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Super PilotUntil recently I have been using a 1 Mb PalmPilot Pro. I started with a 128K Pilot 1000, which was big enough for the contacts and appointments I kept on it at the time. But as soon as I started downloading programs to use with the Pilot, I ran out of space and I chose to upgrade with the 1 Mb upgrade card. That Pilot was replaced by a PalmPilot Pro, which had adequate memory space for me at the time. But over the last couple of months I have found myself deleting old applications to fit new ones on. This is partly because I now use the memo application very much more than I did at first, to keep reference information and partly because I need more applications installed. The crunch came when I had to delete Zip (the Infocom game interpreter) in order to put on HandWeb and HandStamp Pro. The two new programs are going to stay, so my plimsoll line in memory is slowly creeping up. I had read that it was possible to modify a PalmPilot memory board to take 2 Mb of RAM, but I am not happy enough with my soldering skills to even consider that. There has been talk for some time of a company producing a commercial version of this upgrade, and keeping hold of Infocom's Zork was enough incentive for me to find them. Technology Research Group, or TRG (http://www.trgnet.com/Palm/Products/palmaddon.htm ) produce a range of replacement memory boards for all Pilot models, including board swaps, and full replacement PalmPilot Professional or WorkPad models. Prices range from $49 to $300 (that's right, US dollars, TRG are based in the USA). Configurations range from 512K to 3 Mb SRAM plus 2 Mb flash memory for the SuperPilot II. I ordered a SuperPilot I (1 Mb flash and 3 Mb SRAM) from them for $250. What surprised me was that I phoned in my order on a Friday night, and the package was on my desk on Monday morning; I asked around, and have heard from other people in the UK who also received their SuperPilot boards as rapidly. The board looks very clean and well laid out, and pops in to a PalmPilot as easily as the original. Because TRG couldn't license the OS from Palm Software, US Robotics or 3com, the installation procedure is fairly involved, requiring you to run a Windows installation program that asks you to follow through a certain sequence of steps with your Pilot to download a copy of its OS, then load it into flash on your SuperPilot board. I didn't have any problems with this. The end result is that I had 3 Mb of RAM in a PalmPilot Professional; if you tried this with a Pilot 1000, or a PalmPilot Personal, you would end up with the operating system that you started with installed into your Pilot. That left me with a spare 1 Mb Professional board, which I find can run just fine in the Pilot 1000 that I started with. An immediate worry is about battery life. I'd expect a home built 2 Mb Pilot upgrade to run down batteries in approximately half the normal time for a 1 Mb Pilot, but this doesn't seem to be the case. I installed the SuperPilot almost a month ago, and my battery gauge shows 68% left, despite reasonably heavy usage (I carry my Pilot with me everywhere), including some backlight and plenty of Internet email connections with a SnapOn adaptor. The TRG Technical Support web pages carry plenty of pages explaining why their upgrade doesn't seem to significantly increase battery usage. If you use a PalmPilot just to carry address and calendar information, then any of the minimum specification models will be big enough; if you start to use memos or Doc extensively for reference data and other texts, or just want to install a couple of third party applications, then I'd strongly advise a memory upgrade, probably to a 1 Mb model. But if you use a PalmPilot for more than just a minimum set of programs, or want to use email and web browsers, then I'd say a SuperPilot board is strongly recommended. Ease and speed of ordering beats most UK suppliers (of anything, not just PalmPilot upgrades), and the product works. |
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