My first PocketPC device was iPaq 3870 with 64MB of RAM.
That was in *2002*.
I had several more (iPaq 2210, 4700, Pocket Loox 560n), also with 64 MB of
RAM.
Now I am looking for a new device, and I was thinking about Asus P750, and
guess what, it has 64MB ram in *2008*!!
In 2002 my PC had 512MB, and now it has 4 GB, 8x increase. I would expect
PPC to have at least 256MB of ram today.

I know that there are more new devices with 128MB, but why is the progress
so slow? Or is that operating system limitation?

There is not an OS limitation on RAM but it seems most device OEMs have
found it to be a reasonably comfortable size for most users. Personally I'd
rather see a whole lot more (512MB) so I can have a whole host of things
running in the background and switch between them easily instead of havign
to selectively fire up and shut down applications.


--
Clinton Fitch, MVP-Mobile Devices
Clinton Fitch (Dot) Com! & HPC:Factor
http://www.clintonfitch.com
http://www.hpcfactor.com


"Tonci" <me@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:6bttyd4cbf7u.6vje7bax1ch4$.dlg@40tude.net...
> My first PocketPC device was iPaq 3870 with 64MB of RAM.
> That was in *2002*.
> I had several more (iPaq 2210, 4700, Pocket Loox 560n), also with 64 MB of
> RAM.
> Now I am looking for a new device, and I was thinking about Asus P750, and
> guess what, it has 64MB ram in *2008*!!
> In 2002 my PC had 512MB, and now it has 4 GB, 8x increase. I would expect
> PPC to have at least 256MB of ram today.
>
> I know that there are more new devices with 128MB, but why is the progress
> so slow? Or is that operating system limitation?

I know that some places can upgrade certain devices to more. My Dell Axim
x50v can be upgraded to 128MB. It does cost quite a bit, but in some cases,
it'd be worth it. I haven't looked at newer models, but am wanting to
upgrade... After hearing that, though, I don't know if it would make much
difference! I might just go for the RAM upgrade!

--

Dustin Harper
dharper@vistarip.com
http://www.vistarip.com | Vista Resource & Information Page

Was this helpful? Then click the Ratings button. Voting helps the web
interface.
http://www.microsoft.com/wn3/locales...eAPostAsAnswer




"Tonci" <me@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:6bttyd4cbf7u.6vje7bax1ch4$.dlg@40tude.net...
> My first PocketPC device was iPaq 3870 with 64MB of RAM.
> That was in *2002*.
> I had several more (iPaq 2210, 4700, Pocket Loox 560n), also with 64 MB of
> RAM.
> Now I am looking for a new device, and I was thinking about Asus P750, and
> guess what, it has 64MB ram in *2008*!!
> In 2002 my PC had 512MB, and now it has 4 GB, 8x increase. I would expect
> PPC to have at least 256MB of ram today.
>
> I know that there are more new devices with 128MB, but why is the progress
> so slow? Or is that operating system limitation?

Tonci wrote:
> My first PocketPC device was iPaq 3870 with 64MB of RAM.
> That was in *2002*.
> I had several more (iPaq 2210, 4700, Pocket Loox 560n), also with 64 MB of
> RAM.
> Now I am looking for a new device, and I was thinking about Asus P750, and
> guess what, it has 64MB ram in *2008*!!
> In 2002 my PC had 512MB, and now it has 4 GB, 8x increase. I would expect
> PPC to have at least 256MB of ram today.
>
> I know that there are more new devices with 128MB, but why is the progress
> so slow? Or is that operating system limitation?

It's all about power.
It takes power to save the ram contents when the system is in standby.
Twice as much ram takes twice as much power.
Historically, there was a requirement from MS that a PDA be able
to retain its memory for 72 hours after low battery shutoff.
Turns out that that takes a major portion of the battery cpapcity.
With 128MB it takes MOST of the battery capacity to save the contents
for 72 hours. Run time approaches zero.

If you have a program that needs more than 64MB of ram to run, you
probably want a real laptop to run it.

So, it was decided in some backroom that 64MB of ram was optimal.
Vendors added non-volatile FLASH for program storage. It's much more
likely that you'll want lots of programs stored but not need much ram
to run them. I'd guess the internal flash is faster than a flash
card, but that's a guess. Also, you get fewer problems when you
remove or change the flash card contents. The internal stuff is
always there.

Another advantage to this architecture is that you can turn the PDA
OFF and still retain program/data storage. When you turn it back ON,
it's like a soft reset. All the flash is still there.
I can turn my X51V off for weeks and it's still near 100% battery
capacity when I turn it back on. BIG advantage for those of us
who have more pda's than we could possibly use ;-)
--
Return address is VALID!
Bunch-O-Stuff Forsale Here:
http://mike.liveline.de/sale.html

"mike" <spamme9@gmail.com> wrote in message news:_mHZj.24$4c.18@trnddc08...

>> I know that there are more new devices with 128MB, but why is the
>> progress
>> so slow? Or is that operating system limitation?
>
> It's all about power.
> It takes power to save the ram contents when the system is in standby.
> Twice as much ram takes twice as much power.
> Historically, there was a requirement from MS that a PDA be able
> to retain its memory for 72 hours after low battery shutoff.
> Turns out that that takes a major portion of the battery cpapcity.
> With 128MB it takes MOST of the battery capacity to save the contents
> for 72 hours. Run time approaches zero.

Today's devices use persistant storage, so I suspect that requirement has
been relaxed. I doubt my 64MB Wizard could last 72 hours on a fully charged
battery with the phone radio on- I can't imagine many PPC phone users would
leave the device's phone off for that long anyway.

> If you have a program that needs more than 64MB of ram to run, you
> probably want a real laptop to run it.

Perhaps, but with WM5+ a 64MB device isn't really a 64MB device is it?
After the phone radio software and OS load at boot, my "64MB" Wizard has
about 25MB left to run software. Add in the wonderful memory leak "feature"
of WM5 and WM6, and that 25 is lucky to be 12MB in 24-48 hours if I don't
reboot (and that's even with closing all tasks with a task manager!)

128MB would allow me to run for days without rebooting.

> So, it was decided in some backroom that 64MB of ram was optimal.
> Vendors added non-volatile FLASH for program storage.

That was a WM5+ requirement, not a vendor decision.

> It's much more
> likely that you'll want lots of programs stored but not need much ram
> to run them. I'd guess the internal flash is faster than a flash
> card, but that's a guess.

I haven't noticed any difference there in practice. My WM2002 and 2003
devices were much snappier than my Wizard, using fast RAM as storage instead
of flash-based memory.

> Also, you get fewer problems when you
> remove or change the flash card contents. The internal stuff is
> always there.

True. I'd like a lot more RAM and storage memory!

> Another advantage to this architecture is that you can turn the PDA
> OFF and still retain program/data storage. When you turn it back ON,
> it's like a soft reset. All the flash is still there.

That's the only advantage, and frankly, I'd rather have the speed of
battery-powered RAM over slow flash given the choice, but others prefer the
"safety" of flash memory.

> I can turn my X51V off for weeks and it's still near 100% battery
> capacity when I turn it back on. BIG advantage for those of us
> who have more pda's than we could possibly use ;-)

For my older PDAs, I use scheduled backups for volitile data. I've never
lost any data to a dead battery, and I've been using WinCE devices for
nearly a decade.

Todd Allcock wrote:
>
>
> For my older PDAs, I use scheduled backups for volitile data. I've
> never lost any data to a dead battery, and I've been using WinCE devices
> for nearly a decade.
>
>
Loss of data is not the point. The point is that I can pick up my
long-neglected pda, turn on the bluetooth gps and be out the door
immediately without recharging.
That's a BENEFIT!!

--
Return address is VALID!
Bunch-O-Stuff Forsale Here:
http://mike.liveline.de/sale.html

At 24 May 2008 02:50:46 +0000 mike wrote:

> > For my older PDAs, I use scheduled backups for volitile data. I've
never lost any data to a dead battery, and I've been using WinCE devices
for nearly a decade.
> >
> >
> Loss of data is not the point. The point is that I can pick up my
> long-neglected pda, turn on the bluetooth gps and be out the door
> immediately without recharging.
> That's a BENEFIT!!

Fair enough- it's just not, IMO, a benefit that's worth the continual speed
trade-off for my oft-used PDA... ;-)

Todd Allcock wrote:
> At 24 May 2008 02:50:46 +0000 mike wrote:
>
>>> For my older PDAs, I use scheduled backups for volitile data. I've
> never lost any data to a dead battery, and I've been using WinCE devices
> for nearly a decade.
>>>
>> Loss of data is not the point. The point is that I can pick up my
>> long-neglected pda, turn on the bluetooth gps and be out the door
>> immediately without recharging.
>> That's a BENEFIT!!
>
> Fair enough- it's just not, IMO, a benefit that's worth the continual speed
> trade-off for my oft-used PDA... ;-)
>
>
What do people do that needs speed?
My X51V can play a movie without dropping frames.
It can do gps rerouting on the fly while playing an mp3.
Does VOIP.
I can look up a phone number quickly.
What is it that requires speed that flash can't do
but ram could?
I wish for faster internet interaction, but I'm not
sure it was any faster on the X50V with RAM.

I find the input paradigm and screen resolution
far more restrictive than
the speed of the processor/memory.

--
Return address is VALID!
Bunch-O-Stuff Forsale Here:
http://mike.liveline.de/sale.html

At 24 May 2008 06:36:00 +0000 mike wrote:

> > Fair enough- it's just not, IMO, a benefit that's worth the continual
speed
> > trade-off for my oft-used PDA... ;-)
> >
> >
> What do people do that needs speed?
> My X51V can play a movie without dropping frames.
> It can do gps rerouting on the fly while playing an mp3.
> Does VOIP.
> I can look up a phone number quickly.
> What is it that requires speed that flash can't do
> but ram could?


File operations. My old Axim X5 (2003) could open and close Notes almost
instantaneously. My HTC Wizard takes 4-5 seconds to open a note, and
another 4-5 to close it. These are small (<10kb) files. Opening a large
(200-400k) Word, Excel, or .pdf file is painfully slow vs. the Axim.
Viewing a network share with File Explored is also much slower on the Wizard,
but I can't explain why since that wouldn't seem to be a memory issue..

> I wish for faster internet interaction, but I'm not
> sure it was any faster on the X50V with RAM.
>
> I find the input paradigm and screen resolution
> far more restrictive than
> the speed of the processor/memory.

Again, it's mostly file operations I'm talking about.