Why Persistent Storage Is A Good Thing

Artigo
07/14/2005

Here's a quick primer on why you want Persistent Storage on your Pocket PCs.

Persistent Storage (PS) on PocketPC is new for Windows Mobile 5.0. (All Smartphones since the original 2002 release have had PS.)

Previously, your user data (email, contacts, calendar, settings, apps you installed, etc) were stored in RAM. RAM has the advantage of being really fast, but the significant disadvantage of needing a constant source of power for it to hold its data. Leave your device unplugged for long enough, and you'll lose all your data. Fixing that was the primary reason for moving PocketPCs to Persistent Storage.

PS gives you a nice sense of certainty about your data. Batteries running low? No problem. Worst case, the device shuts off and you can't use it again until you get to a power supply. But when you get there, it'll boot back up and all your data will still be there.

But PS has a number of other effects that might not be quite so obvious.

Would you believe that moving to PS can double your battery life and enable devices with significantly more storage than were previously possible?

Here's why. Remember that RAM requires power to keep its data. The amount of power needed is linear with the amount of RAM. That is to say, 64M of RAM needs twice as much power to keep it running as 32M does. 128M needs four times as much power as 32, etc. And this power drain is constant. The RAM is sucking your batteries dry while the device is in use and while it's suspended. It even continues to drain your batteries when they are "critically low" and the system won't let you turn it on. Also, people didn't buy 128M RAM devices for the program space. They bought them to store stuff in. And those devices had lousy battery lives as a result.

Flash ROM, on the other hand, burns pretty much the same amount of power regardless of how much you have. A 32M flash part burns about the same amount of power as a 128M flash part does. And a 1G flash part is pretty much the same as well. So, by moving to a system where I store my stuff in flash, not RAM, I can put more storage in without requiring a bigger battery to compensate.

But wait, there's more. Pre-Persistent Storage, Windows Mobile had what we called "the 72 hour rule." If you've ever seen a PocketPC run low on batteries, at some point it pops up a dialog that says something like, "You're running out of power, you should stop now." If you keep using it, it'll come back a little later with a more dire warning saying something to the effect of, "You'd better save your data now, because you're on the verge of losing it." Then, a bit after that it comes on and says, "That's it, I'm shutting you down." At that point, you can't use the device again until you plug it in. How much battery charge do you think you have then? 5% maybe?

Try half.

Yes, when we shut you down because your batteries were "critically low," they were still 1/4 to 1/2 full. Why? Because, if the batteries ever fully died, it would be catastrophic. You'd lose your data, and that's, in our opinion, one of the worst things that can happen. So we made a requirement and held our OEMs to it. The requirement was that, at the point where we decided the batteries were "critically low," they had to still have enough power to keep the RAM charged for 72 hours. The idea there was that you could discover that you were out of power on Friday on the way home and you'd still have your data on Monday when you got back to your charger.

A typical battery holds 1000mAh of charge. 128M of RAM takes about 500mAh to stay resident for 72 hours. 64M takes about 250. This is why you never saw a 256M WM 2003 device. It would have run for a minute then decided its batteries were critically low.

This is why switching to Persistent Storage can radically improve your battery life. With PS, we removed the 72 hour requirement. We'll let you run your batteries completely dry, because we know your data will still be safe. Right off the bat, that buys you a significant chuck of time. It also means that no one ever has to make a 128M RAM device again. They can fall back to 64M devices, which burn less power, and store the user data in tons and tons of flash. You'll definitely see 128M flash devices. And there's no barrier to keeping you from seeing 256M, 1G, etc devices. That couldn't have been done with RAM.

Downsides? Yes, nothing is free. Flash is much slower than RAM. Reading and writing large amounts of data will take longer on a PS device than it did on a RAM device. That initial sync that pulls down 400 contacts and 5000 emails will take longer. Some write operations will seem a bit more sluggish. But I believe you'll find that the upsides significantly outweigh the downsides.

Mike Calligaro

Comments

Anonymous
July 14, 2005
Mike,

Excellent post. I never realized the implications of RAM storage regarding battery life. Looking forward to the next gen of devices. My SMT5600 has been awesome.

How much slower for write operations with PS? Are we talking double the time to write, or something more like 10% slower?
Anonymous
July 14, 2005
i just bought the samsung i730 - the battery life is HORRIBLE on it. It sounds like a switch to WM05 will have a huge impact. It also appears that the device was designed for WM05 - so how can we force Verizon/Samsung to release an upgrade to WM05?
Anonymous
July 15, 2005
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Anonymous
July 15, 2005
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Anonymous
July 15, 2005
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Anonymous
July 15, 2005
That is really awesome. I can't wait until Windows Mobile 5.0 is released.

Do you know if devices which receive the Windows Mobile 5.0 upgrade will now let us drain the full battery or will it just be new devices?
Anonymous
July 15, 2005
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Anonymous
July 15, 2005
Happy&nbsp;Happy Joy Joy &ndash;&nbsp;I had the distinct pleasure of having VS2005 go south on me yesterday.&nbsp;&nbsp;At...
Anonymous
July 15, 2005
But guys who upgraded their JAM PPC RAM from 64Mb to 128Mb have not reported any noticeable decrease in battery life. How you can explain that?
Anonymous
July 15, 2005
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Anonymous
July 15, 2005
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Anonymous
July 16, 2005
to the person that spoke about their samsung 1730 having "horrible" battery life... it is also do to the CDMA technology that verizon wireless uses, CDMA consumes more battery than a GSM device.
Anonymous
July 17, 2005
Again windows mobile playing catch up to palm.
Anonymous
July 17, 2005
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Anonymous
July 17, 2005
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Anonymous
July 18, 2005
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Anonymous
July 18, 2005
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Anonymous
July 18, 2005
"Or perhaps we just make ps faster :-) Don't SanDisk have 30mb/s UltraIV's now?"

PS speed is not fully altered by the quality of the ROM, but by the system too. it's exactly as a PC which runs RAM at only 133Mhz even if one installs 400Mhz RAM! The 133x SD from Kingston i saw released is very fast indeed. but that speed can only be taken advantage of at this point by one single professional still camera and USB 2.0 card readers.
I believe that faster PS by say 133x factor would mean higher bus speeds and more demanding hardware in a PPC. alas, less battery life..etc
Anonymous
July 18, 2005
Congratulations, finally you are about to implement a feature Apple Newton had since 1993. So much for innovation...
Anonymous
July 18, 2005
Wow, really? ... really?.. That's amazing.. really?

It's 2005 and we just figured that out.. Wow.. Hurray! Great job!

You are now an Embedded programmer, welcome to the 1970's.
Anonymous
July 18, 2005
guys, guys! PS might go back in early '90s, yes. i've been a keen Palm and i've gone through Symbian until i reached Pocket PC. I'm not a fan of Microsoft either. But let's all face the fact that the massive resources Windows Mobile applications require would have rendered a Permanent Storage kind of technology too sluggish to send devices to the market. The PS system is somehow implemented in the new PalmOne Lifedrive which in my oppinion, instead of making use and improve the edge Palm had up until now, goes back to the problems PPC is now getting rid of.
yes, yes, why did they not think of it until now?? pointless questions, please excuse my determination, as so many of you had plenty of good things to say about your PPC's. I now use an Ipaq h6340 which will not make use of PS as there's no Magnito release on the way for it. I'll have to reinvest in technology, alas go for a hx4700. does that put a smile on my face? no! definitely not.
when improvement is being made, i do say "it was about time".
Anonymous
July 18, 2005
>the massive resources Windows Mobile applications require would have rendered a Permanent Storage kind of technology too sluggish

You got to be kidding me.
You know that Windows PPC2003 only requires 7 MBs of program memory as a minimum, right? Yes, PalmOS 5 only requires about 4, however, everything is relative in this world. Linux with Qtopia/Opie requires 11 MBs and OpenZaurus with GPE (which is based on X11 and GTK) requires... 33 MBs of RAM. So yeah, everything is relative when you say "massive resources".
Anonymous
July 18, 2005
There have been a lot of comments to my "Why Persistent Storage Is A Good Thing" entry, as well as a...
Anonymous
July 18, 2005
A continuation of my "More Persistent Storage Stuff" entry, which is a follow up to "Why Persistent Storage...
Anonymous
July 19, 2005
Cornerstone, indeed. try, for instance and load Skpe from an SD. it's not about the amount of memory one given program needs, but about the time it needs to load its resources from ROM to RAM. which is relatively long.
Anonymous
July 19, 2005
A continuation of my "More Persistent Storage Stuff" entry, which is a follow up to "Why Persistent Storage...
Anonymous
July 19, 2005
With Windows Mobile 2005 coming to our cell phones and PDAs soon, you may want to become accustomed to the idea of "persistent storage", which means that in future all of your personal data, user-installed applications, and updates are stored in...
Anonymous
July 20, 2005
Well, during a Dell event i could test a version of their new axim with WM 5.0,,,,i found it incredibly slow...i asked the person who gave it to me and he said it was a non stable version....strange....right now i fear it was a stable version but with PS on....
Anonymous
July 31, 2005
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Anonymous
August 04, 2005
This is a question I've found myself answering several times over the years - why dosn;t a Pocket PC...
Anonymous
August 06, 2005
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Anonymous
August 06, 2005
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Anonymous
August 08, 2005
Luca, I've really got to do a blog entry on the trials and tribulations of virtual memory. The description is too long to get into here, but the issue with VM on CE isn't about a page file. It doesn't work that way. I'll try to do a full description in a future entry. That's going to be a contentious one...

Regarding buffer caching using RAM, yes, we do that.

Mike Calligaro
Anonymous
August 09, 2005
"It also means that no one ever has to make a 128M RAM device again."

Ever? Just like "no one will ever need more than 640kB of memory on a PC" ?

"Ever" refers to a longer time than three or five years.
Anonymous
August 10, 2005
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Anonymous
August 16, 2005
I too thought Persistant Storage was cool until my IPAQ File Store became corrupted on my h5555. IPAQ backup underestimated the space I needed for a backup then maxed out the storage and corrupted the file sysstem in the file store. I can't delete the files, and I can't format the File Store. There is no format utility provided by IPAQ nor can I seem to find one on the internet.

I found that some of the newer IPAQs include a format utility. Any suggestions?

Oh, an aside. I wish Microsoft would enforce a policy with its vendors to provide a minimum of two OS life cycles for a device. I bought my h5555 this year with WM2003 and found that no upgrade was to be made available for SE or WM05. Not nice for a device that costs more than some desktops.
Anonymous
August 19, 2005
I had a request that I do an entry on the differences between RAM, ROM, NAND, and NOR.&nbsp; Because...
Anonymous
August 20, 2005
Mike Calligaro wrote a great blog entry on Persitent Store recently and why it's so cool. His latest...
Anonymous
August 22, 2005
There are a huge number of benefits that Windows Mobile 5.0 brings to customers, partners, operators...
Anonymous
August 23, 2005
There are a huge number of benefits that Windows Mobile 5.0 brings to customers, partners, operators...
Anonymous
August 23, 2005
There are a huge number of benefits that Windows Mobile 5.0 brings to customers, partners, operators...
Anonymous
September 06, 2005
I have never seen my battery go less than 50%. I charge it every night as well... so why would I want to make my system slower for extra battery life that I'll never really need. It would be nice to be able to select how your PDA stores information, but I'm not even sure thats physically possible (I don't know too much about how they work inside).

I have two questions.

How much slower?
Can I revert back to WM2003 if I don't like it?
Anonymous
September 07, 2005
Ryan, it's always a challenge developing software for large groups of people. For every one of you who charges every night, there are ten who don't like needing to bring chargers on the road with them, and twenty who lost their data and rightfully complained that we weren't reliable enough.

When choosing which features to implement, we need to find the right balance between all of you. And I think we did here.

To answer your "how much slower" please see the two "More Persistent Storage" entries.

Regarding reverting back to WM2003, that will be up to the OEM. If you have a device that the OEM chooses to upgrade, then you should check before upgrading whether or not they'll have a mechanism for reverting. If you buy a new device that comes with WM5 on it, there definitely will not be a way to downgrade.

Mike Calligaro
Anonymous
October 07, 2005
What about Ram... Ijust bought an I-mate Jasjar, 64MB of memory, with WM 5 and all the pre installed applications, it remains 22/23 MB, with all the application closed, when I installed few sw, on the ram, and the rest in the SD card, I checked, and I had left 3 MB, WM 5, if you close an application, still rember it, so the memory keep reserved for that, at the end of the day, or you have minimum 128MB of ram, or you won't be able to do nothing at all with persistent storage, not even take a picture with the built in camera!!!!!!!!
Anonymous
October 19, 2005
Have a question which is only marginaly related to PS. With WM2K3se, it was possible to determine/change the ration between Storage Memory and Program Memory. With WM5, this is not possible anymore. In my case (JASJAR), I installed ALL Programs on the SD Card. Now I am left with approx. 23 megs of Program Memory and 33 megs of Storage Memory. Is there any way to change this hardcoded split ? e.g. assign much more megs to Program Memory ?
Cheers
hrb
Anonymous
October 19, 2005
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Anonymous
October 19, 2005
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Anonymous
December 28, 2005
I tried to read as many of the comments as I could and I have a few questions.

1. Why hasn't the standby feature been updated or changed to give a user more options? While some users may want to have the 72 hour reserve, others may want to make it available for longer operating time.

Currently I can only reduce the standby period to 24 hours. There is not an option or method to disable it entirely that I am aware of.

2. What is the realistic possibility to have more advanced power schemes? For example: When battery reaches 50% reduce brightness to (x) When battery reaches 25% reduce brightness to lowest setting that still illuminates the screen.

3. Now that we have persistent storage wouldnt it make sense to include an option similar to laptops - when I press the power button I want to (a) power off the device (b) initiate standby mode

4. Is it the vender's responsibility to implement such features or changes?

Thanks and regards,
Marc
Anonymous
December 28, 2005
I tried to read as many of the comments as I could and I have a few questions.

1. Why hasn't the standby feature been updated or changed to give a user more options? While some users may want to have the 72 hour reserve, others may want to make it available for longer operating time.

Currently I can only reduce the standby period to 24 hours. There is not an option or method to disable it entirely that I am aware of.

2. What is the realistic possibility to have more advanced power schemes? For example: When battery reaches 50% reduce brightness to (x) When battery reaches 25% reduce brightness to lowest setting that still illuminates the screen.

3. Now that we have persistent storage wouldnt it make sense to include an option similar to laptops - when I press the power button I want to (a) power off the device (b) initiate standby mode

4. Is it the vender's responsibility to implement such features or changes?

Thanks and regards,
Marc
Anonymous
January 12, 2006
I would like to contribute to some of the experiences that I have. I bought Dopod 900 with Windows Mobile 2005, I find that the synchronization took so much slower. It's unbelievable. Synchronizing 5000 contacts used to take me only few minutes with PocketPC 2003 and now it's few hours.
After synchronization complete, my Dopod 900 runs very-very slow which is unacceptable.
When I cut down the contact to less than 1000. The Sluggishness disappeared. I assume that this is due to Persistent Storage. Which is not a good thing IMO. Any workarounds to speed up and keep the contact 5000?
Anonymous
January 15, 2006
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Anonymous
February 17, 2006
I'm using h6340.
How can I format, reset data or do other manipulations with the "iPAQ File Store" storage?
Hard reset not helps.
ReFlashing BIOS not helps too.

Thanks.
ivo2k5@gmail.com
Anonymous
March 16, 2006
I've received a few questions from users who have said that their WM5 device seems to slow down and speed...
Anonymous
March 26, 2006
Yes, WM2005 with it's persistent storage runs like a dog on many 2003 designed pocketPCs such as the iPaq 4700 range.
How a machine with a 600MHz+ processor can run so slowly is astonishing, and this problem appears when the device has been hard-reset, so it's unrelated to any third-party software.

Fortunately HP allow you to downgrade to WM2003, but not until you've bought the WM2005 CD :/

I wonder if the newer native 2005 machines have a different hardware architecture to make them run better with the newer OS? I know that the 200MHz i-Mate starts up and switches callendar modes much better than my 4700, which is very odd. Or perhaps the problem is related to the VGA screen? Is persistent storage related to video usage?

Cheers,
Gadget
Anonymous
March 27, 2006
How do i perform hard reset in dopod 900!
Anonymous
March 31, 2006
I upgraded my x50v to WM2005 last weekend and thankfully found a file on the Dell page that allows me to revert it back to 2003. Everything was much slower. Like some individuals above, I like to have tons of stuff in my calendar, past and present, as i sync between home and work, so maybe that had something to do with it. I definately am not a fan of the WM2005 on this unit. Outside of being slow, it had some appeal, seemed crisper, but I will not have enough time to fully experience it before I put the old OS back on.
Anonymous
April 13, 2006
If we downgrade to WM2003, can we keep the newer versions of Excel, Word and Powerpoint? Alternatively, is there upgrade to those applications available for WM2003?

(It should be free for those of us who bought WM5...)
Anonymous
April 17, 2006
PingBack from http://www.e-fuze.com/community/?p=74
Anonymous
April 17, 2006
Based on the article, is it safe to say that if there are lots of running program on RAM, the battery will run out faster? Therefore, it is better close off all the programs to save RAM and battery. The reason why I ask is that I do not close off all the program because it is much faster to start the program if they stay resident in ram. Please advice.
Thanks in advance
Anonymous
April 18, 2006
Sharpmind, no RAM burns the same amount of power whether it's being actively used or not. So shutting down programs won't make the RAM use less power. The way to make the RAM use less power is for the OEM to put less of it into the system in the first place. Persistent Storage allows them to do that.

Now, another source of power drain is the CPU, and it DOES burn more power when it's active than when it's not. So, if one of the programs you have running is running the CPU a lot, shutting it down can save battery life. But that's not related to the RAM.

Mike
Anonymous
April 24, 2006
for me wm 5 it is a nightmare it just much to slow on my hx4700. i wanted a ppc to look up somthing fast if i want to wait i can run my notebook with windows xp. so a big NO
Anonymous
April 26, 2006
After upgraded to WM5, it seems that my 4700 is a lot faster. Just remember, never to RESTORE your previous programs using your backup software but REINSTALL it. Try this link: http://www.mobiletopsoft.com/board/view.php?newsid=388
Anonymous
May 09, 2006
Can someone please explain to me why I lost all my data (including that on my CF Card) last night simply by switching my iPAQ 4700 on and off. I upgraded to WM5 a couple of days ago. Yes - it is slower and I was prepared to live with that. But how can all my programs and settings and music etc etc just dissapear and I have to start from scratch again. So much for persistant memory.
Anonymous
May 11, 2006
I have an original I-mate Jam with PPC 2003. 64Mb RAM is not enough on this and I am going to upgrade. I was going to get the 128Mb RAM Jam, but after reading this I am not sure what to do! Maybe I should go for a newer I-mate device with WM5 and 64Mb RAM instead? I am not fussed about battery life too much, but want to run Tomtom 5, traffic plug in, IE for traffic info plus other bits and pieces of software. I think I may still be better off with the 128Mb RAM JAM as I am not convinced the extra RAM freed up by WM5 will be enough.
Anonymous
May 13, 2006
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Anonymous
May 15, 2006
I don't know if it is the PS or what but WM5 is just too slow. My new hx2490 looks nice but is very frustrating to try to use. It often takes a very long time to start up. I had PocketBreeze on it but removed it as it made the device much too slow - sometime minutes before I could check today's appointments.
Anonymous
May 24, 2006
The amount of RAM is linear to the power consumption is only correct for the case of the device uses 2 slots for the RAM module.

eg. RAM power consumption;

128MB x 1 < 64MB x 2

64MB x 1 < 32MB x 2

In fact, 32MB x 2 modules might consume more than 128MB x 1 module. Hence, 128MB not necessarily consume more power than 64MB. Please take note.
Anonymous
May 24, 2006
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Anonymous
June 02, 2006
Dear Mike,

I quite understand the concept of PS and compaction. But please can someone explain how to use it all inreal life? In the WM5-upgraded devices like my hx4700, the less you install into PS, the less compaction you get. But what should I do with the PS space which is free now because I use an SD card to install apps there in order to minimize compaction? I have 64 free megabytes of PS which I do wish to use, but dare not! Otherwise I will end up with a slow brick. This is not to say "MS doesn't care", not at all. I'm just looking for a sort of guidance here, how to best balance the two extremes - either have a free PS and ALMOST useable PPC with ALMOST no lock-ups, or use the PS concept and store all my data and apps in it, but be frustrated every time I switch the device on...

Thanks.
Anonymous
June 25, 2006
I understand the miniSD access is slower than the XV6700's native memory can hold and I would like to, somehow, get the Windows Mobile 5 to route the contacts on to the expansion card. As slow as it would be, it's nowhere near as slow as the XV6700 gets when the native storage memory is 99.8 used! How many lines of code would it have taken Microsoft to allow users to route their contacts this way? 20? How stupid not to give people that flexibility.
Anonymous
June 26, 2006
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Anonymous
July 02, 2006
One of my colleagues Reed Robison published an internal summary of the great articles that Mike Calligaro...
Anonymous
July 07, 2006
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Anonymous
July 07, 2006
PingBack from http://www.zhangling.org/blog/20051121/dell-x51v.html
Anonymous
July 14, 2006
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Anonymous
July 28, 2006
Hi Mike,

I really like your blog... If now data is stored in Persistent Storage (I assume which uses ROM of NOR type) so that it can be recovered after reset. Why do we require RAM at all? What is RAM used for ?
Anonymous
July 31, 2006
Hi NS. RAM is used by running programs while they're running. Programs usually load things out of persistent storage into RAM, do work on them there, and then store them back into the persistent storage. It's pretty similar to desktop PCs, except that PCs use hard drives instead of NAND/NOR ROM.

Mike
Anonymous
August 08, 2006
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Anonymous
August 16, 2006
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Anonymous
August 17, 2006
Mike,

Great Blog. We have a data critical application and had to store data in RAM and ROM before WM5.0 Great improvement. Couple of questions: 1) Is there a registry setting that controls when a low battery warning will appear? (percentage?)
2) What would be the biggest battery consumption activities? This is a field application and we have to take out spare batteries currently.

Mike.
Anonymous
August 18, 2006
Mike, to answer your battery consumption questions, check out these two entries.

"Power to the Smartphone"
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2006/08/04/689069.aspx

"Power to the PocketPC"
http://blogs.msdn.com/windowsmobile/archive/2006/08/16/702833.aspx

Mike
Anonymous
August 18, 2006
I'm a medical resident and am using an iPaq running Windows Mobile 5.0 for several reference programs. From day one, I have had daily problems with the device either locking up, taking 1-2 minutes to be responsive to inputs, or simply not turning on at all. When it doesn't turn on, I remove the SD card and then it'll start but apparently the lock up uses a lot of energy since the battery will have lost a noticable amount of charge. I have removed all medical programs and still have similar problems. Other residents using the same iPaq have the same problems. Our hospital tech guru says he has had the same problems on ALL PPCs running WM5. Any suggestions other than going back to my old trusty iPaq running WM2003?
Anonymous
August 21, 2006
If you're talking about the iPaq 4700, HP has recently released an update that makes the device work better.

We've had many reports of the experieces you're describing on two WM2003 PPCs that were updated to WM5 (see my various "Compaction Thread" posts here). On non-upgrade devices, we've had reports that devices are slow when they have thousands of contacts, but people with < 1000 contacts are generally pretty happy with them.

The only other major issue I've been hearing about is that some devices have had problems in their OEM SD drivers (they sometimes crash when there's an SD card in it).

I've regularly used 8 different WM5 devices without seeing these problems, so it's definitely not all of them that act this way.

Mike
Anonymous
August 28, 2006
So, is there any chance that WM5 use RAM instead of ROM ? Any kind of switch?
Anonymous
August 30, 2006
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Anonymous
September 07, 2006
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Anonymous
September 07, 2006
I think speed is utmost important for handheld device, how can one afford to wait almost two mins for wm5 loaded after reset to make a call! PDA data should normally backed-up in desktop, any lost of data in the device can be restored soon from pc.
Anonymous
September 08, 2006
I store > 2,000 contacts on a database & export them regularly to Outlook, to be ActiveSync'd with my PPC. Since upgrading to Windows Mobile 5.0, I've not been able to store these contacts in a miniSD storage card.

Unfortunately having this data stored in PS isn't good, as it slows down all the PPC / Smart phone.

Frankly, I don't care if the contacts are volatile & are all lost / erased on the Mini SD, since my data repository is the database.
Is there a way to ActiveSync directly to the Storage Card?, or do I have to purchase 3rd party software?
Thank you
Anonymous
September 21, 2006
My utstarcom 6700 pda phone is slow as a dog with anything network related. I get the hour glass for minutes at a time while it's figuring out what to do. The task switching in this thing is slower than a 286. I can't believe they tested this thing in a real environment.

It's a device with everything.. except it isn't good at anything! For something that cost me over 400 I would think it would work better. It locks up all the time. Because of it's poor task switching it isn't a good phone either. Forget browsing your email and having someone call you.. if I'm online my phone almost never rings.
Anonymous
November 26, 2006
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Anonymous
November 26, 2006
Whoops, forgot to add this. "Eventually I get an error message saying something like 'Storage memory is critical. Delete some files or programs may not run'". My storage card has about 600 MB free, just so you know. Michael
Anonymous
November 30, 2006
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Anonymous
November 30, 2006
Mike, How will Windows CE 6.0 address memory and performance? Kent
Anonymous
December 01, 2006
i'd like to squeeze in a question..... getting off the thread a bit.... so, i have an ipaq rx3715 and it does have the "format storage" utility. i believe my file store is corrupted. the bundled utility won't work, so how do i get around formatting the folder? is there any other utilities that can be used? or is there any other work around on this? thanks! any input will be a great help. :)
Anonymous
December 01, 2006
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Anonymous
December 01, 2006
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Anonymous
December 01, 2006
that's a help. thanks :) i have come across the "buttons" and already did a hard reset. several times, i must say. well, the file store folder was not touched, unfortunately. i'm just looking around for ways to fix it, other than going to the HP service center. i guess, i'm destined to give them a visit. :) thanks a bunch!
Anonymous
January 10, 2007
'Upgraded' from a Palm T5. >1000 Contacts, > 1000 Tasks and very, very , very poor performance. Totally disappointed in this useless OS.
Anonymous
January 15, 2007
I thought is was time to retire my Treo 270: 16 MHz processor; 16 MB RAM and bought a Fujitsu-Siemens LOOX 815 WM5 based Phone with 400 MHz processor and 128 MB of storage. But what a frustrating experience: the new device is in almost all situations slower than my 16 MHz Treo. Worst application ist contacts: the Treo handles 3000 contacts easily. Entering the first characters of a name shows immediately all possible matches. On the T815 it takes 10-20 seconds. For a businessphone this is unuseable. The argument that only a minority of customers has that many contacts is ridiculous. Microsoft and the OEMs are targeting the busines users with that kind of device (cost more that 700 $) . With the company phonebook and external contacts I guess that the majority of professionals have several thousand contacts. And if the don't have that many contacts they have notes or tasks or any other kind of information (eg. product catalog). Why isn't Microsoft warning prospectice customers, that WM5-devices cannot handle more that 1000 records in their applications? Every tire is only certified for a certain max speed. But I should have been warned: I am using Windows for years. :-(
Anonymous
January 27, 2007
Ohh man you guys are a bunch of wingers, if you don't want wm5 then don't use it. Go back to Palm or your old wm2003 devices.
Anonymous
February 17, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
March 22, 2007
I have an ipaq rx1950 that's running wm5. I have noticed that over time the 'Program' memory reduces (RAM). This happens while the ipaq is sat there in its cradle doing nothing, and eventually it gets to the point where I have to reset the unit. It then has 11mb free again. Is there any way to stop this from happening? (And why does it do it?) Also, when I try to run windows media player, I sometimes get an error message stating that there is not enough memory to run the application. Is there any way of rectifying this? Thanks.
Anonymous
March 26, 2007
On personal opinion, I find this very helpful. Guys, I have also posted some more relevant info further on this, not sure if you find it useful: http://www.bidmaxhost.com/forum/
Anonymous
April 26, 2007
Does anyone know if the WM5 problem not having as quick an access to the ROM as WM2003 had to the RAM (where contacts and calendar entries were stored) has been solved finally in Windows Mobile 6. Personally I think it would be a shame in MS will not be able to support Power Users with their operating system/ hardware requirements... I personally have over 4000 entries and have already returned two WM5 devices when I tried to upgrade from my QTek S110...
Anonymous
April 27, 2007
I know that the contacts people optimized for people having more contacts in WM6, but I've never tried a device with 4000 contacts to tell you how well it will work for you. If my memory serves me correctly, I think WM5 aimed for 1000 and WM6 aimed for 3000. If that's correct, I suspect you'll find that your 4000 case works better than WM5 but not as good as the RAM case in WM2003. I don't know if you'll find the difference acceptable or not. Mike
Anonymous
April 29, 2007
I just want know how I can downgrade to WM2003 I dont care what they say on microsoft If I just can put contact from the last 2 weeks , why do we need then a pda we will have more then sufucent , with just a data bank from a phone , or a peace of paper and about the more secure , I know there are lot of programs who are doing a very nice job , with backuping everthing when the battery level has reached 10% or something like that . so please dont tell you did all this for us PLease help me How can I downgrade to WM2003 ???? thats all I need the know
Anonymous
May 06, 2007
Persistant memory is great until the File Store in your IPAQ locks up and you can't delete or modify files anymore.... Pretty poor for a one year old device - too the bin it goes
Anonymous
May 10, 2007
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Anonymous
May 11, 2007
I'm sorry David, but I don't have any advise for you. I know that Windows Mobile devices aren't optimized for 12,000+ contacts. I don't know which, if any, of our competitors are. I'm sure that you can't install previous OS versions on newer devices, and I wouldn't expect there to be any WM2003 devices available this many years later. I hope you're able to find a device that works for you. Mike
Anonymous
May 11, 2007
Thanks. You state WM 2006 will support larger name database, how large?
Anonymous
June 09, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
June 19, 2007
I work for a fortune 25 company that operates tens of thousands of mobile devices. I won't name manufacturer names, but suffice it to say our introduction to the WM world has been less than satisfying. Our pre WM legacy devices still operate admirably today, but parts are no longer available. We made the switch to a WM/CE ('03/4.2) based family of devices, solely because every vendor we could find had switched to that platform. Though the developement/learning curve for the new devices was initially steep and the necessity of a large backend management system is annoying, we got the '03/CE 4.2 devices to a stable state. They either work or they don't and 95% if the time a cold boot restores them to operation. Halfway through our deployment however, we were told our current devices will be sunsetted soon and be replaced with a new and improved WM 5 / CE 5 based device because of "Microsoft's timeline". We don't do anything complicated beyond run security software to lock users out of the many features they don't need and offer a few communication client apps. Lo and behold, the WM 5 devices are an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE slower than their '03 predecessors. Tasks as simple as screen recalibration or loading a simple telnet client are painfully slow, logic necessary to perform a functional cold boot has become a rube goldberg affair and many of the useful features (registry merge behavior) has been dropped. You can tout marketing decisions all you like, but it's painfully clear to major corperations that that CE 5 /WM 5 is a huge miss. We're now stuck with the unenviable task of having to explain why our new devices with twice the memory and a processor 100 MHz faster is a dog compared to the old one. It's so bad that we dream of a day when Linux, or ANY other operating system that doesn't incure this huge performance and developement overhead is offered on an otherwise robust platform.
Anonymous
July 05, 2007
For Derald Grimwood, ivo and nina: I too had a corrupted IPAQ File Store on my IPAQ 5550. All the free space was eaten up by a failed backup and I couldn't read, write or delete the files. After a lot of searching I found a great utility: psmformat1.exe (persistent storage manager by intel). I gave it a try and finally my file store is back. I launched the program, waited a couple of minutes (it seamed that nothing happens) and suddenly a messagebox appeared and said that format completed. I found psmformat on a czech page, here is the link: http://www.ce4you.cz/forums/download_file.asp?f=872&d=/files/forums/cz/0000032204/psmformat_Persistent%20Storage%20Manager.zip
Anonymous
August 19, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
August 19, 2007
these devices use on average only 512 MB or memory. can't this little amount of memory have a higher access speed? how much more is it going to cost 20 bucks? the device costs hundreds... i'd rather pay 20-50 dollars and get a device that works. why does microsoft certify devices that are lacking in basics?
Anonymous
August 21, 2007
I was upgraded my HP4700 to WM 5.0. Now, there is problem, IPAQ file store disappeared, from File manager and other application. Under MEMORY is listed like STORAGE (82Mb), but not under STORAGE CARDS.... Help
Anonymous
September 04, 2007
I am sill using my WM 2003 device and just bought two more on ebay in case it breaks.. It is hard to believe and somewhat sad but it seems to have been the last device which is able to cope with 5000 contacts without freezing up. Now we are in 2007 and after reading this thread I get the impression that I will have to wait until at least 2009 until Microsoft gets its act together and produces an OS + hardware specifications which can handle this amount of data. WM2006 certainly did not do the trick! ...does anyone have a solution for me before 2009?
Anonymous
October 10, 2007
I've read all the comments above, having found this thread because I also am having the slowdown problem in the calendar - click on a day, wait 10 secs. I don't understand why the delay for reading the calendar for a single day has to be proportinal to the entire size of the calendar database. Isn't there some way using file indexing to just read the data for the day I ask for? Then there'd be no scaleability problem. Please help me to understand what my device is doing when I click on a day in the calendar, that takes so long, since the part of the calendar database that it actually needs to read is relatively small. Colin
Anonymous
October 11, 2007
Colin, are you sure you're talking about a Windows Mobile (PocketPC or Smartphone) device? On my desktop machine, the calendar takes an unexplicably long time to open, but I've never seen that happen on WM. Mike
Anonymous
October 30, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 06, 2007
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
November 27, 2007
I've received a few questions from users who have said that their WM5 device seems to slow down and speed
Anonymous
December 28, 2007
PingBack from http://www.aximsite.com/boards/windows-mobile-2003/222939-ram-pocket-pc-power-drain-disadvantage.html#post1059180792
Anonymous
March 19, 2008
CAN YOU SAVE .CAB FILES IN THAT LOCATION SO THE PROGRAM WILL RELOAD AFTER A MASTER RESET ON A SMARTPHONE. I KNOW ON A PDA YOU CAN UNLOCK THE EXTENDED ROM AND PLACE IT THERE.....BUT HOW DO YOU DO THIS ON A SMARTPHONE(MOTO q 9C)...THANKS
Anonymous
May 08, 2008
The comment has been removed
Anonymous
July 09, 2008
Is there any virtual memory setting in Windows Mobile6.0?? I am wondering why i am not finding any virtual memory in my WM6. My HTC PDA has got 64MB RAM and if during some processes running i try to open camara it delivers msg: no enough memory...!! Why there is no virtual Memory managment in WM6? This was even in early desktop system e.g.win95 which run on even lesser memory e.g.32MB. I wonder when microsoft will introduce this in mobile OS..
Anonymous
September 15, 2008
Why there is no virtual Memory managment in WM6? thanks
Anonymous
September 26, 2008
hello Why there is no virtual Memory managment in WM6? thanks
Anonymous
November 26, 2008
A continuation of my "More Persistent Storage Stuff" entry, which is a follow up to "Why Persistent Storage...
Anonymous
April 20, 2009
Hi Mike! Although its very late but since I have just started looking into wondows mobile I think I can still pay a complement for this nice piece of writing. It was a fun read. I have a connected question though and that is With the usage of persistent storage is it safe to say that object store is no more needed or used in WM5 and WM6. If it is not used then why are there registry entries in WM6 by the name of object store. While we are on the topic of storage in WM could you please do a post regarding the filesystem(FAT,TFAT) that WM5/WM6 uses for its internal storage and how does ROM & RAM/ ROM only files system work when it comes to windows mobile. I have been reading about them in context of windows CE but have no idea how WM does it. Thanks a lot
Anonymous
June 15, 2009
hello Why there is no virtual Memory managment in WM7?
Anonymous
June 26, 2009
hi guys i have a ipaq rw6815. I installed stroge manager program and I tamper mount,unmount and i can unmount msflash or windows file system now my device not boot windows . I've tried the hard reset,i tried to install the new rom bla bla but My problems continue my device not but plss help me :(

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