Optimising Speed

[taijidan]

Hi There,

I have been using my palm for a few months. I installed loads of applications on it.
However now I just want to have a clean palm installation with pleco.
As pleco is the only thing I use it for are there any tips to improve performance.

Also one thing I am not used to in Palm OS there seems to be no way to close applications like
there is in windows. Some of them seem to keep running in the backround slowing things down.
Is there any way to shut them off?

Thanks for any tips.

rgds
Dan

 

[ipsi]

If all you want is a clean PDA, do a hard reset, which will wipe *everything*. Then reinstall Plecodict. However, BEFORE that, find someone who's actually done a hard reset and ask them for tips on how to make it as painless as possible. I've never done one, so I'm not sure. Probably need to rename your backup directory, and backup your various Pleco files, etc.

I'm not sure about the whole speed thing, as Pleco works fine for me, with about the speed I would expect. .

 

[mikelove]

Actually, on Palm OS only one application can be running at a time; when you switch to another application the one you're currently in automatically exits. The only programs that avoid this restriction are a few specialized things like MP3 players that have hacked the system to enable multithreading, and you don't need to worry about those unless you actually have one playing music in the background while you're running Pleco.

So if you're experiencing slowdowns on your Palm there may be some other factor at work - have things gotten worse recently or are you just unhappy with your Palm's performance in general? A hard reset certainly might help speed things up a little if it gives Pleco more storage memory to use for file caching, but as ipsi suggests you should definitely be careful when doing that; the main thing you need to do is rename the backup directory, which you do by going into your Palm Desktop user folder (My Computer, C, Program Files, Palm, (your username)) and renaming "Backup" to "Old Backup" or something similar. So the overall procedure is HotSync your Palm, rename that backup folder, reset the Palm (stick a paperclip or pin in the reset hole on the back while holding down the power button, release the reset button but keep holding down the power button until it asks you if you want to erase all memory), HotSync it again (selecting your same username when prompted), and reinstall Pleco.