LifeDrive Specs Missing RAM size.

[ksjenkins]

Maybe I'm a bit naive but I haven't seen a RAM spec in the new LifeDrive.
I've seen speculation on the RAM size of 32 or 64MB but that seems a little lite considering that the T5 has 256MB. The spec sheet doesn't mention anything about RAM which is a suspicious omission.


If the 4GB drive is the only Memory in the device (which I doubt) I wonder how long the battery life is?

[The Mad Dog]

I really do not know. In my opinion, we can use the 4 gig for everything. I mean the LD will only have the Microdrive and NO Ram. Who knows (perhaps a reason to use ActiveSync?)

[tungsten t5]

ohhh, I don't mean to be mean but the ram thing has been explained many times! the T5 doesn't have 256mb of system ram don't quote me but I think it's 32mb. the rest is storage for programs and the operating system. Now I'm guessing that the lifedrive will have 32mb too, possible 64 but more likely 32.

[jjesusfreak01]

I really do not know. In my opinion, we can use the 4 gig for everything. I mean the LD will only have the Microdrive and NO Ram. Who knows (perhaps a reason to use ActiveSync?)
The lack of listed RAM is actually very telling. Because it isnt listed, it is extremely likely that the RAM it has (it doesn have to have some) will be used for the sole purpose of running the OS, and active processes. There is no other reason that they wouldnt list the RAM for the device, and because of the 4gb HDD, it seems that there is no reason why there would be usable RAM. It will be interesting to see how it works.

[speak2u]

Found a link on another forum to French site that says 64 mg ram - I think. Been a long time since I did Frence.

Check it out:

http://www.mobinaute.com/mobinaute/article.php?id=20050518002118

[tritan]

http://forum.palmattitude.org/index.php?showtopic=22714&st=140&p=309432&#entry309432


Its 64 mb of ram.

[ebernie]

Latest specs:

Technisches

Das erste Gerät dieser "Dimension" ist der LifeDrive. Viele seiner technischen Daten kursierten ja bereits im Vorfeld im Interner. Mit Palm OS 6 wollte uns palmOne diesmal nicht beglpcken, so ist der LifeDrive ein Palm OS 5.4 Handheld (nein, "Mobile Manager") mit 64 MB nicht-flüchtigem RAM, sowie einer 4GB Mini-Festplatte von Hitachi. Von der Speicherkapazität sind 3,85 GB effektiv für eigene Daten verfügbar. Außerdem findet man integriertes Wireless LAN und Bluetooth - das erste mal in palmOnes Gerätelaufbahn sind beide Funkstandards in ein Gerät verbaut. Das konnte bisher nur Sony mit dem UX50 und dem TH55, und beide Geräte sind mangels Herstellerpräsenz im Palmbereich nicht mehr auf dem Markt verfügbar. Der LifeDrive gleicht ansonsten von internem RAM, CPU (beide 416 MHz XScale) Betriebssystem, Bluetooth und Anschluss (Multi-Connector) dem Tungsten T5. Bis auf den Zire haben nun alle aktuellen Geräteserien diesen Anschlusstyp - sehr positiv! Neu beim LifeDrive sind Wireless LAN, eine Sprachaufzeichnungstaste, eine LED sowie eine eigene (Hardware-)Taste zum Drehen des Displays. Der Powerschalter hat nun auch eine "Hold"-Stellung, damit man ihn nicht versehentlich betätigt. Und natürlich die Festplatte. Laut Datenblatt ist der LifeDrive (121x73x19mm) genauso lang, jedoch 5mm schmaler, aber 3mm dicker als der Tungsten T5 (121x78x16mm). Er wiegt mit 193 Gramm 48 Gramm mehr als der T5.

Design

Das Gehäuse ist, anders als die Fotos vermuten lassen, aus Kunststoff, der zwar hochwertig wirkt, das Metall des T3 fasst sich aber dennoch besser an. Auch die Tasten sind aus Plastik. Das Gehäuse ist in allen Dimensionen etwas größer als das des T5 und an den unteren Kanten abgeschrägt, weshalb es gut in der Hand liegt. Durch die Festplatte wird die Unterseite im Betrieb etwas warm (jedoch nicht so, dass es unangenehm wird). Auch das Display ist etwas größer als bei bisherigen Geräten und meiner Ansicht nach sehr brillant und hell (vergleichbar mit T5). PalmOne behauptet eine 40% höhere Helligkeit und 35% mehr Brillanz. Das kann weder ich, noch die Kollegen vor Ort bestätigen. Das Display des Treo 650 ist um einiges heller.



If you go through the gibberish snippet, a few features that should interest potential users:
1) 64MB NVFS RAM in addittion to the 4GB HD
2) Metal case
3) Something about display as well, 35% brighter?

One last question left unanswered; battery life...

[ksjenkins]

ohhh, I don't mean to be mean but the ram thing has been explained many times! the T5 doesn't have 256mb of system ram don't quote me but I think it's 32mb. the rest is storage for programs and the operating system. Now I'm guessing that the lifedrive will have 32mb too, possible 64 but more likely 32.

TT5: I really understand the whole RAM discussion very well - I've a UX50 with a whopping 104MB of RAM (16 for the system, the rest broken down in a variety of partitions). :rolleyes:

The point is that with a 4GB HD you want that little disk spinning as little as possible to extend your battery life to the max. The more solid-state RAM the better balance for battery life. :)

For instance, I don't want the LifeDrive to spin the HD everytime I want to look up a Phone contact, or Appointment. If I put a bunch of MP3's on the LifeDrive I want enough RAM to hold 3 or 4 songs so that the disk only needs to spin every 10 - 15 minutes to retrieve more songs. If palmOne skimped on RAM then the usefulness of the LifeDrive would be limited to how long you could survive between charges.

My UX50 can go a solid 16 hours listening to MP3's & reading ebooks (with the extended battery of course, 8 hours stand-alone). If the LifeDrive can do half that I would be very impressed.

I'll wait & see what the reviews show for this baby. From what I'm seeing it's looking pretty usable, but battery life will be the bottom line for many of us travellers/superusers. :D

[PDASpecialists]

I'm curious why some of the foreign reviews mention 64mb NV when the official specs at palmone.com do not show any real ram at all.

[Antoine]

RAM question answered in the BargainPDA review. It goes into it a bit more than some of the rest of the reviews.

[ksjenkins]

RAM question answered in the BargainPDA review. It goes into it a bit more than some of the rest of the reviews.

Thanks for the heads-up. The review at BargainPDA was more of what I'm looking for. Because the LifeDrive uses the main processor for everything, it's "Media" capability while good is also a battery killer. Sony did the seperate DSP for media and a slower processor for the day to day stuff. The result is an excellent balance, good battery life and excellent Multimedia performance. PalmOne will get it eventually (Hopefully!!).
Maybe once PalmOS 6 comes out, we will have Palm Nirvana.

Thanks for all the responses. :D

[tuxsam70]

Latest specs:



If you go through the gibberish snippet, a few features that should interest potential users:
1) 64MB NVFS RAM in addittion to the 4GB HD
2) Metal case
3) Something about display as well, 35% brighter?

One last question left unanswered; battery life...

Not quite: the review states that the case is made from plastic, does not feel like the T3. PalmOne says the screen should be 35% brighter, allthough the reviewer could not confirm. Says that the Treo 650 is brighter.

Andre

[poissonsouriant]

What's odd, is that the review at Mobile Tech Review seemed to say that the 64MB was volatile RAM, not NVFS.

http://www.mobiletechreview.com/palmone-LifeDrive.htm

[Cyker]

That's because that 64MB isn't NVFS. It's real RAM, but it's not accessible by the user - As far as we're concerned, it doesn't exist.
It's only used as Dynamic RAM and as temporary storage for programs when you run them - You can't run programs from NVFS directly like you can with real RAM, so they have to bodge it by copying the programs into real RAM, which is part of this 64MB area.
As far as the average user is concerned, that 4GB *is* the only memory.

It's the same setup as the T|5, Treo 650 etc.

[junglemike]

Ok, here's some misunderstanding here:
Any processor can access ONLY Dram (i.e SD ram) - which is equivalent of RAM on pc.
So NO pda can exist w/o RAM (random access memory) at all.
All palms from prior to T5 had only Dram memory, along with small amount of flash (or masked rom) for OS image. For example, TT3 has 64mb of SD-ram @100mhz, and also 16mb of Flash ( where os resides). These 64mb of ram are used as application storage (i.e like hard drive on pc) but that's not all 12mb of that 64mb are used as Dynamic Heap (equivalent of ram on pc) - which is used by programs while they work.
In T5, there is 2 128mb chips of Flash memory making it 256mb, which is used as :
1) program storage
2) contains compressed Os rom
3) contains Internal 160mb section - equivalent of sd card
But along with that it has 32mb Dram chip - which is used for
1) program heap (4mb in T5's case)
2)DB heap.
This 32mb dram chip is not accessible by user and all process is transparent for end user.
So when you launch any app on T5 or Treo650 - it is first coped to Dram chunk, and then launched.
Now with the lifedrive: nobody argues, that there is at lease _some_ Dram memory, because otherwice it coudn't work (i guessing that it is 32mb, like in T5's case)
But the question is: where is the program storage area?
There is 3 options:

1) it is in RAM - like on T3 and prior palms. - very unlikely. Dram is though fast, but very expensive, P1 stopped using it in app it's palms since T3 and TC. Hard to believe that they used expensive 64mb Dram chip, while they didn't even include a cradle.
But if that's the case - This is ideal situation. All apps will work instantaneously, no bugs whatsoever, and HDD will be off except when you play music/watch videos/ access large db's.
2)It is in Flash - like on T5. - This more believable than 1) . In this case operation will be equivalent to T5's. Hdd wll be off most of the time. Upon launching - apps will be copied to Dram chunk (just like on T5) .
3) It is on separate partition on Hdd. This is looks so from Bargain Pda review. If that's the case - hhd will spin every time you launch any app, than it will be transfered to Dram cnunk and launched. If that's the case - this would explain tremendous lags and unexusable battery time as stated in bargainpda review. But this is the cheapest solution for P1 :-)

[Adrenochrome]

RAM question answered in the BargainPDA review. It goes into it a bit more than some of the rest of the reviews.
Agreed, but his review doesn't match several others. MobileTech, for instance, got 6 hours of MP3 playback, to his 3+. There are other inconsistencies.

I've found listings of no RAM, 32mb RAM, and 64mb RAM. I don't really care as long as everything loads nice and quickly.

[beaune]

Maybe I'm a bit naive but I haven't seen a RAM spec in the new LifeDrive.
I've seen speculation on the RAM size of 32 or 64MB but that seems a little lite considering that the T5 has 256MB. The spec sheet doesn't mention anything about RAM which is a suspicious omission.


If the 4GB drive is the only Memory in the device (which I doubt) I wonder how long the battery life is?

THe Specs sheet on the palmone web site says 16MB
http://euro.palmone.com/uk/en/products/lifedrive/specs.html
under memory....

[SoS]

THe Specs sheet on the palmone web site says 16MB
http://euro.palmone.com/uk/en/products/lifedrive/specs.html
under memory....

16Mb ROM!!!!!! OS, bundled apps etc...I think its a fairly good bet that RAM (where your programs, dbs, preferences etc live) is a virtual partition on the HD and, as JM states, this will eat battery...

[beaune]

I should read properly before I get excited... there is 16MB ROM and 64MB RAM internally *** well as the 4GB drive. Just wonder how many apps you can fit in there of if you can put apps on the HDD... battery issues here we come!

[palmato]

Those who have followed discussions on this topic, discussions we had over and over, won't be surprised by the storage heap design.

It's true that spinning the HD with take some time and cause delays especially when turning the device on or off or switching applications. But it remains to be seen what the impact on the actual use is. It might be relevant or not.

As for increased power requirements, I might reply that the whole point of having a pda with a HD is to use the HD. And there's no way to get around it.
Otherwise a pda such as the TE2 (and a 1G card) is a better choice.
The only "real" complains might be the cache size and battery size. I was hoping for 64M cache, which would have provided 32M more for the HD alone. And a 2000mAh battery. But p1 decided otherwise.
(Well the price is too high, but that's a different topic)

[nickms]

If programs could be stored in RAM, as has been the case with previous palms, this would reduce the need for constant drive spin when attempting to use small applications. Why should I have to spin the drive when accessing the calculator? If there are operating delays due to poor buffering/caching these will add up to getting much less done with the available battery life. Worse yet with time, like all hard drives, data fragmentation will occur, causing the delays to increase.

[palmato]

Sorry, but still I don't see the point in getting a LD to run the calculator and solitaire.

[poissonsouriant]

Well, you may not buy the LD just for the calculator or solitare, but they still might get some use.

[GadgetGuru]

If the devices has 0 RAM, then even the dynamic heap should be hard drive space...

Does the engineers know their stuff...even on a Windows PC, if you have to use hard disk space as virtual RAM, the PC will slow down tremendously...that's why we see 512MB -1 GB SD/RDRAM as standard on PC these days...

And on a device with a slower hard drive, it would slow the device, not to mention battery life...

Still keeping my fingers crossed that the Lifedrive has some RAM in there, aside from the 16 MB ROM...

[ksjenkins]

The LD could be a great convergence device if:
1. All Basic Palm functions can run without accessing the HD (Launch: Address, Datebook, Memo, Tasks etc).
2. Use the HD ONLY for advanced functions, ie Media Player, Backups, Store / Access / Modify Large files.
3. Battery life is equal or better than any current models ie 10+ Hours between charges.

JungleMike brings up many good points. You would think that P1 would keep the current model of Memory, App-space, heap-space the same since the LD is running 5.4.2 Garnet. 16MB ROM as Apps area, 16MB heap, and the rest of the 64MB NVRAM as App / pdb storage space. Leave the HD for extras and not as the primary storage medium for any normal PalmOS functions.

Besides RAM is cheap, why not keep the status-quo with a proven memory design, kiss in action.

I believe that once the LD gets into the public at large we will see a lot of discussions around this topic. ;)

[GadgetGuru]

OT: Looking forward to 1Src podcast 24 and Jeff's take on the final Lifedrive specs...

[Cyker]

IIRC, the 64MB invisible 'Real RAM' in the LiveDrive is split in half:

32MB holds the ROM image which is (Presumably) loaded from the MicroDrive HD
The other 32MB is split between Dynamic RAM/Stack and the scratch space for the LD to copy programs and data off the HD so it can run them - This second 32MB section acts the same as it does in the T|5.

This might be wrong 'tho - The info was speculation from an early early thread. It's possible that the OS is stored in a standard FlashROM like it is in all the other Palm devices.

JungleMike: I'm very very sure the LD is setup as your option 3 - i.e. the HD is used for the Storage RAM - The HD replaces the Flash in the T|5, and is apparently split between internal VFS, Storage 'RAM' and (Allegedly) the ROM (But see my above caveat ;)).
BTW, what do you mean about DRAM being expensive? DRAM is a lot cheaper than Flash...!

[prayer4eev]

hey, lets wait for some good reviews,
because sum says that there are LAGS when launching applications - that means that "programm memory" is HDD partition, some says there are 64Mb of DRAM.

so lets wait.

Cyker
if 3. is true - than it will be pain in the *** launching big applications.

[Jeff Kirvin]

OT: Looking forward to 1Src podcast 24 and Jeff's take on the final Lifedrive specs...
It's up! Had to do it early because I'm going to see Star Wars at midnight!

[Ezikial Anta]

Me too.
'Kay, i lied. But I am going to see it tomorrow! :D

[Cyker]

hey, lets wait for some good reviews,
because sum says that there are LAGS when launching applications - that means that "programm memory" is HDD partition, some says there are 64Mb of DRAM.

so lets wait.

Cyker
if 3. is true - than it will be pain in the *** launching big applications.

Not really - All hard disks can transfer stuff as fast as any Flash device, so big apps shouldn't take that much longer than small apps.

HOWVER, the killer will be if you have to swap lots of scattered files/records in and out - Hard disks have fantastic throughput but the latency is much much higher than solid state RAM (DRAM, SRAM, Flash etc.). In fact it's several orders of magnitude worse, so lots of large random-accesses will butcher the performance. Since this is likely record-based like the T|5, things like my poor database would likely take a hefty performance hit during heavy use.

There is supposed to be a 'Real RAM' cache between the HD and main RAM which will dampen the impact of it a bit, but fact is this device will have more latency than any other PalmOS device.

For people that know about x86 hardware, a good comparison is a P4+Rambus vs an Athlon+DDR;

The LD will likely have fantastic sustained data rate which should make it very good at playing higher-bitrate video and sound and anything that needs to stream large amounts of data, but it will not be a great general-purpose PDA.

Brighthand have already said it feels a bit slow - I suspect this is the high latency in action because everything is being loaded off hard disk.
The monster CPU will help 'tho, and in reality it will probably feel like using an old slow Clie.

TBP is that PalmOS was DESIGNED to use *real* RAM and it just won't work very well on anything else, even with hideous kludges like NVFS.

Cobolt allegedly chucks the fast run-in-place architecture for more bloaty but standard load-and-execute, and a HD will work a lot better on such a system, but the way PalmOS is written, it's very sensitive to high latency because it just doesn't expect it...

*Disclaimer*
All the above is speculation and supposition extrapolated from available information and may not, in actual fact, have any bearing on reality, unreality, or corn circles.

EDIT: I was apparently waaay wrong about the RAM split - Apparently...:
The HD is split into 64MB Storage RAM and the rest is (I am assuming) used for internal VFS, similar to the T|5 and UX50.

There is 32MB of 'real' RAM, which is split into Stack/Dynamic memory, hidden scratch space to load programs off the HD, and HD cache. I haven't found concrete data on the split for this, I keep hearing 6MB and 10MB for the stack and scratch space 'tho.



It's up! Had to do it early because I'm going to see Star Wars at midnight!
May I just say, sir, that you are a GIT! :mad:


(j/k ;) :p :D Enjoy the show, and no spoilers pleeeeeezzzeee!!!!)

[prayer4eev]

Cyker
it will be in reality, because HDD will be fragmented with time. and Access time is not so high like for flash or dram
u already said that.
+ if HDD won't spin all time - u will have additional delay, if it will be - life time from one charge will be very bad :(

if 32Mb Dram will be splited like in T5 then it will be so -
4mb dynamic heap, 12Mb - database heap + 16mb OS. (if i got all right)

[junglemike]

I still really really hope that there program area resides either in read Dram (like T3) or in flash (like T5). Maybe hdd is spinning all the time due to some bug or bad written driver from p1's side. Even if you forget about possible lags and bugs, this drive (based on mobile-review) consumes 300ma when working, and 16ma in idle mode. 300ma alone is what my T3 consumes when cpu is 100% busy, and max brightness. Just for comparison at lowest brightness, almost idle cpu (reading) at stock 400mhz cpeed it consumes 140mA.
This 300ma drain will kill any battery, no matter how large. There must be some way to avoid accessing hdd all the time.

[junglemike]

BTW, what do you mean about DRAM being expensive? DRAM is a lot cheaper than Flash...!
Well Dram is similair to computer SD-ram, whith that difference that it works from lower voltage, and must consume very low amount of current (to sustain data when palm is off). I 99% sure that this is the main reason why P1 switched to flash.
I can't tell you much about the prices, but for comparison, Zod1 has 32mb ram, Zod2 is virtually the same, except it has 128mb of ram and costs 100$ more.
How much, would you think would cost 128mb flash chip? Taking into consideration that it it is much cheaper than sd/cf cards, because it doesn't contain casing/connectors and doesn't contain cf/sd interface protocol chip (which present in every single flash card along with the main flash chip)

[Ezikial Anta]

Mike, you know that the real price of the Zodiac2 came from that snazy Black paint?
:p Just playing man, thats a good point.

[Cyker]

Possibly... personally I think the main reason Palm went with NVFS is because it's non-volatile, i.e. the RAM doesn't die if the battery runs out.

While DRAM does draw a power constantly, it's a very small amount of current. Flash doesn't need any at all when inactive, but reading from Flash uses similar levels of power and writing to Flash uses significantly more power (It has to punch electrons into sortof a holding cell, and that needs a relatively large spike of power), so the power draw probably balances out.

Cost-wise, high-end high-speed DRAM likely costs more than the Flash chips used in most memory cards.
However, in PDA's and small devices they usually use the cheaper, slower but far more common low-draw DRAMs, which are a lot cheaper than Flash.
If you look at PC RAM, the difference between two fairly average modules, say 256MB and 512MB is what, £10? (NB: Obviously, as you go higher, the price jumps more because high-density chips have lower yields, but when they ramp up the price gap will drop. Going from 128 to 256 OTOH will be an even smaller gap.)
Now, a 256MB DDR SDRAM is about, say £20? A 256MB Flash card will cost roughly double that (I'm going by off-top-of-head UK prices here BTW). Now, this gets a bit hazy because DDR modules just have some basic electronics whereas Flash cards have controller circuitry, but I figure the controller circuitry is not gonna add that much to the cost...
Flash prices have dropped, but they are harder to make than DRAM and need controller circuitry so I figure that chip-for-chip they will cost a fair bit more than an equivalent DRAM...
As for the Zod2 - They would have had to use higher-density DRAMs, and extra (soft) hacks for the memory controller so the $100 difference is probably a bit deceptive. I suspect only a small fraction of that is from the extra RAM.


BTW, what're your theories on why the iPod gets so much run-time out of it's powerpack compared to the LiveDrive? More efficient use? Or does it just have a massive battery pack? :)
My (admittedly limited) experience with small HD's is that they have a tiny current draw when idling - Spinning up is the biggest drain, and excessive head-seeks don't do it any favours, but given their small size, they don't have to deal with so much momentum as bigger HD's so the power draw should be correspondingly less...?

[GadgetGuru]

If you put all of your application in a card, most people do anyway...then the Hard drive will spin less, and the speed hit would be less wouldn't it? After all there's a few (32MB?) RAM left in there hidden and for execution space...

So if one uses the hard drive as their primary memory, the device's speed take a hit. While if they uses an expansion card as repository of their applications, the speed hit is a bit less...

[GadgetGuru]

PalmOne decision to save maybe $10 on an OEM level, will end up costing PalmOne lots in sales and public relations.

It should have gone back to old fashioned volatile RAM, nobody's complaining about data loss due to battery drainage anyway since data is backup to PC and they would have solved most of the bugs that had surfaced with Garnet 5.4.

PalmOne need a better beta test team...

They should quickly sellthrough their Lifedrive inventory and introduce a Lifedrive 11 during their autumn product releases...adding just 64MB RAM, and they are done.

[Adrenochrome]

If you put all of your application in a card, most people do anyway...then the Hard drive will spin less, and the speed hit would be less wouldn't it? After all there's a few (32MB?) RAM left in there hidden and for execution space...

So if one uses the hard drive as their primary memory, the device's speed take a hit. While if they uses an expansion card as repository of their applications, the speed hit is a bit less...
I've been wondering this as well. Since I'm coming from a T2, I've got a 1Gb card that'll just be popped into the LD. I'd really like to know what effect that has. If everything gets saved onto the card, does the thing run faster? Does it have better battery life? I'm planning on using the drive for just music, some data backup, and maybe an occasional video. I'd be using the SD card for as much of the application work as I can.

[PaTx]

As most of you suggested I think it has been a pity that the LD hasn't come with just 64MBs of RAM. However I would like to point out something:

- The battery is a 1660mah one + the harddrive is the one that needs more power => the less you access the harddrive the longer the LD will survive between changes.

That said, I believe it isn't really a problem that Palm applications are stored in a false RAM that uses the harddrive because they will be loaded into RAM (that execution one) and once there the harddrive doesn't have to keep spining around.

I mean that if, for instance you are reading the news for hours using Plucker and the news are stored on an expansion card the harddrive should be quiet and battery life ought to be quite good.

I therefore think that the harddrive is more convenient to store ocassionally accessed data, such as GPS maps (you could charge it in the car), maybe even enciclopedias, documents and so on, but I would avoid to play there video or audio files since that would mean constant spinning of the harddrive.

I suppose that you could play a movie file for longer than 4 hours having brightness at 50%, no Bluetooth, no Wifi, no IrDA and of course, the file being played stored in the expansion card. That's a great battery life and I think this device can be cool if used in a wise way (playing videos and mp3 files from the card, not the harddrive and use the harddrive for data that doesn't require a constant access).

About what some1 mentioned about iPods having harddrives and better battery life I think it must be owing to they might have a buffer memory to stop the harddrive for quite long whiles rather than better batteries, but who knows :rolleyes:

[Adrenochrome]

PaTX, you actually have some of that backwards. If you're playing an MP3, for example, the harddrive will spin up, load the entire MP3 file into RAM, and maybe even the next song or two, and then spin down. An encyclopedia, on the other hand - the HD doesn't know what bit of info you'll require next, so it will have to keep spinning up to go find the next selected piece of information.

[PaTx]

I meant that if you look up something in the encyclopedia the harddrive will spin up until the data is found and shows up but after that you close (usually) the encyclopedia and forget about it. Yes, you spin it up but just once.

Mp3 files are different, it would save a lot of battery life to play it from the expansion card since the program (i.e. Pocket Tunes or TCPMP) will be already loaded into execution RAM and the harddrive doesn't have to spin since the files are on the SD card. If instead, you play mp3 files from the harddrive it will be spinning up and down all the time. Ok, it will only spin up every song or every a couple or even three songs, but it will have to spin up and down from time to time, using my method (mp3 files on the card) you only spin up once: to load the program into RAM, therefore saving a lot of power for mp3 playback.

(I hope I have explained this better now)

By the way, I love Jeff's podcasts and it's a honor for me to post here, really :).

[Adrenochrome]

Yes, if you just need to find one file in the encyclopedia, then the hard drive would only need to spin up once.

And yes, if you're playing songs from an SD card, you'll have faster responses and less battery wear, but I'm not sure the difference would be noticable.

The idea behind using the HD for music, like an iPod, is that the data flow is predictable. If I want to play music, the HD spins up, loads Pocket Tunes into the 32mb cache, then loads the next six or seven songs in as well. That means I can listen to a good fifteen or twenty minutes of music before the HD has to spin up again and load in the next six. By contrast, if I were looking up three entries in a large database, the HD would have to spin up three times (or wouldn't stop spinning).

Everything runs faster and with less power off an SD card. But you can get more gigs per buck from an HD, so you have a trade-off there.

My guess is that within a year we'll see a 10-40Gb palm. Sure, CF cards will always be around with lots of storage, but HDs will stay out ahead of them for the foreseeable future.

[smaara]

Hi PaTx
Nice to see you again

[picard]

If I want to play music, the HD spins up, loads Pocket Tunes into the 32mb cache, then loads the next six or seven songs in as well.
So I will have to add this feature (sooner or later) to TCPMP as well.

Btw if anybody is still unsure about memory size the palmOne SDK states clearly 32MB RAM and 16MB ROM (plus the hard drive).

[lmame]

So I will have to add this feature (sooner or later) to TCPMP as well.

Btw if anybody is still unsure about memory size the palmOne SDK states clearly 32MB RAM and 16MB ROM (plus the hard drive).
Thanks for the info ;)

[PaTx]

Welcome to 1src smaara ;). Here we are putting our 2 cents on 1scr, among idols like junglemike or Jeff Kirvin.

Let's give the LD a chance to show up its power among its prospective users. We won't know the real battery life until then, there're too much inconsistencies comparing the battery life data between several couples of reviews.