Jeff Kirvin

SharkCache 1.1 released.
SkinUI just keeps getting better, and a shoutout to all the skinners.
Fitaly rules, but not on the LifeDrive.
NVFS is the biggest innovation since the original Pilot. [details]

GadgetGuru

This is a reply to the article at solomedia. The podcast is still downloading on my PC.

PalmOS' original design is great. At every hotsync, your data is backup'ed. With USB's and OS 5-5.1's speed a restore takes just a couple of minute or less. No need for NVFS. Fully drained battery is a seldom occurence, and if Palm has include a cradle with most, this would even lessen that further, I know that most people will just put the Palm in their cradle overnight to charge. And even with a fully drained battery, there's probably enough juice for a few hours to tide you over until you run home to charge it.

They could easily workaround 'not-near a PC' backup problem by putting a little NVFS as external drive and automatically back up the RAM once every 12 hours or so. Instead NVFS broke all backup solutions and the promised (?) fix is 6-months too late. So without backup solutions, you really will have to rely on NVFS and hope you don't have to hardreset on the road...

NVFS is neat, if it works. But PalmOne and Palmsource (?) did it all wrong. When OS5 comes out, resets takes 5 seconds or less, that to many is a big improvement, a real sign that Palm OS 5 is superior to OS 4. But with NVFS and its super slow boot up time, many people think Palm OS is regressing instead of going forward. PDAs are supposed to be boot up quickly, so that you could jot something down and move on to your next task. Resets do happen, and if you just want to jot something down and a reset occurs, you'll be pulling your hair if you have to wait 20 seconds (T5) or a minute (Lifedrive) for the OS to boot up again when you want to jot something down.

NVFS also broke many an applications, sure many of them are not well-written. But do you expect every developer to fix their application everytime a new device shows up? Palm's advantage is huge boatload of software, but if you really count what's working on NVFS, maybe the count will be drawfed by Windows Mobile. More great Windows Mobile apps are showing up these days than Palm do. Check Palmgear and Pocketgear.

A sign that NVFS broke many applications, is that there are now compatibility threads. Sure a big OS upgrade, say OS 4 to OS 5 will break some. But OS 5.1 to OS 5.4 is supposed to be incremental and slight improvements. And if they knew that it will break many apps, they should have told the developers and the community beforehand, so that there's a smooth transition. Microsoft did it with SP2, Apple is doing it now with it's shift to Intel chips. Palm? They hide it and suddenly dumped a buggy and poorly beta-tested unit and OS on end -users.

And with applications, yes, you will have to install new versions, get new conduits, etc, etc, etc...now where are the days when you could put a new Plam unit in and just sync your old data and its ready to go? I don't think the masses want to hae to upgrade all their applications again and again...and some developers even charge for them. Take Agendus, if you are content with version 7 or 8, why upgrade to 9? But if you get a new NVFS unit, you'll be forced to because only version 9 works on NVFS units.

And there's PalmOne stupid implementation of Lifedrive. Just HD RAM as NVFS. That's sheer stupidity. The Cache is too small for a multimedia device. If only that device has RAM , then it will be zippier and I am sure many a Palm user will upgrade to one, as it is, some do but many don't.

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GadgetGuru

One more thing, NVFS may be the worst thing to come to Palm. As stated NVFS is neat, if it work smoothly, but currently, it don't. Had Palm not concentrated on it (and fixing its many bugs), Palm might have designed better and more consumer-friendly products. NVFS on Palm looks like alpha software (the 512k-size bug should have been catched by any decent beta-test team!). It's not ready for release, yet PalmOne released it and let the end-users act as guinea pigs and beta-testers.

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Cyker

NVFS their biggest innovation? There's nothing innovate about it - PPC's have been able to do that since they had SD cards! NVFS is just a bad implementation of an idea that's been around since computers were invented.

Now, don't get me wrong - The idea is a good and sound one. The dependence of Palms and PDA's in general on their batteries to keep the RAM alive has definitely been one of their stupider problems. This whole 'charge all the time' thing is annoying, although since I sync regularly it's not really much of an issue for me, but for the phone crowd, you are right - It's essential.

The reason I despise NVFS so much is purely the implementation. Of course, this has no bearing in the real-world (Most users don't know or care how it works - Heck, I bet most of them wouldn't even know the LD had a hard disk unless it was pointed out to them!), which would automatically render most of any rant I'd make in that direction irrelevent.

I do take issue about the stability and buggy programs thing 'tho - That's just not fair on the coders.
See, NVFS works *exactly* the same way as running a program off VFS via the \PALM\Launcher directory, and we already knew that a lot of programs didn't like that - Despite this, Palm extended that over the system, hid a few things and rename a few things and didn't even consider any consequences.

That's why it's such a pain in the *** for stability - We all know that lots of non-trivial programs wouldn't work properly when run from \PALM\Launcher.

When NVFS came out, almost *every* non-trivial program had to be re-written to work around NVFS. Not because they were buggy, but because NVFS broke so many of the old PalmOS rules, and in doing so broke compatibility, IMHO unnecessarily.

Luckily, this isn't such a visible problem now - Only older programs (Like the ones I use alas) haven't had NVFS workaround hacks coded into them so, for the most part, we're back at the status quo. Maybe a few more unexplained crashes, but again most people won't notice or care as long as their data doesn't get wiped out.

The wiping of the NVFS during a hard reset is a Good Thing - As you say, if it didn't then a Hard Reset would be pointless. Even Real RAM devices effectively null-write all their RAM (By cutting power ) when hard reset, so it's just a logical continuation.
That said 'tho, the null-writing of VFS areas is stupid stupid stupid. There is no good reason for this. Also, I thought only the LifeDrive did this, but I'm told the T|5 does it to it's internal FlashRAM too - Is this true?! (I hope not!!)

GadgetGuru

A second-or-two here and there is not bad, but if you come from a $199 Tungsten E that launches up in under a second. Would that be a step forward or backward? And you are paying $300 bucks more, you would think that three times the processor speed would speed things up not down...now try to explain that its the hard drive to a non-geek...

Pocket PC 2000 was slow, but each new version Pocket PC 2002, and especially Windows Mobile 2003 increases the speed dramatically. My H3600 is slow but my h1930 with 1/3 the proicessor speed feels snappier. Now that's tangible improvement. PalmOne is moving backwards in the user-experience thing.

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Surur

Jeff, you started out so well, but by half way through you were again up to your apologists ways. Non-volatility is good, but Palm's solution was just cr*p. I understand it was forced on them by the architecture of the OS. Doesn't mean it works well at all, and if it results in very fragile, sensitive, unreliable devices it negates all the battery-related advantages.

As usual you blame the users and their "third party software". How dare they install software from anyone else but Palm on their pocket computers? Funny that versamail and bazer themselves seem sufficient to bring a LifeDrive to its knees on some web pages and e-mail messages.

Do you always end with "This is the situation, Palm is a monopoly, you have no choice, now shut up and stop complaining"?

Surur

Surur

BTW, since Palm has introduced non-volatile devices they have sold less handheld PDA's, not more. Maybe what has been exhausted is not the geek market, but the people who feel their lives are so complicated they needed a PIM to manage it. Growth is now coming from other areas such as GPS navigation (who would have though that would be the killer app?) wireless Internet and information appliances bought by bosses for their menial workers. For all of these Palm's now legendary unreliability just will not cut it.

Surur

smoothjordan

since when did PPC have NFVS? Please tell me, I've owned three and they all don't survive after losing battery life. You get 30 mins to get it to a power source or you lose your data. Jeff, great podcast as usual, NVFS rules, it makes the bat life much better.

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Alan G

Ok, this is already shaping up to be a lively disucssion. I look at NVFS more from an end customer perspective. I have to support the executive team in my office. And the single most annyoing pain for me is: they don't want to carry all of this stuff and they always forget to charge their devices. This includes cell phones, Blackberries, and Palm OS handhelds. I always end up getting involved when someone forgets to charge their Palm and the batteries die. palmOne's implementation of NVFS is going to cut down on the number of support calls not only for me, but for the general help desk at my company. So, there is my $0.02 on the subject. Making things easier for the cusomter I feel, is an important feature for any mobile tech device that a company wants to sell.

Alan G

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archangel

NFVS might be a good idea someday, but Palmone has a lot of work to do before that day comes (maybe when they finally move beyond Garnet this will be a major plus). It is probably not a step backward, but it is far from a step forward at this point. I certainly have no interest in the NFVS of the T5 or Lifedrive at this point. It is far from a hardship to backup my PDA to my SD card in case of a battery failure or hard reset and just restore everything that way in the ultra rare occassion of that even happening. Much simplier than putting up with the headaches of the current NFVS PDAs.

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LupeValenz

I think most people respond to the 1-2 second lag because Palm was known for their simplicity and their quick access. Now they are slowly losing ground on this and before we know it, PPC and Palms won't be that diffrent from each other. With all this talk bout resets and how they do happen, well I think I been blessed by Sony. I think Sony handhelds are VERY reliable. My first PDA was an NX70, then it just increased. I always stayed with Sony and have very rarely experienced any kind of resets. Before TH55, I never knew how to do a hard reset and think before TH55, I think I had about total of 5 soft resets from the NX70 to the UX50. Why before TH55? Well, lately I was brave to test out beta programs and well, they are sooo cool I HAD to test them out but yeah, I had some problems because of that hehehe but before these enhancements, still VERY rarely (like soft reset 2 times) did I have to soft reset my TH and for my first hard reset (PicselBrowser problems ) I had to go in my manual and find out how to do it.

Then again, I guess I usually don't put TOO much misc apps on my PDA, I only put apps that are well known. *Docs2go, Zlauncher, AcidImage, etc*

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Cyker

They don't have NVFS in the Palm sense, but ever since you could put an SD card into a PPC they have had non-volatile storaqe: You see, with a PPC, you can load/run/save ALL progs & docs off an SD card directly - My friend runs his iPaq with O% of his internal RAM reserved for storage - He runs and saves everything to and from SD seamlessly - He's never worried about batteries.

Jeff Kirvin

For you, maybe. But again, "regular" people aren't going to bother with that. They just won't. I've seen hundreds of "dead" PDAs that just needed a charge and restore. But why make people do that if the device doesn't have to get amnesia every time the battery goes dead?



There it is again. I don't know how much simpler I can say this.

You should never, EVER, have to do a hard reset. There is almost always a less destructive way of solving the problem.

I'd hate to be with you hard reset people on a camping trip.

Billy: Mom! I got a scrape on my knee!

Dad: He's done for. Shoot him.



What are you doing that you have to reset so often? I have the "horrible" T5 and I don't reset at all unless I'm knowingly doing something stupid. For example, I've had more than my usual resets recently because I'm running SkinUI, which is still in beta. But that's a decision I've made and I know the consequences. I also know that if I removed the unfinished software, my T5 would be rock solid again.

But again, you're making a strawman argument. 99% of the time, the device isn't going to reset when you turn it on to jot something down. It's instant on, just like other Palms.



No, I expect them to get it right the first time. Stick to the rules, ferret out the bugs, and nobody gets hurt.



One of the reasons I no longer use Agendus. It's buggy to begin with, and then they charge for bug fixes.



Did you read or listen to a word I said?

If it had RAM, it wouldn't be able to survive a dead battery.

"That submarine would fly a lot better if it had wings and a jet engine..."

archangel

Man, I had a ton of hard resets out of no where with my OS5 Sony Clies. I lost the data on my NX80 many times and had to restore it from the memory stick. It was probably because I had to use so many hacks like the Cliepet audio hack to make the thing functional though. I like the Clie for innovation but it was not all that reliable in my experience.

My Zodiac will crash occasionally but I have yet to have it hard reset on me. The Zod has been by far my most reliable PDA since the S300.

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