A newbie question!

[Snarf]

Newbie question!

Hey all, never owned a Pocket PC, but intend on getting one shortly. Just trying to get a handle of the following:

If a Pocket PC says it has 64MB of RAM and has a slot for up to a 1GB SD card, does this mean that that all my executable programs must be located on the 64MB RAM portion, or can they be located on both the expansion card and RAM?

I assume that the latter is true: that I can store/install games onto a 1GB card, and then just launch them from the pocket PC.

Now, is it slower to do so? Like running a desktop app from a floppy disk, do you get a lag when launching a program from an expansion slot?

Just wondering what the general practices are regarding RAM vs cards.

Thanks!

[Jorgen]

You can store your programs in main memory or on a card. The installation program gives you the choice of installing in main memory or on a card. Executing a program from a card is slightly slower but you will probably not notice the difference.

I use the cards for mp3, ebooks, notes and like data and keep all programs in main memory. I have only one card slot, so this makes it easy to change to another card: one with different data, WiFi, projector, ethernet, camera or whatever else you have.

Good luck with you PPC!

Jorgen

[tanalasta]

The other thing you must realise is that the onboard RAM (64Mb) is shared between storage and running programs. Most of the time, programs are temporarily loaded into RAM when you run them (memory footprint) - Games can take up to 5-10Mb of this. As long as you leave 20Mb free you should not have any problems.

Programs that you use often, integrated into your device (e.g. today-plugin's, PIM) and those which use files that you have on different storage cards (e.g. your favourite mp3 / ebook reader) should be installed in main memory.

The other thing you should be aware of is that if you hard-reset your device or the battery completely dies, you will lose ALL your data that is in RAM unless you have it backed up. This happens more often than you would like... :P

[Jorgen]

if you hard-reset your device or the battery completely dies, you will lose ALL your data that is in RAM

Good point! It is therefore a good idea when you install a program you can't live without to find the .CAB version if possible and store these on safe storage, e.g. a card so you can reinstall without a PC. Just double-tap on the CAB filename and it unpacks (and deletes) itself. You can often find the CAB files in the ActiveSync directory under \Program Files

Jorgen

[tanalasta]

[quote]
It is therefore a good idea when you install a program you can't live without to find the .CAB version if possible and store these on safe storage, e.g. a card so you can reinstall without a PC. Jorgen

It has been said many times before: Sprite Backup is worth it's weight in gold - by far, one of the best programs you could ever get for your PPC. The self-executable backup-file saved onto my memory card has resulted in 2 minute restores after a hard-reset have been a real God-send whenever my device hard-resets.

Just a bit easier than .cab files :)

[Jorgen]

Sprite Backup looks good, but $20 for the cheapest, somewhat limited version! I'll stick to CAB files!

Jorgen

[Snarf]

Thanks for the replies.

I intend on getting the h6315 when it comes out. Have been watching the PDA world for a while but nothing had enough features until now.

Says it has 64MB RAM, 64MB ROM

I assume that the 64MB ROM is the OS and system related stuff, and can't be installed onto?

Which leaves that full 64MB of RAM as "main memory (storage of apps)" + runtime memory ? So if you wanted to allow 20MB for runtime purposes, you could use 44MB as storage? Or does the device fill some of this 64MB itself?

It seems to me that what makes sense is to install everything that you possibly can on an SD card, *except* applications that require data files from a SD card -- such as a media player, mp3 player, etc.

[Snarf]

BTW, is there no way to upgrade the "onboard RAM"? 64MB sounds a little silly to me when we know that you can store a lot more than that in a tiny space. Surely there's a way to swap out the 64 and replace it with something a lot larger? Or is this a hard limitation of Pocket PC addressing or something?

[lordpercy]

not a good idea, the PPC's of today are almost impossible to work inside so even if you could up the memory its cheaper and esier to do it via external storage, you should find 64mb is plenty to run most apps.

[Jorgen]

The operating system has a lot of built-in routines so 64Mb is a lot.

Anyway, the PPC will automatically split between user memory and storage memory as needed. As said above some 15-20Mb free total (about 10Mb storage and 10 Mb runtime memory) is good. Some games may use more or run faster if they have more.

You will find that it all works very well.

Jorgen

[Sven Johannsen]

The ROM portion is where all the OS, built in apps and OEM additions are stored. Registry settings, even for those, as well as portions of the OS that need to run in RAM do so, and take up part of that 64M of RAM that is available and split between user storage and program execution space.

Most PPCs that have ROM left over, after all the standard stuff is loaded, provide that to the user as an additional storage option. HP calls it FileStore, Dell calls it Built-In-Storage. My HP 4155 only has about 3M of this, which isn't worth much, but my Dell X30 has 30M. That is enough that all the programs I would normally put on a Flash card will fit in there. It is a bit faster than a Flash Card but there are still some things that need to be installed into the Main RAM storage. Putting files in Built-In-Storage, allows me to keep only datafiles on the Flash cards, which includes MP3s, Videos, and real data like pdfs of manuals, databases etc. That lets me have multiple flash cards and swap them without concern of what program might be on them.

If you are thinking of the 6300, with 64M of ROM, I would expect that it should have a significant amount of user accesible ROM, so this is something you might consider.

Note that all the registry is maintained in RAM. When everything dies, unfortunate crash, forget to keep the battery charged, that registry is gone. So even if you have apps loaded on non-volitile storage, like a Flash card or Built-In-Storage, the system no longer knows about them. You can certainly use cab files to reload the apps you want which reloads the registry entries. This puts them back to default, however. You will likely spend a lot of time customizing your PPC with thems, specific program options, folder arrangements, etc. This is what takes time, not merely re-installing apps. That is where a good backup program helps. It will put everything back the way you had it. Sprite Backup does a particularly good job at that even having the option to automatically do backups at your chosen interval. Mine does one at 4AM every morning and keeps two. My backup is never more than 24hrs old. When you look at the price of a good backup program, you have to look at it understanding what your time and frustration level is worth.