Persistent Storage on WinCE 5.0

  • Thread starter Thread starter fairycat
  • Start date Start date
F

fairycat

As you guys knows, PS sounded good to me. Now I'm wondering if vendors
are working on it or not. As I know, I haven't heard that kind of news
so it makes me bit worry. Does anybody can tell any information about
it? It seems like vendors are still using Ram as storage.
 
Huh? Windows Mobile 5 devices, at least my limited sample of two: JasJar
and K-Jam, persist all of the filesystem. There is no place in the
filesystem, unless you install some sort of RAM disk to intentionally use
RAM as storage, where a file is not persisted through a soft reset. What
vendors seem to be using RAM as storage? Why do you think that they are
doing do (what statement leads you to believe that they are)?

Paul T.
 
Well.. Those smartphone devices already had a concept of PS since 4
years ago. Also, vendors can choose whether they will use PS or not.
You know some people still prefer RAM, right? So, I think there's a
possibility vendors wouldn't want to put that feature in their
products. I looked up JasJar and K-Jam but.. I just don't think 128MB
of PS can make any difference. Why don't they put 1GB or 2GB of spaces
in it? What I expected after I heard the news of PS is maybe I wouldn't
need to worry about space anymore. But 128MB of PS? Gosh, I still need
to buy 1GB of SD card. I wonder if there are any handheldpc which has
PS concept of Windows Mobile 5.0.
 
Depends on what you're storing in there. You certainly don't need 1GB of
storage for a phone unless you have the New York phone book in your contacts
list or you're storing music on the thing. It's not like desktop Windows
where every Word file is 500k, after all. I'm sure that everyone will
eventually need more storage than is standard now for one thing or another
as the uses of the devices increase, but I don't see right now what you're
storing in there. As far as "why", as a device manufacturer I can tell you
in one word: "COST". Flash isn't free and, if 80% of the device users don't
need 1GB, I'm certainly not going to put that much in there, forcing the
uncaring 80% to pay for something they don't want! For those who do care,
there's expansion capability.

As far as whether WM5 devices can choose to store the filesystem in RAM or
flash, I don't think that's true, except maybe in the case of
previous-version devices which are upgraded to WM5 and might not be able to
achieve the same persistent storage scheme without hardware changes.
Certainly there is no more slider in the Control Panel for dividing the RAM
up between filesystem and program memory. The reason to go away from RAM
comes down to one word, too: "POWER". When your older Pocket PC says that
the battery is low and it has to shut off, that's because there's only
enough power to persist the RAM filesystem for three more *days* or
something, not because it's just about to die. With persistent filesystems
in flash, you really can run the battery all the way down, which,
effectively, gives you longer battery life on the devices.

Paul T.
 
Back
Top