[Dave Conger]

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/tho...ave08162005.mp3

The ThoughtCast world is expanding! Ed's been doing such a great job with the ThoughtCast but we want to provide even more content coming to you over the RSS feed. Jason Dunn and I connected up a little while back to chat about things that were going on in the mobile devices market. Of course Jason is in Canada and I am the US so we didn't actually meet up, but through the miracle that is Skype we were able to chat. This is the first part of our chat. Part two will be on the way soon.

Show notes:
• Mass Storage in the PDA Market
• Features that need improving (using the LifeDrive as an example)
• Why memory sizes have stayed small
• Storing Programs and Data
• Windows Mobile 5 Look and Feel

Direct Link to this show: Download
RSS Feed: PPCT ThoughtCast Feed

And actually, Jason and I thought it would be cool to include a special edition ThoughtCast as well. This is our "beta" show we recorded back in March 2005 - Jason had a headset microphone that picked up a lot of "popping p's", so you'll have to excuse frequent "pppops". It isn't really Pocket PC heavy in content, but we wanted to pass it along to you as well to spur some discussion.

Show notes:
• Skype and VoIP
• WiFi/Cell Service Jumping
• WiMax for Data Service
• Internet as a Utility

Direct Link to this show: Download
RSS Feed: PPCT ThoughtCast Feed

[Dave Conger]

http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/tho...ave08162005.mp3

The ThoughtCast world is expanding! Ed's been doing such a great job with the ThoughtCast but we want to provide even more content coming to you over the RSS feed. Jason Dunn and I connected up a little while back to chat about things that were going on in the mobile devices market. Of course Jason is in Canada and I am the US so we didn't actually meet up, but through the miracle that is Skype we were able to chat. This is the first part of our chat. Part two will be on the way soon.

Show notes:
• Mass Storage in the PDA Market
• Features that need improving (using the LifeDrive as an example)
• Why memory sizes have stayed small
• Storing Programs and Data
• Windows Mobile 5 Look and Feel

Direct Link to this show: Download
RSS Feed: PPCT ThoughtCast Feed

And actually, Jason and I thought it would be cool to include a special edition ThoughtCast as well. This is our "beta" show we recorded back in March 2005 - Jason had a headset microphone that picked up a lot of "popping p's", so you'll have to excuse frequent "pppops". It isn't really Pocket PC heavy in content, but we wanted to pass it along to you as well to spur some discussion.

Show notes:
• Skype and VoIP
• WiFi/Cell Service Jumping
• WiMax for Data Service
• Internet as a Utility

Direct Link to this show: Download
RSS Feed: PPCT ThoughtCast Feed

[MS Mobiles]

Interesting podcast but I have impression that it is an advertisement for PalmOne company (due to much talk about PalmOne's Lifedrive product), rather than a podcast about Windows Mobile... did you get paid by PalmOne for that Podcast?

[x999x]

Originally Posted by MS Mobiles

Interesting podcast but I have impression that it is an advertisement for PalmOne company (due to much talk about PalmOne's Lifedrive product), rather than a podcast about Windows Mobile... did you get paid by PalmOne for that Podcast?

My "thoughts" exactly.

[surur]

Re the Lifedrive.

I believe the 32Mb ram is devided between 16Mb for the OS, which is therefore always in cache, 10Mb cache for software and databases and 6 Mb dynamic ram.

Surur

[Dave Conger]

All I will say is that sometimes your thoughts will make you think about more than just Windows Mobile. The LifeDrive is a major competitor to the media-centric nature of Windows Mobile. On occasion, Pocket PC Thoughts covers competitor news as well. This was an "occasion" for the ThoughtCast and just happen to be one of the things we were thinking about at the time.

There is sure a lot of bashing of the product for it to be an advertisement. By the way, PalmOne has changed its name (though you hear us refer to the company as PalmOne because the podcast was recorded just before the official name change). This is why compitor news is covered :-).

[Dave Conger]

Originally Posted by Surur

I believe the 32Mb ram is devided between 16Mb for the OS, which is therefore always in cache, 10Mb cache for software and databases and 6 Mb dynamic ram.

Mmmm, not sure that is right. Palm did state, at least to me, that it was a 32 MB cache for the hard drive, not for storage. Could be wrong though. I also see that in a number of places across the web as well. Note that the hard drive also has "64 MB RAM" on it as well.

[surur]

The HDD has a 64Mb partition, which takes the role of NVFS (Non-Volatile File System). This is "mirrored" to the executable RAM, so that everything is preserved in case of powerr loss. On bootup (e.g. after a soft reset) it takes 2 minutes to check the intergrity of the drive and load up the OS into the 32Mb RAM. For many people resets are quite frequent (the only failure mode it seems for a device without protected memory)

There is an application called sharkcache which will lock your databases to ram, so it wont be paged out by other software, but this itself causes many crashes.

The LifeDrive is very crashtastic. I sure hope when Dell implements their HDD PPC it does it a lot better (using real flash rom and real RAM). The 'HDD drive support in WM5' does worry me a bit. Do they mean th ability to use the HDD in place of flash storage? I'm sure that ppc would suck as much as the LD.

Surur

[Jason Dunn]

Originally Posted by MS Mobiles

...did you get paid by PalmOne for that Podcast?

Yes, they paid Dave and myself enough to buy a small island, so I'm going to retire there next week. Time to start packing! :roll:

I'll respond to serious questions only.

[Dave Conger]

Originally Posted by Surur

The LifeDrive is very crashtastic. I sure hope when Dell implements their HDD PPC it does it a lot better (using real flash rom and real RAM)...

I agree, and I think that is what Jason and I were poking at. This is a kind of product that should be on the Windows Mobile line, though we hope that Dell and others will do it better.

[PatrickD]

Great job guys. Dave you sound like a professional broadcaster If Jason and Dave did get paid to advertise the life drive, then it is no wonder Palm is in trouble, because I don't think they will get many sales from that review :wink: Anyway, I think it is valuable to see what the competition is doing. As long as it is a constructive and balanced review (which I think it was) and not just an exercise in Palm bashing then I am interested.