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Filesystem Problems with the Treo 650s
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Sun Nov 21, 2004 01:11 PM
from the early-adopters-always-get-the-shaft dept.
from the early-adopters-always-get-the-shaft dept.
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?"
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I know, I know! (Score:5, Funny)
File for bankruptcy?
an excellent product (Score:5, Informative)
- 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 PalmOne is right (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:I think PalmOne is right (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Are you trying to troll? (Score:5, Insightful)
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 $99 Zire 21) can play MP3s too. Are you really suggesting that playing music on a Palm is a problem?
And as for the size of apps, wow. Again, I'll take your word on the actual numbers but are you really saying that 5MB isn't big enough for any application that you'd want to run on a PDA?
Parent
Re:I think PalmOne is right (Score:5, Informative)
All the current applications for PalmOS use the database way of accessing files. So there's no real workaround for it, except rewriting applications to combine records into one and use their own database access wrapper.
This will affect the program I develop for Palm OS too, as it stores small (~100byte) macros in seperate records of a database.
Parent
ARGH (Score:5, Interesting)
I was hoping for the 7135 to drop in price, but Verizon outright pulled it instead.
None of the current batch of smartphones appeal to me in design. They're all more PDA than phone, the Kyos were EXCELLENT phones. I *need* tactile feedback when dialing my phone, and all of the current smartphones use on-screen dialing.
Re:ARGH (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, I chucked my 6035 beneath the wheels of an oncoming train to stop it (the phone, not the train
Parent
Step backwards into a FAT hole (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps it makes some things easier... (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
FAT (Score:5, Funny)
Re:FAT [Off-Topic] (Score:5, Funny)
Another day I have heard screams in computer room. I went there just to find my friends literally laughing to death. They were trying thru laughing point to the screen of WinXP with error message.
As soon I have taken a look at screen - I have joined them laughing to death under table.
"Invalid MS-DOS function"
For sure, we had over-reacted, due to couple of M$ 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.
Parent
Treo 650 Scam on eBay (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Treo 650 Scam on eBay (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Palm Reach Out to The F/OSS for Help? (Score:5, Interesting)
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
reiserfs (Score:5, 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 [namesys.com].
You can get a special license to include it in your own proprietary OS.
Not As Big an Issue as it seems (Score:5, Insightful)
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-
Palm OS vs. Copland (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Who has 22,000 contacts on their phone? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Ouch! WRONG (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, 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>
Parent
Re:Ouch! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Eating the dogfood (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent