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PRODUCT SURVEY
Expansion card data and application management
By Chris Phillips
One of the first things I purchased for my Palm m505 was a 16MB MMC/SD (MultiMediaCard/Secure Digital) memory card. In order to free up memory, I copied several of the larger applications to the memory card. Since the built-in application manager doesn't allow you to move (rather than copy) applications, I had to manually delete them from RAM once I had copied them to the card. Next, I launched one of the applications from the card. When I exited the application, I was very surprised to find that the application was still in RAM on my Palm m505. Now I had two copies of the same application, one on my Palm m505 and one on the memory card. This is not my idea of saving memory.
As it turns out, others encountered the same situation and have sought to correct it by developing programs that manage both applications and data on the expansion cards. Let's look at a few of those applications.
WorkBench v.1.2
One of the first applications I ran across was WorkBench. WorkBench sells for $10 and can be found at http://www.toysoft-dev.com.
When you install and enable WorkBench, you choose one of the silkscreen icons as a shortcut (e.g., the Application icon). Then you can launch WorkBench at anytime by holding your stylus on this icon for more than one second. When you release your stylus, a menu will pop up, as shown in Figure A.
FIGURE A
The main WorkBench menu will pop up when you follow these directions.
With WorkBench, you can choose to work with files stored either in RAM or on an expansion card. WorkBench has a nice set of utilities that allow you to launch, copy, move, beam, or delete files from either RAM or the card. When you copy or move an application, you're given the option to move just the application, just the data, or both. The first thing you will probably want to do is move some of the applications from RAM to the card so you can free up some memory on your Palm handheld. To do this, tap on RAM device. You will see a list of all applications stored in RAM, as shown in Figure B.
FIGURE B
You'll be able to view a list of all files stored in RAM.
Please note that applications like Memo Pad and Address Book are built into the Palm handheld's ROM (read-only memory). These are not applications that should be moved to an expansion card.
To work with an application, tap on its name. A menu will pop up giving you the option to launch the application, copy it to the card, move it to the card, beam the application, or delete the application. You can see this in Figure C. If you change your mind and don't want to do anything, tap on close.
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