what OEMs need to do to make PPC's much more useful

[heov]

Here's what I think would make my uses of a pocket pc so much more useful.

1. increase the speed of the CF/SD/storage card interface... it's SO SLOW! copying between cards, copying to card from RAM or from PC is just so extremely slow... even for USB1.0 standards it's extremely slow. MAKE IT FASTER. my 5 dollar cheapo card reader is faster.

2. hurry up w/ the usb 2.0 already... and make sure it runs at usb 2.0 speeds.

3. make pocket pc's act as storage drives by DEFAULT. i know you can get third party drivers for it, but why don't they just make this standard? seems so obvious to me!

4. include a client/mini usb port on ALL pocket pcs. just stick it on the top or bottom or something, just so we can use them as card readers w/ a standard USB cable. I dont' want to carry/buy another sync cable with me, especially when i have to have one for my mp3 player already! I know my old asus had this port.

5. include a vibrate feature! this should also be a no brainer for appointments. i know the phones have these, but i think normal PPCs should as well.

I'm really just hoping the next wave of non-cellular pocket pc's will at least have USB 2.0 and much faster read/write storage interface speeds (i want my phone seperate from my ppc).

EDIT:

oh yeah... and stop using Flash ROM. Why not use NVFS RAM, like what Palm's been using?

If i understand it right, it's the same type of chip that's used in storage cards, which is much faster than flash ROM. The OS can be flagged as READ ONLY, and then in WM5 the basic operations should be a bit snappier, and we coudl still have dynamic ram for the other stuff. I bet it's cheaper too... Palm seems to be able to cram tons of it in even its lowend devices.

[Janak Parekh]

oh yeah... and stop using Flash ROM. Why not use NVFS RAM, like what Palm's been using?
Just FYI - NVFS uses flash ROM too (NAND flash to be precise).

--janak

[applejosh]

And to further comment, the NVFS system on Palm sucks there, too. Palm uses NVFS (on FlashRAM (or FlashROM, depending on how you look at it) - same thing as in newer WM5 PPC's), which is just a file system. NVFS is Non-volatile file system, which is basically a hack of the old VFS (virtual file system) so that when the OS needs to run a program, it has to copy the app out of NVFS to real RAM (of which there is only about 8-10MB available, I think, on the T5 and TX) to run it (and then copy the changes back to the flash afterwards. The real fun comes when the real RAM fills up (because the OS keeps apps in the real RAM until RAM is really needed for other purposes - kind of like PPC does), it has to release that RAM, which (at least for me) was a very time consuming process. Sometimes, after exiting a larg-ish app (eg. TCPMP) and trying to launch something else (eg. DateBk), there would be a delay of around a minute (spent staring at a white screen) while the OS cleared out the real RAM. I don't know why it took so long, but it did (unless it really did hang, in which case you'd waste a minute thinking the RAM clearing was happening when in fact, it had just crashed and locked up). I usually tried to make the T5 work for a couple of weeks, and then I'd go back to the stability of my T3. Try the T5 a month or two later, only to go running back to the T3.

So, while I'm usually happy to jump on the anti-Microsoft wagon, I think their transition to a non-volatile file system has gone much smoother than Palm's current experiment (not including the upgrade route for some devices such the X50v, etc., where the hardware really isn't up to supporting WM5 - Palm doesn't have this problem since they don't do upgrades any more). The whole filesystem that PPC was built upon is better suited to the transition.

Just my 2 cents. I really do like Palm devices - just not the current crop of buggy things.

[heov]

And to further comment, the NVFS system on Palm sucks there, too. Palm uses NVFS (on FlashRAM (or FlashROM, depending on how you look at it) - same thing as in newer WM5 PPC's), which is just a file system. NVFS is Non-volatile file system, which is basically a hack of the old VFS (virtual file system) so that when the OS needs to run a program, it has to copy the app out of NVFS to real RAM (of which there is only about 8-10MB available, I think, on the T5 and TX) to run it (and then copy the changes back to the flash afterwards. The real fun comes when the real RAM fills up (because the OS keeps apps in the real RAM until RAM is really needed for other purposes - kind of like PPC does), it has to release that RAM, which (at least for me) was a very time consuming process. Sometimes, after exiting a larg-ish app (eg. TCPMP) and trying to launch something else (eg. DateBk), there would be a delay of around a minute (spent staring at a white screen) while the OS cleared out the real RAM. I don't know why it took so long, but it did (unless it really did hang, in which case you'd waste a minute thinking the RAM clearing was happening when in fact, it had just crashed and locked up). I usually tried to make the T5 work for a couple of weeks, and then I'd go back to the stability of my T3. Try the T5 a month or two later, only to go running back to the T3.

So, while I'm usually happy to jump on the anti-Microsoft wagon, I think their transition to a non-volatile file system has gone much smoother than Palm's current experiment (not including the upgrade route for some devices such the X50v, etc., where the hardware really isn't up to supporting WM5 - Palm doesn't have this problem since they don't do upgrades any more). The whole filesystem that PPC was built upon is better suited to the transition.

Just my 2 cents. I really do like Palm devices - just not the current crop of buggy things.

i agree with you, i've owned a tx, the memory setup sucks.

but the chip seems to be superior. I'm not saying switch to how palm does it... keep it the way WM5 is setup now... 100+mb of storage (rom) and 64mb of dynamic ram.

i'm sure that the number one biggest complaint about WM5 is it's lag/slow response, which seems to be directly related to how slow the FlashROM is.

If i picked the wrong type of ram, why don't OEMs switch to flash ram ala SD cards and such. the write speed is so much quicker (in real world use at least) and it's so cheap. They can just set hte OS section as read only.

[applejosh]

OK, I'm not quite sure what you're asking for. SD cards are flash ROM. (The use of the word "RAM" I believe was created just to show that the data was writeable.)

According to this article:

http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2005/08/19/453784.aspx

SD cards (and other non-volatile storage cards) use NAND memory, which is slower to read, but faster to write to (than the other type - NOR). I believe that the PPC's designed for use with WM5 have NAND memory. NOR is another type which is read fast, but is slow to write to (and my experience with older PPC's suggest this). So, it sounds like you want programs to be stored in NOR (faster execution) but data to be stored in NAND (as suggested in the above blog entry). I don't know how feasible that is, but I guess it won't hurt requesting it (although I personally think it will cause more confusion and complexity than is really necessary).

In my experience so far with the X51v, programs launch no more faster off the SD card than they do out of the main memory (the flashRAM/ROM part). I feel the write speed on the flashRAM/ROM is faster than it is to my SD card, but I don't have any specific data to that effect.

Also, I believe (just a hunch) that devices specifically created for the WM5 use NAND memory (eg. X51v); and the TX (and I believe T5 and any NVFS Palm device) also uses NAND. So it's the same stuff. Palm may access it differently than WM5 devices (which they'd have to given the way Palm programs run), and they may call it FlashRAM, but it's the same thing. Older devices that have upgrades to WM5 may still use NOR (as they were not designed to have data saved on a regular, dynamic basis to the flash space), and you may see some delays on those devices because background processes writing data to the storage area are slower than one would hope (because NOR flash is slower to write) and also take more CPU cycles (as suggested by the filesys issue on upgraded X50's).

I think part of the issue is that Palm programs (in general) are smaller than PPC programs. Just the nature of the two OS's. (Compare DateBk6 on the Palm (~900kb) to PocketInformant on the PPC (a couple of MB's).) The less stuff to shuffle from NAND to real RAM may be a big contributor to the speed increase you see on the TX. I'm just thinking out loud here, though. Anyway, at least on my X51v, they are using the same type of memory as in SD cards.

[heov]

well it seems like i've got the naming conventions all wrong, but i'm failry certain the chips inside an SD/CF card are different than the the flash rom in pocket pcs. I mean pocket pc's basically use special intel flash chips.

Maybe it's just the way it's interfaced, but I can say that I can write MUCH faster to my SD card than i can to my ipaq file store. I really haven't compared read times though.

of course i'm just ranting in all this, but I don't want WM6 or whatever my next pocket pc will run to be as laggy/slow as WM5 is, and i'm hoping using a different type of memory will solve that.

but then again, having your OS/docs on non-volitile storage all the time is extremely nice, i'm just not willing (and i'm sure others as well) to sacrifice basic UI speed.

[applejosh]

They may be made by different companies, but according to that article, they all are NAND flash memory (except for earlier than current models which mostly used NOR, I'm guessing). Considering that I've had SD cards that fly and SD cards that are slower than, well, something really slow (this is a family site), I'm guessing you just had a brand that operated really well. Of course, I don't know how all that factors into reliability and longevity (it's a lot easier to replace an SD card, even if it does come with a "lifetime" warranty" than it is to replace the soldered in chip on a PPC board). Plus, I don't know if SD cards do wear-leveling like internal NAND memory operations do (so no one spot gets worn out prematurely), and that might actually slow writing down as the OS/memory controller determines where to write to next.

I'm not trying to downplay your concerns (I know the persistent memory PDA's operate slower than the non persistent memory devices - independent of platform). I'm just trying to 1) understand what your concerns are (to which I think we've pretty much spelled them out at this point), and 2) try to understand why the WM5 devices are slower than earlier OS devices. I'm also trying to debunk the myth that the NVFS memory (which really is just a filesystem on top of NAND memory) is faster in any way (my experience has been the exact opposite). I'm pretty close to being a Palm zealot, but I do appreciate each platform for its strengths, and NVFS isn't one of those strengths. And I do like my X51v, and it is my main PDA at the moment. I think (except for ActiveSync 4.1, which really needs to be fixed) this device is my most stable PPC to date (not that I've had a lot of them). Anyway, to each their own.

[r@dimus]

Here's what I think would make my uses of a pocket pc so much more useful.

1. increase the speed of the CF/SD/storage card interface... it's SO SLOW! copying between cards, copying to card from RAM or from PC is just so extremely slow... even for USB1.0 standards it's extremely slow. MAKE IT FASTER. my 5 dollar cheapo card reader is faster.

2. hurry up w/ the usb 2.0 already... and make sure it runs at usb 2.0 speeds.

Can't disagree on that one.



3. make pocket pc's act as storage drives by DEFAULT. i know you can get third party drivers for it, but why don't they just make this standard? seems so obvious to me!


I'll only bite on this feature if it this can be done in such a way that Activesync still works. No storage mode as default for me, thank you. If I have to choose between the two I'll stick with Activesync to keep it updated with Outlook and I can still copy files through Explorer even though it doesn't show up as a drive letter.


4. include a client/mini usb port on ALL pocket pcs. just stick it on the top or bottom or something, just so we can use them as card readers w/ a standard USB cable. I dont' want to carry/buy another sync cable with me, especially when i have to have one for my mp3 player already! I know my old asus had this port.


Don't a lot of the HTC devices already do this? I'll go along with this one only if it doesn't mean loosing the option of a cradled connection. I had a Blackberry 6210 once that used the mini USB connection and didn't like the untidiness of having this device laying around on its back with the cable hanging out the side. Yeah, there was a stand available for it, but then it looked even more rediculous sitting in an unwired cradle with the USB cable sticking out the side. No thanks. I like cradles. It makes it super easy to dock the device and it keeps the thing up off the desk so there is a lesser chance of something getting dropped or spilled on it.


5. include a vibrate feature! this should also be a no brainer for appointments. i know the phones have these, but i think normal PPCs should as well.


I'm pretty ambivelent on this one. My Blackberries always had this feature, and it and the beeps were the first things I deavtivated. My PPC's never bothered me, and I like it that way.

Some changes I'd love to see is a built-in USB host and printing capability. As these thing are getting nearly as powerful as some laptops were a few years back I think it's time to add in some real PC-like features.