Log in

View Full Version : Did I need 128MB RAM afterall?


famousdavis
12-07-2004, 07:46 PM
Following on the heels of a recent discussion here on how much RAM memory a PPC ought to have, I learned something last night that made me realize that 128MB -- or more! -- might be helpful.

I have a personal website where I'm loading up a year's worth of photos -- one webpage per month, with upwards of 30 photos (some 800x600, some 400x300) on each page.

When I went to view my website through my PPC (Dell Axim X50v), I couldn't display all the photos because my PPC ran out of memory! Mind you, I didn't have anything else running at the time, and I've loaded most all apps to the built-in storage memory, not RAM. Still, the RAM was gobbled up with my website photos and left me with about half a page of photos undisplayed.

I was surprised. I never thought I needed more RAM that what my X50v came with, but now I'm not so sure about that.

ADBrown
12-07-2004, 08:16 PM
If you have a bunch of space free in Built-In Storage, or on a memory card, you can use that to store PocketIE's temporary files, which would seem to be the problem.

Sven Johannsen
12-07-2004, 09:01 PM
You could also redesign your web site so that the photo page is a page of thumbnails, which each link to a larger photo.

Ripper014
12-07-2004, 09:12 PM
Or you can just get a machine with more ram...

surur
12-08-2004, 12:16 AM
I was surprised. I never thought I needed more RAM that what my X50v came with, but now I'm not so sure about that.

This needs to be highlighted. 64MB is fine for normal use, but as soon as you start pushing the limits you will run into those same limits much faster than with 128MB.

Surur
(happy loox 720 owner)

Fishie
12-08-2004, 12:18 AM
If you have a bunch of space free in Built-In Storage, or on a memory card, you can use that to store PocketIE's temporary files, which would seem to be the problem.
That doesnt help as the page you are watching at that moment needs to be loaded in RAM.

Jason Dunn
12-08-2004, 07:22 PM
Your scenario is pretty unique though - Pocket PCs don't have scratch drives, so imagine what it would be like surfing the Web on your desktop PC without a hard drive...not pleasant. :-)

Paragon
12-08-2004, 08:03 PM
I was surprised. I never thought I needed more RAM that what my X50v came with, but now I'm not so sure about that.

This needs to be highlighted. 64MB is fine for normal use, but as soon as you start pushing the limits you will run into those same limits much faster than with 128MB.

Surur
(happy loox 720 owner)

No kidding! I never knew that. :lol:

Kowalski
12-08-2004, 08:31 PM
this is a very rare situation, and the designer could give a little affort in order to the page to be much more optimized.
i dont see the situation as "ppc needs more than 128 megs of ram" instead i can say that "the designer has to make more optimizations"

famousdavis
12-09-2004, 11:54 PM
this is a very rare situation, and the designer could give a little affort in order to the page to be much more optimized.
i dont see the situation as "ppc needs more than 128 megs of ram" instead i can say that "the designer has to make more optimizations"

Tee-hee! The designer of my website is, well, me.

I'm stuffing onto one page a bunch of fairly big, not-very-compressed images so the photos look great and can be printed by friends and family members with good results. I could break up the page or use fewer photos, but that compromises my other objectives of lots of great shots of my family and our friends throughout the year.

It's doubtful that anyone would view my site from a PPC, and the disk caching in Windows ought to ensure others with little memory in their desktop are not adversely affected. Still, I may create a "lite" version of my pages with fewer photos for those poor folks still on a telephone modem.

Kowalski
12-11-2004, 10:14 AM
Tee-hee! The designer of my website is, well, me.
i got it :D
and it seems that you got my message too :)

I could break up the page or use fewer photos

Bill Harrison
12-13-2004, 02:07 PM
Actually, I have enjoyed both my PPC's so far, one URthere Amigo w/ a 128mb ram upgrade, and my Toshiba E805 w/ 128mb stock. I recall having tried out 32mb on my Amigo which it had stock, and that was plain useless. I am not sure how 64 would feel, but it seems restrictive to me, atleast seeing as how 128 mb is easily available. I feel this would be different if the 64mb really were JUST ram, but it is also program storage etc, and to me thats just not enough!

I know cards and so on are avail, but who wants to install programs on a storage card, then not have it handy when u need the program. Blah.

Bill

Darius Wey
12-13-2004, 03:27 PM
I am not sure how 64 would feel, but it seems restrictive to me, atleast seeing as how 128 mb is easily available. I feel this would be different if the 64mb really were JUST ram, but it is also program storage etc, and to me thats just not enough!I know cards and so on are avail, but who wants to install programs on a storage card, then not have it handy when u need the program. Blah.

64MB isn't fantastic. It's usable, but 128MB is certainly a nice amount to sit on. My device has 64MB at the moment, and while I have 2x 1GB storage cards which could certainly make up for the lacklustre amount of RAM, I'd still prefer installing my programs on the onboard memory for convenience and speed.

At the moment, I've used up most of my onboard memory and am sitting on an idle ~2MB of free storage and ~3MB of free program memory. I think a hard reset is imminent. :P

Janak Parekh
12-13-2004, 07:04 PM
Part of the problem is PIE, as well -- it should be more memory efficient, IMHO. There's a number of tricks a developer could use. I can't believe I'm saying this, but Opera on my WM2003 Smartphone is an order-of-magnitude faster and more useable than PIE on any Pocket PC I've ever used -- and this is a puny little 200MHz device with 32MB of RAM on a 176x220 display.

I really, really hope Opera is released on the Pocket PC as well -- I'd expect that we all would move over about the same day it was released. I'm not kidding, it is truly that much better.

--janak

Jason Dunn
12-14-2004, 12:21 AM
Part of the problem is PIE, as well -- it should be more memory efficient, IMHO. There's a number of tricks a developer could use.

Yeah, like limiting the amount of cache PIE uses. :roll: I'm seriously stunned...awed....blown away that you CAN'T limit the cache inside PIE. It just keeps eating away at your storage until the Pocket PC becomes unusable. It's ridiculous, and I've been bringing this up for a LONG time. Microsoft just doesn't seem to get it. It's like their non-innovating desktop IE brothers came over to work on PIE and they said "Gee, that's good enough for some people, let's stop development." :?

Ripper014
12-14-2004, 01:52 AM
Ok... just found another reason I need additional ram... seems that Atlantis Redux needs not only 120mb of space on a storage card... but it requires that you have 20mb of free ram....

Looks great... but I don't have the ram... not a square to spare... only have about 16mb free...

Darius Wey
12-14-2004, 03:02 AM
Yeah, like limiting the amount of cache PIE uses. :roll: I'm seriously stunned...awed....blown away that you CAN'T limit the cache inside PIE. It just keeps eating away at your storage until the Pocket PC becomes unusable. It's ridiculous, and I've been bringing this up for a LONG time. Microsoft just doesn't seem to get it. It's like their non-innovating desktop IE brothers came over to work on PIE and they said "Gee, that's good enough for some people, let's stop development." :?

And having said that, thank heavens for third-party companies. 8)

Bill Harrison
12-14-2004, 12:40 PM
Well, I really do not see why these devices are not all standard with more ram these days. 64mb honestly is a paltry amount. My tosh has 128 + a 32mb filestore. No problems. Battery life is fine, and with the screen off lasts many many hours. Even wifi does not seem to suck this bad boy down much, I had the thing configured as a voip phone sitting idle w/ wifi on for about 8 hours, and still had 35% battery life.

So refreshing 128mb of ram can't be as power hungry as alot of people make it out to be!

Brad Adrian
12-14-2004, 02:48 PM
This discussion takes me back to 2000 when the first Pocket PCs came out. I was SO glad I opted to spend a few extra bucks and get the HP Jornada with the 32MB of RAM instead of the 16MB model!

And, believe it or not, for 99% of what we were using our devices for back then, 16MB was actually sufficient.

Jason Dunn
12-14-2004, 04:07 PM
So refreshing 128mb of ram can't be as power hungry as alot of people make it out to be!

According to a recent event I was at, moving from 32 to 64 MB means a 20% battery hit - moving from 64 MB to 128 MB is roughly the same hit.

surur
12-14-2004, 05:27 PM
So refreshing 128mb of ram can't be as power hungry as alot of people make it out to be!

According to a recent event I was at, moving from 32 to 64 MB means a 20% battery hit - moving from 64 MB to 128 MB is roughly the same hit.

20% over what? Does 64Mb use 20% more battery than 32Mb, and 128Mb 20% more than 64?

Or are we talking about 20% reduction in battery life of the same unit with 64Mb vs 128Mb e.g. a 4700 with 64Mb will last 10hours, and will only last 8hrs with 128Mb.

If the latter then this should be easy to confirm, as many people have done the ppctech upgrade, and can report before and after battery life experiences.

If the former, I would contend that refreshing the memory is not a significant power drain, compared to lighting the screen and wifi, which really sucks battery. In which case your pocketpc may last 10 hours with 64Mb and 9hrs 45 minutes with 128Mb. THAT would be a price I would willingly pay.

Surur