Monday, November 22, 2004
Less Than Expected
The new Treo 650 is a step backwards from the Treo 600 in one area: memory usage.The two devices include the same amount of memory (32 MB) but the 650 has a new Non-Volatile File System (NVFS) that organizes memory as blocks of 512 bytes. Palm applications use record-oriented databases. On the Treo 650 under NVFS, each record is padded out to 512 byte chunks. So, for example, a 50 byte record would inflate by more than 10x when stored on the 650. A big problem for applications with lots of small records such as Contacts and Datebook.
The change in memory technology on the Treo 650 means that even if the battery dies you won't lose any data. Definitely nice but I'd forgo this feature for more reasonable memory usage. In all other respects, the Treo 650 is much nicer than the 600. palmOne promises to address the problem but it's not clear if the fix will be a software patch or something more extensive. Hopefully they'll address it quickly.
Update: palmOne has responded to these memory concerns. They plan to release a ROM upgrade to "increase memory use efficiency" and are offering a free 128MB SD card to existing Treo 650 users. palmOne has also posted an article on NVFS in their Support Knowledge Library. Sounds like most of the problems will be mitigated by the ROM upgrade but may also require updates to third-party software to deal with NVFS properly.
The change in memory technology on the Treo 650 means that even if the battery dies you won't lose any data. Definitely nice but I'd forgo this feature for more reasonable memory usage. In all other respects, the Treo 650 is much nicer than the 600. palmOne promises to address the problem but it's not clear if the fix will be a software patch or something more extensive. Hopefully they'll address it quickly.
Update: palmOne has responded to these memory concerns. They plan to release a ROM upgrade to "increase memory use efficiency" and are offering a free 128MB SD card to existing Treo 650 users. palmOne has also posted an article on NVFS in their Support Knowledge Library. Sounds like most of the problems will be mitigated by the ROM upgrade but may also require updates to third-party software to deal with NVFS properly.
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