Upgrades are never easy

I love my Palm Pilot. Which is very strange. When I entered Jr. High, my dad got me a day planner in which I was to write out all my assignments, sporting events, etc, and check them off when they happened. It got me started in a life of organization since Jr. High was really the first time I had things to DO daily. Elementary school homework had always been done after school in ‘day care’ when everyone else was napping or playing games I didn’t like. I only brought home my writing assignments since I loved them.

Still, I liked my day planners, and my father has a few of them with my colorful pen usage and my little notes like: Great Expectations Chap 1-6 by Thurs

Hey, it helped.

I was very resistant to a Palm, and indeed my first three years at my ‘real job’ I picked up the office hand held day planners to write out my appointments for every work day, complete with phone numbers, etc. It was exactly what I needed. Oh sure, I stole coworkers’ palms for games, but they were toys. I didn’t need them at all.

August 1999 my online ‘job’ ballooned, my RL job promoted me, and my life got very, very busy. I was having trouble, for the first time, keeping everything I needed on me and where I needed it. I had notebooks with the Y2K crap, my day planner didn’t have enough room for the particulars of what I was doing, where, when and why, and finally? I was forgetting things.

That last one was a dozy, since I pride myself on my ability to remember what the fuck I’m doing. Well sure, as a kid it was easy. As an adult with a busy adult life I find it’s a little harder, and weirder. I can’t easily remember everything I need to remember forever as well as disposable information like meeting dates etc.

Enter 2001 and the Palm Pilot.

My SO got one from her mother and rarely used it, so after purchasing a gently used one for her, I got the Vx. It was amazing. Everything I needed was right there where I needed it. I could work on my stories, read novels, and keep track of my plans in one, small, easy to carry unit. With the extended/portable keyboard, I could work on stories in weird locations (on the train, on a plane, in a box, eating lox). I decided I liked it.

In 2003 I got a Tungsten W (I was going to buy a Treo, long story), and 8 months later I still adore it. The keypad is much easier than Graffiti, and the phone bit means I can surf the web while on the El. There are a couple foibles, but not really that bad at all.

Today a new update comes out, that fixes (among other things) one of my worst issues. SMS (Short Messaging System or whatever) on the Tungsten didn’t come with an easy way to see WHO sent it without knowing the phone number or opening it up. What an annoyance. Naturally I ran to update.

Turns out I can’t run the update on OS X (I disabled booting to 9 for many reasons, least of which was I needed the space and I don’t use any OS 9 apps anymore). My buggy XP box (my main PC at work) charfed on it (DLL errors, but there’s a lot more wrong on the darn XP machine). I finally set everything up on my spare 2000 machine at work, and I managed to get it to install cleanly to my desktop.

What a pain in the arse.

I’m pretty chapped at how much of a pain it was to install. Given the issues others have had, I made sure my warranty was still good for this sort of upgrade. I don’t have any hacks installed and recently I hard reset my Palm to reinstall everything.

I did a full backup of EVERYTHING on my palm before starting. Oddly, my Hotsync Manager closed on my machines (both!) when I tried to run the update exe and I had to reopen it to Hotsync and install everything.

Total time involved? Over one hour. Gee I’m glad I didn’t have a lot to do this morning. The actual sync took about 20 min, plus another 20 for the OS upgrade hoot’n’anny.

I found it important to use the Web Pro 2.1 for AT&T config file after everything else was up and running. I did not count this in my ‘time to upgrade.’

Oh and a handful of people at Brighthand complained about errors. Count me in for Flash Errors.

I uninstalled and reinstalled the update software on my PC and tried it again. I had errors on 4%, 10%, 11%, 28%, all of which were fixed by ‘retry’ when I pushed my Palm down firmly into my cradle. I passed the dread 29% and it seemed to be working a little better. Flash errors happened again at 33%, 85%, 86%, same fix.

Everything installed, I ran the hot sync. The second ‘upgrade’ failed BUT everything seemed okay. It took a while for the phone to reset itself and I haven’t tried GPRS yet. It deleted all my freaking apps though, and I spent a few hours reinstalling. At least it gave me the chance to delete some old apps.

I think there are (at least) two kinds of flash errors. The ones that come up right away before you get to the percentage marks, and the ones that come up during. My fix for the former is to gently but firmly make sure the Palm/Cradle connections are seated securely (ie. push down on the palm in the cradle). I don’t have a clue about the others.

I have a short list of the changes I don’t like. I can’t turn OFF that stupid clicking when I press keys etc unless I turn off ALL system sounds, so I can’t preview ringtones in ringo. Oh and all my personalized ringtones are gone. Given the problems everyone else has had, though, I see this as minor. The Versamail 2.5 update is … interesting. I don’t like it (Snappermail is much better, thank you everyone who suggested it). Everything else is pretty nice.

Some cleverness helped me fix my Snappermail config problem (I copied over the old SnapperMail*.PDB). I decided to apply the same brain power to my ringtones, and verified that MobileRingToneDB.PDB is the ringtone baby. And as it turns out, it was something else causing my no-ringtones. My bad all fixed!.

As for personalized ringtones on the T|W, it was long and convoluted. Here’s as best as I can remember.

• Backup System_MIDI_Sounds.PDB someplace safe.
• Downlod and install geek tones and Ringo.
• Open Ringo (click trial, it never expires and the friends/groups/pictures don’t work well on a T|W anyway).
• Click on the music note (third icon on the right side).
• From the dropdown box, right side, you should see ‘Personal Ringtones’ and ‘System MIDI Sounds’. For anything you want to use as a ringtone, click on it and press ‘Use as Ringtone.’

Volia! Personally I moved over the ones I liked and then reverted back to the old System MIDI sounds. Works well. My phone plays Indiana Jones now.