While I agree that adding more RAM will consume more power (as you say, doubling it doubles the drain), in the overall scheme of things, memory represents only a fraction of all the parasites on your Pocket PC. The screen, backlight, WiFi, wireless communications, and microdrive are all very thirsty, which explains why I have to have the extended battery on my e800. That's why doubling, tripling, whatever the amount of memory on my device doesn't really bother me as much as it would others, because to me it's just a drop in the bucket.
To others who have a basic device or aren't power users (usually these are one and the same), which represent the majority of PDA owners, it would mean more to them. But then, most of them don't know any better anyhow, do they? All they care about is the fact that their battery is draining too fast so there must be something wrong with their PDA.
A large number of processes running on your Pocket PC will also drain your battery faster, such as a lot of today plugins and TSR programs. But instead of trying to find ways to make storage persistent, time would be better devoted to finding alternative power sources, because we're eventually going to need that gigabyte of memory on our devices + be able to handle these and future device "features".
OK. If NOTHING else it will bring the system closer to acting like a desktop. Its not as if Windows 2000 allows you to store files in RAM. Well at least not without a RAMDisk.
I look forward to this transition because it should also free up much needed resources.
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In a similar thread I have demonstrated that its trivial to increase memory use to 75MB by simply loading two picture heavy web pages. Phone edition devices specifically start with a high number of processes running (one for listening for MMS, one to monitor GPRS use, one to display a caller picture, email monitoring etc etc) I am sure people with 64MB devices are going to see a lot of weird behaviour when software gets closed in the background to free up memory.
I'll be getting the MDA IV when it comes out, and am very glad that it will continue to come with a large amount of memory.
...in the overall scheme of things, memory represents only a fraction of all the parasites on your Pocket PC. The screen, backlight, WiFi, wireless communications, and microdrive are all very thirsty, which explains why I have to have the extended battery on my e800. That's why doubling, tripling, whatever the amount of memory on my device doesn't really bother me as much as it would others, because to me it's just a drop in the bucket.
This is correct if you think only of when the device is turned on, but remember that the power hit for RAM is constant whether on or suspended. So I would offer that over the lifetime of the device, the RAM refresh hit is actually much higher.
Also, of all aspects of mobile computing, power/battery is the one that is progressing the least quickly. This isn't due to lack of effort, because the rewards are great, it is just a matter of physics and engineering.
I think it is kind of funny that some of the responses seem to actually be defending the idea that a Pocket PC should lose everything if the battery fails. Personally, I've always found that inexcusable and I'll be glad to see that gone! ;-)
In a similar thread I have demonstrated that its trivial to increase memory use to 75MB by simply loading two picture heavy web pages. Phone edition devices specifically start with a high number of processes running (one for listening for MMS, one to monitor GPRS use, one to display a caller picture, email monitoring etc etc) I am sure people with 64MB devices are going to see a lot of weird behaviour when software gets closed in the background to free up memory.
You shouldn't see any weird behavior when background apps get closed. When you go back to them, they SHOULD return to the same state that they were in when you left them. Strangely enough, about the only major app I know of that doesn't follow the rules here is IE.
Why is it none of the "official" will answer questions about the lifecycle of ROM memory once everything starts to be written to it?
Well, this question has been partly answered by HP's not providing the WM5 upgrade for the iPAQ rx3xxx (the worst PDA, file store life expectancy-wise) :devilboy:
I'm also afraid of the upgrade because of this fact. I'll try to find ways of relocating the Registry and the WinCE databases (especially if there will be a lot of PC -> PDA, for example, mail synchronization) back to the main memory, I think... My PIE/Netfront cache will also go back to the main memory. I don't want to have a paperweight (my PL720's warranty will run off this Autumn...)
Unfortunately you won't be able to do this. For one thing, the registry/databases all are being looked for at a certain path. The best you can do is make a RAM disk and copy non-system databases/files there if the apps allow that.
One thing that people don't realize is that any app built for WM5 will most likely do some buffering. Buffering minimizes the file read/write speed issues of the persistent store. Most apps read/write files byte by byte or section by section. If you do that on WM5, you will be terribly slow. If you buffer read/write operations with an 8k to 64k buffer, then the speed difference will be negligible, and may even be faster than the previous WM2003 release (of course the WM2003 release would then benefit as well).
In a similar thread I have demonstrated that its trivial to increase memory use to 75MB by simply loading two picture heavy web pages. Phone edition devices specifically start with a high number of processes running (one for listening for MMS, one to monitor GPRS use, one to display a caller picture, email monitoring etc etc) I am sure people with 64MB devices are going to see a lot of weird behaviour when software gets closed in the background to free up memory.
You shouldn't see any weird behavior when background apps get closed. When you go back to them, they SHOULD return to the same state that they were in when you left them. Strangely enough, about the only major app I know of that doesn't follow the rules here is IE.
Apps like the one listening for MMS messages. If they close then you don't get your message. Or a GPS program that suddenly shuts down for no reason. It makes your PPC appear less reliable.
I?ve never lost my data due to a dead battery, and I use my Pocket PC a lot.
If I ever did loose my data due to a dead battery, since I sync with my desktop, usually two or more times a day, my data is backed up on a regular basis.
Something that greatly concerns me, and should concern most corporate users, is that if my pocket PC should ever all into the wrong hands, I?m secure in the knowledge that when someone does a hard-reset, all of my data will be gone. Please, someone correct me if I?m wrong, but if this should happen with WM5, after someone did a hard-reset to gain access to my device, my sensitive data would still be there for them to use. Even if I encrypt my data, they still have something to hack. Am I wrong? (I really hope so).
We?ve always had this sort of storage since the beginning, in the form of memory cards. In previous versions, we had a choice of using ROM or RAM, now we don?t.
Something that greatly concerns me, and should concern most corporate users, is that if my pocket PC should ever all into the wrong hands, I?m secure in the knowledge that when someone does a hard-reset, all of my data will be gone. Please, someone correct me if I?m wrong, but if this should happen with WM5, after someone did a hard-reset to gain access to my device, my sensitive data would still be there for them to use. Even if I encrypt my data, they still have something to hack. Am I wrong? (I really hope so).
If you use strong compression (and I'm pretty sure that most 'corporate' PDAs will by default have it, just like the hx2750 now; even if the WM5 by default won't have built-in encryption) - a process that automatically de/encrypts everything -, then, I don't think anyone will have access to your WinCE databases storing your stuff.
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I?m still not convinced. Here?s why:
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