[kman42]

I had a two megabyte Visor a couple years ago and bought an 8MB expansion card for it. The expansion card was pretty useless though. All applications and data had to be on the internal memory to run. This meant that I had to move things around to get them to run--very annoying. It also meant that I couldn't have apps with large databases (like epocrates) on the unit even though I had 10 MB of memory because they had to be on the internal memory to run making me remove EVERYTHING else. It was also a hassle to try to install other stuff because of this.

I'm looking at a new PDA, but I don't want to run into the same problem. I don't really need a color PDA, but the only Palm with 16 MB of memory has a color screen and costs 399. The 8MB, b&w version would do me fine with a $59 32MB expansion card, but will I actually be able to use the memory on the expansion card or will I be dealing with the same headaches I had previously?

Any advice would be great.

kman

[scaught]

i think theres a type of SD card you can get that basically acts as an extension of your RAM so theres no swapping around.

if that first sentence proves to be false, theres several programs you can get to allow for running apps or databases off of an external memory card. i use pidirect 2 on my handera 330.

[wingdo]

Originally posted by scaught:
<STRONG>i think theres a type of SD card you can get that basically acts as an extension of your RAM so theres no swapping around.
</STRONG>

Actually, as far as running programs from a Palm with SD memory, there is still swapping around. Applications cannot be directly run from SD. However Palm's advantage over Handspring's is that the copy from SD to RAM is transparent to the user. It is done in the background automatically.

[kman42]

Originally posted by wingdo:
<STRONG>

Actually, as far as running programs from a Palm with SD memory, there is still swapping around. Applications cannot be directly run from SD. However Palm's advantage over Handspring's is that the copy from SD to RAM is transparent to the user. It is done in the background automatically.</STRONG>

Does this mean that as long as I have no programs+databses that exceed 8MB (somewhat less due to system overhead), that I should be able to get by with an 8MB Palm +32MB expansion card? The device will switch things automatically as needed without any fussing on my part? What about installation of new apps, will that require me to move stuff off of the internal RAM to make room or does it move it automatically?

thanks for the help,

kman

[wingdo]

Originally posted by kman42:
<STRONG>

Does this mean that as long as I have no programs+databses that exceed 8MB (somewhat less due to system overhead), that I should be able to get by with an 8MB Palm +32MB expansion card? The device will switch things automatically as needed without any fussing on my part? What about installation of new apps, will that require me to move stuff off of the internal RAM to make room or does it move it automatically?

thanks for the help,

kman</STRONG>

More or less. Not all databases are currently designed to write to flash, so you need to keep some data on the main RAM. However, most programs run fine off of the SD card. There just needs to be enough RAM (plus something like 5%) free in main RAM to hold the program while it is active. Once deactvated it is erased from RAM. The system works fairly well, and as more programs are designed to deal with SD cards, more databases will be able to be kept on SD.

As far as installs, Palm Desktop 4.0 allows you the choice of installing new programs and data to SD or Internal.

BTW, Palm Reader takes full advantage of the SD cards. I've got about 15 MB of books on my SD card (32MB card).