Palm, PDA, and Related Stuff

Currently I use a Palm Tungsten T5. In the past I have had a Handspring, Clie, and Tungsten T. In particular I purchased the T5 because of the Bluetooth feature. That is, it talks to my cell phone, a Sony-Ericsson T616. Transfering the entire address book back, and forth is a piece of cake.

My Experiences with the T5 so far:

There is a major update. I am an experienced user, upgrading from a previous PDA (Tungsten T), and I had trouble. Well... Trouble may be too strong a word. But it was not as simple as previous hardware upgrades.

First, the T5 is based on different technology from the T. Both use Palm OS5, but there are differences that caused the T5 to have trouble when upgrading. In the past, including the upgrade from the Clie with OS4 to the T with OS5, upgrading PDAs was a simple matter of installing the CD stuff, and doing a Hotsync. With the T5 there were a couple of hiccups. For example, there may be bits, and pieces of software left over from previous PDAs, and in the past this has never bothered my new PDA, but there were bits from the Handspring upgrade process, Hackmaster hacks, and so on that brought the T5 to its knees. I don't know what happened previously, but my guess is that the other PDAs just ignored them.

Second, here's what I recommend. Follow Palm's advice and upgrade by creating a new user, exporting all data from the old user, and importing it into the new user. This works extremely well with one caveat. The databases in the new user's Palm Desktop must have the destination categories created prior to the import process, or it all goes in 'unfiled.' However, there is a major upgrade/patch. I suggest following this sequence of actions:

  1. Install the upgrade to the Palm Desktop, and other PC software from the CD provided. This should go smoothly, and you'll still have all your data from the previous PDA in the Desktop's databases.
  2. Create a new, default user in the Palm Desktop software. Hint: Rename the old user, so your new user can have the name you prefer.
  3. Synchronize the T5 with the Desktop to make sure all is working
  4. Install the T5 OS Patch. This will blow away everything on the T5
  5. Synchronize with the Desktop again, and select the new, default user you created to use with the T5.
  6. Install any other relevent T5 upgrades. The Phone Link Updater is key, if you have a Bluetooth cell phone.
  7. In the Palm Desktop application switch to the old user, and export all the data to some directory you create. Remember to use the 'All' category, and select all entries (CTL-A), so you get all entries.
  8. Switch to the new user, and import all the databases you just exported. Remember to create the categories as the existed for the old user first.
  9. Synchronize again. All your data should be on your T5 correctly.
  10. Now add back the third part applications you used to use. I highly recommend you do this one at a time, as some will not work, and may even hang the T5, as Palm has changed some database structures. If you do it one app at a time, you won't have any trouble. You can always do a hard reset, lose all your data, but not the OS upgrade, and resynch. At least that's easy.

NOTE: You can do seven different kinds of reset.

NOTE: There is a glitch of some kind with the Quick Install application. It doesn't seem to want to release from memory after it finishes. A symptom of this will be a synchronization getting hung in the middle of installing a file. You can manually kill the Quick Install process using the Windows Task Manager, and you'll have to unplug the T5, and cancel the Hotsync before trying again. You may even need a soft reset.

NOTE: In your user's Palm directory under the Program Files directory, all your files from your previous PDA can be found in their old backup location. You can reinstall them from there, including their database files. E.G.

In my case I ended up with the following user directories:

C:\Program Files\Palm\BarnettC
C:\Program Files\Palm\BarnettC0
C:\Program Files\Palm\BarnettC1

Clie, T, T5 respectively. Each directory contains a Backup directory, and each Backup directory contains the .PRC, and .PDB files from my respective PDAs. Notice that the Palm Desktop created numbered directories, so you can safely rename a user, and he still uses the directory he always did.

I hope this helps someone. It took me a lot longer than it ought to get here. Thanks PalmOne :-P

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