[Fwd: Memory cards, app data mirroring and battery life (Was Re: Grid 2MB SRAM Card)]

Domenic Romeo (dom.romeo@worldnet.att.net)
Tue, 06 Aug 1996 21:20:36 -0400

Man F Wong wrote:

-- [ From: Man F Wong * EMC.Ver #2.3 ] --

Domenic Romeo wrote:
> Levi Wallach wrote:
> > I saw that you can COPY it to
> > the card via the Transfer app, but does this mean that if I copy data from
> > the appointment book to the card, then delete the appointment book data from
> > the main memory, the Ogo will automatically look for it, and then start
> > saving it to the card instead of main memory?
>
> As far as I know (still learning myself) application data is stored in the Ogo
> main memory bt default ( no matter where the apps reside). The data that is
> copied using the transfer app, is for backup purposes. This allows you to
> restore your application data from the sram card, in case of total power
> failure, or data corruption.
>
> I'm not exactly sure, how to move data to the Sram card. (Other please
> help here)
Check out the OmniGo FAQ under memory management or such for this info at
URL:

http://www.aa.net/~desmoine/omnigo/omnigfaq.htm

You can also get a copy of it from the OGO mailing-list server by sending
mail to majordomo@lifelike.com w/ the following in the message body:

get ogo ogo.FAQ

> These are good questions. I am currently working on a list of question, to
> ask in a Ogo Ram survey. I should have an preliminary questionare for review,
> in a few days. Hopefully this will help future users contemplating add on Ram
> cards.

In your survey, you should probably ask people to use Battery Watcher for
more accurate accessments of their experienced battery life. I've been
using Battery Watcher myself, and notice a big dip in the battery meter
curve whenever I check after my OmniGo reads or writes to my flash (or SRAM)
card. The dip seems much greater when writing to my flash card. Strangely,
this greater dip also occurs whenever I use Pocket Quicken, which resides
on my flash card, even though my data is stored on the internal ramdisk.

One thing is certain: Using a memory card to run apps will cause greater
battery reading fluctuations; thus, the OmniGo will likely give you a low
battery warning significantly sooner than otherwise even though battery
power is not actually quite so low yet. This may also cause very brief
taps on the backup battery on such occasions, but it's unclear how much
it'd affect the backup battery's life.

Domenic, you probably do not need to hurry on the survey since not everyone
will have used Battery Watcher for even one full battery lifecycle; I
haven't since I was roughly halfway through my current Duracell alkalines
when Battery Watcher became available.

_Man_

PS: Please forward this to the OGO mailing-list on my behalf as before.
Thanx. (Did it!)