Hi all!
I'm Markino from Italy and I've got some question about I-Mate Jam.
I don't undertand the memory management of this device: how the RAM-ROM and MMC are used by the Windows Mobile 2003 SE? If I install an application, where the files are stored? If the battery drops down what I'll lose?
Many thanks and sorry for my bad English!
Marco
Marco, in theory you should let Windows to manage your memory. The i-mate JAM has 64MB of ROM and 64MB of RAM. The ROM is mostly occupied with OS and other 3rd party software that installs automatically when you hard reset the phone. Part of this ROM is also used when using the "Permanent Storage" feature of the OS, where it lets you save some files, contacts, etc.
What should really interest you is the RAM. The OS uses this RAM for running programs (like the RAM on your PC) and the rest is used for storage. If you go to Start -> Settings -> Memory, the OS will tell you how much of your RAM is being used for Running Programs and how much is used for Storage.
The safest place for your data would be an SD Card, as anything stored on the SD card will stay in tact after a hard reset.
Thanks kta! You're great!
Well.. in your opinion what is the best way to use the Jam's RAM with a 512MB SD installed?
I can configure the device to use all the RAM space to run program and store all the file and app. in the SD or it's better to use a part of RAM to some particoular application?
The SD Ultra II are really faster in the Jam?
The more free RAM you have the faster your mobile works. I would suggest installing most of your programs on the storage card. Before installing a program make sure that it can run smoothly on an SD card. Most programs do work well when installed on the storage card so it shouldn never be a problem.
Having said that, RAM is MUCH faster than an SD card, although modern SD cards like the UltraII give over 9MB per second (66x) write speed.
A more complex option (the one I'm using) is to install a hacked ROM (aka Big Storage ROM) where you will be able to gain an extra 27MB of Storage (i.e. in RAM). You can then use this storage space for installing programs and these should work slightly faster than when installed on an SD card. However, installing the hacked ROM requires some experience with ROMS and would not suggest you go for it unless you want to end up with your JAM stuck in bootloader mode :wink:
With regards to SD cards, the faster the speed (i.e. 40x, 66x, 133x) the better.
And if you intend to use your JAM as an MP3 player I would suggest going for a 1GB or 2GB SD card. The price difference usually justifies the extra space! Before buying a 2GB card, check these forums for compatibility issues as some of them did not work on the JAM.
Hope I didn't confuse you more!
SD card speed on the JAM makes no difference for operating the device, since the JAM can only read/write the SD card at the standard speed - buying a faster card makes no difference.
A faster card is useful if you frequently copy large files between your SD card and your PC, but for the JAM it makes no difference.
Microsoft said in WIN2003SE it's always recommended to install mostly used programs into MAIN memory cause it's way way way faster than the extended rom or storage card. So on my old PDA2k I installed regularely used programs like Pocket Informant, Voice Command etc.. on the internal memory for enhanced speed.
I was wondering if anyone knows/ did benchmarks of Read/Write/Access Speed of all 3 memory mediums available to us JJ/Exec users ? That is Internal memory, Extended Rom (Which was unlocked thanks to buzz) as well as an SD Card.
Thanks guys
MOBILER
I have a 60x SD card - at least I am TOLD it is a 60x card - but Pocket Mechanic benchmark tells me it is just 4x. (Perhaps someone else who has PM could give us THEIR SD card benchmark figures for comparison?)
It was suggested on this forum the problem might not be in the card but in the SD port. If so, the Universal's SD port could be a serious hindrance to good performance.
hi, I'd like to know if you can use the sd card and say partition it so that you can make your xda exec device use the storage on it as programe memory so it speeds the device up. this really is a fab device, but it really lacks the memory capacity that I had on a blue angel.
I have a 1gb sd card and don't mind loosing any storage space to accomplish this. if there isn't a way, can someone try and find a reg tweek for this....
anyway, I leave it with you...
cheers.
joey jojo
I think this is something which should be taken as a clue by developers who make programs such as Memaid, Pocket Mechanic, etc and include this as a a feature. Maybe the concept will be something similar to the Virtual Memory on a regular windows pc.
You are absolutely right, I too really miss the shortage of program memory. I can never open a really complicated web page with lots of images in Netfront before I get the dreadful warning that I have run out of program memory.
I hope some developer picks this up and incorporates this as a feature. I am sure this will increase his sales many many times.
Regards
you can put your internet explorer's cache on the sd-card...
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Shell Folders\Cache]
change cache from '\windows\profiles\guest\temporari internet files' to '\SD_MMCard' to achieve this...
however you'll notice that it only slows your device incredibly down if your SD-Card is not set up right
see also http://forum.xda-developers.com/viewtopic.php?t=50301
There is just no way a third party program can add this. On the windows mobile team blog, there's a post from a few months back talking about doing virtual mem on the SD card, and basically, it's just not in the OS and won't be until at least WM6, and third-party programs can't do it.
JasperJanssen said:
There is just no way a third party program can add this. On the windows mobile team blog, there's a post from a few months back talking about doing virtual mem on the SD card, and basically, it's just not in the OS and won't be until at least WM6, and third-party programs can't do it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Those are very disappointing news...
Speaking of memory management and the OS itself..I really wonder during the development of WM5, did they try to come up with a better OS, or just building up upon WM2003.
Reason why I say this is my Universal crashed yesterday, and a look into the "Memory" panel in the Settings showed the OLD memory management screen along with the sliders and all... :lol:
Looks like the developers got lazy and just placed a panel on top of the old one :lol:
Ehh.. You guys want to be buying new SD cards every third month?
Flash memory like the SD cards have only a limited number of write operations before they fail.
Using them for storage is good, because you don't write to the cards that much.
Using them as memory would totally screw up the card in a rather short time.
And, I think using SD card for program memory would result in a slower application, because of the read/write speed of the SD compared to the RAM..
--- EDIT ---
3 months is just a figure of speach..
I have no idea of how much time it would take before failure occurs..
It would probably result in slower and slower performance, because some sectors would be worn out faster than others..
What you say about the writes before failure is right, but when you are faced with a £300 PDA that has the same amount of RAM as my little finger, you have to do something.
SD cards are cheap enough these days, and money grows on trees. I'd rather be able to leave programs open and not worry about how much it will slow the machine down to have more that three big apps running than I would be about coughing up for a new SD card every 3 months.
I have seen a 4GB card on Ebay for less than £80, Tescos sell 1GB for £30 these days.
The great thing about Tescos is their guarantee. You buy the card, write it to death, take it back for a full refund, no questions asked.
hello, i was wondering if there was any way to change the amount of memory shared between storage and software ?
Actually, i've got a lot of storage memory (as i'm mainly using my Sd card to install my software), but i'm lacking some software memory to run a few of them.
I've read about the memory unlocker, is there anyway to use it to "give" the 10 MB gained to the software memory ? or any software to share memory in WM5 like it was shared in W2003 ?
thanks anyway and sorry if i missed the answer on a previous post.