it wa

                    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                • Yeah, it was real nice. Just look at an excerpt from this review of the Agenda [uni-potsdam.de]: There. Now you see how well Linux works on a PDA.

                  The review for the Agenda VR is entirely accurate. However, the the Palms available at the time were slower, less responsive, and crashed more.

                  You see, unlike you, I have actually used the various systems. All of the handhelds are compromises. Functionally, the Linux-based ones are about as bad or good as the alternatives. The difference is that they don't

                  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

                    • The review for the Agenda VR is entirely accurate. However, the the Palms available at the time were slower, less responsive, and crashed more.

                      That is simply incorrect. I have never tried to start an app on an Palm and had it take around a minute for [my] other application to start up or register [my] input as the review stated.

                      That's because the Palm Pilots we had at the time weren't even capable of starting up multiple applications at the same time.

                      Again, the Agenda VR UI was not as mature as the P

                    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                    • Who cares?

                      Palm cares. That's why they are doing a big rewrite for PalmOS 6.

                      What argument? I was countering your claim that PalmOS tied you to a single vendor.

                      PalmOS comes from a single vendor only.

                      It has a larger memory footprint than PalmOS. It requires far more CPU cycles. It will reduce battery life. It will kill off the low-end $99 machines. And it does not answer a significant need.

                      As if PalmOS 5/6 is going to run on a Zire.

                    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
                    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • POSIX-compatible kernel is completely inappropriate for a Palm-style handheld.

          It takes much more than a kernel to be POSIX compatible. Using Linux in no way implies all the POSIX miscellany (although that's what the other poster wanted).

          However, the more important point is that new PDAs being designed today are not "Palm style" handhelds. Today's new hardware is completely different from the 1996 PalmPilots. A minimalist, single-tasking, manual allocation API that was fine for scraping along in 1 mega
          • A minimalist, single-tasking, manual allocation API that was fine for scraping along in 1 megabyte of RAM becomes a drawback moving into a future of 64+ megabytes and always-on WiFi networking.

            I like my Palm IIIxe, and I've even developed programs for it, but I agree that Palm has needed to add some kind of multitasking in for quite a while. Ironically, the kernel that PalmOS is based on is a real-time, multithreaded OS, but the license agreement that Palm made only allows applications to use a single thr

            • I'd love features like the Zaurus, I enjoy 1-3 month battery life.

              I feel that one of the big marketing oversights Sharp made with the Zaurus is failing to produce an "entry-level" model. Their first Linux Zaurus product cost nearly $400 at launch, because of high-end features- which are actually detriments to some buyers. The gorgeous color screen made battery-life horrible, and the physical QWERTY keyboard made it bulkier than any Palm or PocketPC.

              Releasing a greyscale, no-keyboard model would've incr

      • Actually I found Palm's memory handling quite logical -- you're writing for a platform with a slow but energy-miserly processor and small amount of memory. Why bog it down with unnecessary memory buffers memory reorganization?

        Access all memory as handles and lock what you need only when you need it. It's a pain in the arse compared to the normal "memory's always there and can be used as if it's never going to run out" but in the context I mentioned above, it's really not too bad. You work within your c

  • imagine... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18, 2003 @04:51AM (#5758192)
    imagine a beo...aergq+t43,.234 [NO CARRIER]

  • Drug Wars (Score:2, Funny)

    by phunhippy ( 86447 )
    Alright! Now i can really play drug wars game for PalmOS to its fullest!

  • Palm already competing with Memory Stick (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 18, 2003 @04:55AM (#5758203)
    This looks to me like Palm's plan for remaining competitive against handhelds like Sony's that can add more memory in via memory stick.

    If that's their plan, then they're doing quite well, since 7 (out of 9) of Palm's current models and at least one of the older models all have an SD Card slot. Some links for more info:

    • The Palm product family [palm.com] -- look at the "Expansion Cards" row.
    • And a list of expansion cards [palm.com] that are available from Palm. (You can use generic SD Cards from other manufacturers too, of course.)

    However, as you might be aware from having used Flash in other circumstances, regular RAM is waaaaaaaay faster than Flash, so breaking the 16MB RAM barrier is a Good Thing(tm).

    On a completely different note, why doesn't Slashdot allow me to use HTML entites, so that I could write ™ and get a REAL trademark symbol? Is it that hard? It seems like actually extra work to filter them out!

  • memstick, chemstick (Score:2, Informative)

    by lexcyber ( 133454 )
    I have a 128M SD-card in my palm tungsten T, wich I run alot of application from. I also have some mp3's on it. So what is the point?
    • Reading from the SD card is a lot slower than reading from internal memeory. In fact, when you run an app from a card, it actually copies it into internal RAM first so it'll run faster.
    • I have a 128M SD-card in my palm tungsten T, wich I run alot of application from. I also have some mp3's on it. So what is the point?

      The point is Slashdot editors are allowing ignorant trolls in story submissions to get through.

      The article is (I assume :^) about changes in the Palm OS that allow MAIN MEMORY to expand to 128MB for 16MB. The submitter, clearly having no clue, used his limited knowledge to say "Hey, those Sony gadgets can use proprietary 128MB memory sticks to expand. Ha! Dumb Palm!"; in

      • Nit: Palm OS5 is built for ARM cores. While Motorola is marketing their new i.MX chips as part of the DragonBall family, it has to be emphasized that it's completely different from the older 68K based DragonBall chips that Palm was using before.

        In fact, Palm Hardware isn't even using Dragonballs anymore, but rather have seem to have picked the TI OMAP ARM chips instead, and Sony has is using Intel XScales for their OS5 PDAs. I believe Garmin is using a Dragonball MXL for their new GPS/Palm doohickey tho
  • What's this crap?

    I only use my palm when I don't get RAM...

    When I get some RAM, my hand gets to rest for a while.

    And when I don't get RAM, I use my palm a lot... Sometimes it gets hairy, and I have to shave it. Then I have a Shaved Palm.

    I don't know where the Pilot bit came in. I've never RAMmed a pilot before.

    I've used my Palm while thinking about a stewardess, but not a Pilot. That's sick.

    • Re:RAM / Palm / Pilot (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Funny in its own right, but I near cried when I first saw the name of the Palm Pilot.

      When I went to high school in the late 80s, a "palm pilot" was a wanker. someone who masturbated too much. an idiot with his hand on it all the time.

      (maybe you had to be there)
  • If palm could allow their pda to use the IBM 1Gb micro hdd would be great. 128mb ? How many mp3s, pictures and divx movies can I store ?

    I could sure use the 1GB drive !

  • Caching (Score:2)

    by rf0 ( 159958 )
    I wonder if they can use the memory to cache any say incoming streams rather than having swap space

    Rus

  • Memorysticks aren't RAM. (Score:5, Informative)

    by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @05:21AM (#5758241)
    Sony Clie handhelds run the PalmOS. The memorysticks are used for storage, not RAM, as PalmOS can't use that much memory for RAM. Which is part of the reason why they're extending PalmOS.
    • I used to have a visor dlx (which ran palm os). I got an adapter for it to use compact flash which had advantages and disadvantages. It was slow to read from, and even slower to write to (The bottleneck was the handheld). It also required me to get a third party launcher to run programs off of it. However, I could store any file type on it, and I even had software to read jpegs and wavs. It also let me backup my internal ram (8mb) to the compact flash card in case it got erased. I think that having m
  • With innovations like these, the future is truly bright. My, we haven't had this kind of creative thinking since people added extended memory hacks to DOS. World hunger is sure to end soon.
  • or a hack?
  • In my pre coffee morning stupor I read the headline as "Pain Memory Maximum Increased". That's some tech I can live without. "It's like high school but without the drugs".
  • Does this mean that I can write more phone numbers on my hand?

  • I want a PDA, not a laptop (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mousse-man ( 632412 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @07:00AM (#5758399) Homepage
    Different devices for different needs. I still have an old (or better: now antique) Palm IIIc for my PDA needs. It does everything perfectly. I can download mail, I can even browse the web in a limited way, I have my phone numbers and even a game or two, and some ebooks to read. I want that device to be usable when I'm away from the grid. For a whole day. To effectively work with a keyboard, type this article, do some scripting and java programming, I have a notebook with all possible gadgets and softwares that will fit on a 40 GB disk (with Linux, as we know, an "awful lot" (c) by mousse-man 2003). I can watch multimedia stuff on it, can use Mozilla and other memory hogs, and I have a second battery in the DVD-ROM bay when I'm away from the grid, giving me approx 4.5 hours of work time. That's why I keep my old Palm and haven't bought a Sharp Zaurus - it won't work more than 3 or four hours at a time without recharging. Just one advantage the Zaurus has is all that fancy free software. If somebody makes a Zaurus that lives on little power, a smaller footprint than the current model, I might be tempted to test it since I'm a bit of a Linux zealot... :) Getting a Palm to have more than 8 MB of RAM won't have any benefit for me as I don't even use 6 MB. And I use my palm as calendar, address book, and a for a few other applications and references.
    • The big items on my Palm are a dictionary (5MB), and AvantGo (2MB). Both of these could be improved with more memory. I haven't even fully realised the potential of my M515, and it's already sitting at 12MB used.
      • Agreed, a Thesaurus (4mb) and Avant Go (2MB) eat up the main chunk of RAM available on my device, but there is also a Japanese Dictionary (5 MB), a Spanish Dictionary (3 MB), a Perl developer's guide (3MB), an HTML with Style Sheets guide (4MB) that need to be swapped on and off quite frequently. 128MB of ram could easily be filled with the reference material available online, and would be a compelling reason to upgrade.
        • Yeah, the extra RAM would be nice... I've got almost 40 megs of medical software on my card - being able to store it all in RAM would speed things up a bit. Unfortunately, I suspect that this will only be available for the new StrongARM power-gobbling multimedia devices which get 3 or 4 hours of battery life at best...
    • A PDA is a Personal Digital Assistance - What do you want digital help with today? For a lot of people, playing MP3s is a digital activity they'd like help with, and 16MB of memory just doesn't cut it - the 128MB is marginally enough. Depending on what other new applications people want to develop, they might or might not be able to fit them in Palm's atrociously limited applications memory, and if this makes it easier to develop new cool apps, they win.

      Some of the potential new applications you might

  • Now, if only they can find a technological innovation that'll let them make a Palm device with a decent size screen. Say, a device about the size of a paperback book. That way e-books might actually have a chance of catching on.

  • Probably used for Palm's new Tungsten C (Score:4, Interesting)

    by abischof ( 255 ) <alex@NoSpAm.spamcop.net> on Friday April 18, 2003 @07:41AM (#5758539) Homepage
    This is probably used for the new Tungsten C [palminfocenter.com] (to be released at the end of this month, so they say). In addition to integrated WiFi (w00t!) and a 400 MHz processor, it's also said to include at least 32 MB RAM.

  • Market Matured? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jmichaelg ( 148257 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @07:51AM (#5758580) Journal
    I'm thinking "so what?" I don't want a PDA to be anything but a PDA that runs virtually forever on a charge. I'm on my third PDA only because I wore out the first two.

    For me that's it - the only reason I'll buy another PDA is when the one I have dies. What I have does exactly what I bought it for - don't need any whizbang, battery-draining geegaws on it.

    So maybe that's why Palm is hurting - they've sold their equipment to everyone who's willing to fork a few hundred dollars for an electronic rolodex/calendar/calculator. For everyone else, it's a device that's either too expensive compared to manual methods or they just don't need to be organized - their organic memories are good enough.
    • Well... I guess if that's all you use it for then it isn't really useful. I don't though. I look at it as more of a small, low-storage, palmtop computer. Sure I use it to keep track of things, but I'm far more likely to use it to read the news or a book, keep a database of movie times, play games, store useful data, and a number of other things. I'd say that I use the calender and address book least of anything on it.

      Now if the Palm platform offered more features much like the PocketPC lines but without th

  • MMPlayer for Palm (Score:2, Informative)

    by datrus ( 265707 )
    Checkout mmplayer.com [mmplayer.com].

    I'm trying to develop a mobile media player that supports most codecs, formats and protocols.

    I think this will be most useful when finished.
  • Wow, very cool that they are modernizing this platform more to support this much memory. However, I gotta think that someday I'll look back and miss the days when I had apps on my pilot that would run in infinitesimal amounts of memory. I actually have one of the original Pilot PDAs (yeah, even before they caled them palm pilots). IIRC it had something like 256k of memory. Unfortunately, I don't think the thing even runs anymore.

    Speaking of which, anyone interested in buy a legacy PDA? :)

  • Announcement is Significant (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Coppit ( 2441 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @09:29AM (#5759107) Homepage
    This announcement that Palm OS 5.2.1 can handle more memory comes just before the new Palm Tungsten C is rumored to be released. The T|C is supposed to have 64MB of memory and run--you guessed it--OS 5.2.1.

    Here [palminfocenter.com] is the original leak, and here [ebay.com] is one for sale on Ebay. The thing is supposed to retail for $499 on the 25th, but some dumbass is willing to pay an extra $300 to get it a couple days earlier. Anyway, Quill Corp, Amazon, and Staples all jumped the gun with listings for the product but have since removed them.

    I for one am going to snap one up on Wednesday. It's got a hi-res color display, 64MB of RAM, a thumbboard (which I like), a 400MHz Intel XScale chip, no exterior antenna, and best of all... 802.11b. (No, damn it, I don't want to pay a stupid monthly bill for your wireless service when I can get it just about anywhere I work away from the office.)

  • Does this mean that they can finally port Nethack to the Palm [sourceforge.net]?
  • Refreshing all that memory has got to be hell on the device's battery life. Unless they've devised some clever way to ignore unallocated memory.
  • Monopolistic vorticies are ideas that when turned on, cause people to need your product in such a way that everyone needs it, and at the same time competitors can not be born.

    This particular idea was infared scheduling.

    You know how you have headaches scheduling?

    Well simply enter in your free time, with a weight, and beam all the PDAs data between each other, and you have a few options for meeting times.

    It saves time scheduling, but removes the "I'm more important than you factor", unless you want to add
  • My next 'phone' will be either Palm-based Tungsten or Symbian-based Ericsson/Nokia. Which one to get?
    The Palm has thousends of applications and games, but Symbian has Repton [bluetechnologies.co.uk], and is more 'modern'. GPRS here [cia.gov] is surprisingly cheap, so I'm looking forward to use it, since I don't talk much on the phone.
    Choices, choices....

  • Ignorance of Palm/PalmSource/Sony and Palm OS (Score:4, Informative)

    by MythosTraecer ( 141226 ) on Friday April 18, 2003 @01:15PM (#5760733)
    This looks to me like Palm's plan for remaining competitive against handhelds like Sony's that can add more memory in via memory stick.

    This shows a complete ignorance of Palm, PalmSource, Sony, and Palm OS itself.

    PalmSource, the Palm, Inc. division responsible for Palm OS, announced this change to Palm OS because it's an important change. The previous 16MB limit was a holdover from older OS versions that ran on the 16/32-bit hybrid DragonBall (68328) processors. ARM processors have no such limitation. This change really should have been in Palm OS 5.0.

    Palm Solutions Group, the Palm, Inc. division responsible for making Palm-brand handhelds, has little control over PalmSource, and can only make suggestions about what goes into Palm OS. Sony and Palm SG have about the same amount of influence over Palm OS now. Soon Palm, Inc. will be split into 2 completely seperate companies, and this distinction will be more clear to outsiders.

    No version of Palm OS natively uses removable memory as RAM. Memory Sticks, SD, MMC, and CompactFlash cards are all accessed by using the VFS (Virtual File System) Manager API, which has been in PalmSource's Palm OS since version 4.0. VFS treats cards like removable drives, and files on cards must be accessed in a completely different way than databases in main memory. However, there are several programs that allow some directories on cards to be treated like RAM, allowing programs without VFS support some access to files on memory cards. Most of these only allow read-only access, though some work around this by copying the file from the memory card to RAM when it is accessed.

    (Although VFS was added to PalmSource's Palm OS in version 4.0, Sony actually came up with most of the original API for its own version 3.5S. And HandEra (then TRG) actually predated both Sony and PalmSource's VFS API with a completely different "FFS" API for the CompactFlash slot on its TRGpro.)

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