Observations on the Palm Desktop public beta

Dec 27, '01 07:53:33PM

Contributed by: robg

After a very very slow download (13.6mb at 936 bytes per second on a cable modem, or roughly four hours!), I have now installed the Palm Desktop for Mac OS X beta software. For many Mac users, this was one of the biggest pains about OS X - many could not get hot synchs to work in Classic, and were forced to reboot in OS 9 simply to synch their Palm devices. The availability of a native version of Palm Desktop eliminates this problem!

After the installation, I spent some time doing a hot synch (my first in literally over a year at home!), and playing with the software a bit. Read the rest of the article for my impressions of the Palm Desktop for Mac OS X public beta...

After the painfully slow download completed, installation was sort-of straightforward. I launched the installer, and it proceeded to find my OS 9 Palm desktop software and wanted to remove it (which surprised me). The only options at this point were "remove" or "cancel and quit the installer". I just told it to go ahead and remove the old one, since I hadn't hot synched anytime in 2001 ;-).

At that point, I noticed an "Uninstaller" app running in the dock, and nothing more seemed to happen. After about five minutes with nothing happening, I used force-quit to quit the Uninstaller, and I immediately saw the "Install Palm Desktop" splash screen. After that, everything went perfectly fine. Although the Uninstaller did not delete my previous installation, if you want to keep it, it may be best to have a backup on a separate, non-mounted disk when you run the installer.

After installation, it was time for the ultimate test - running a hot synch. The connection between my Palm IIIx and my Mac is not what you would call straightforward - the cradle's cord leads to a Mac-to-PC serial converter, then to a true PC serial modem cable which plugs into a Keyspan Twin USB serial adapter, which is then plugged into a powered Asanté four-port USB hub, and then finally into my Mac! I figured if my setup can successfully hot synch, then pretty much anyone's should be able to!

I plugged the Palm into the 2nd port on the Keyspan adapter (I'm using the 1.01GM Keyspan drivers), and tried to hot synch. Nothing happened. So I moved the Palm to the first port, tried again, and everything worked fine. I have no idea why it didn't like the second port; it would probably work fine now if I switched it back (but I'm not going to push my luck!). Unlike hot synching in OS 9, you can move the synch window to the background and work on other things (like this article!) while the hot synch proceeds (if I'm recalling this incorrectly and you can background an OS 9 hot synch, someone please let me know).

The software worked as expected - I didn't notice a ton of new bells and whistles over the OS 9 version (but I'm not a 'heavy' Palm Desktop user), but the look and feel is now 100% OS X, and I must say I like the new look. For beta software, I have yet to have a single crash, and event printing worked as expected. Overally, I'm happy with what Palm has done, and I think most Mac users will find it meets their needs.

A couple of caveats. As noted earlier, you may lose your existing OS 9 Palm installation, so back it up if you wish to keep it. Also, once installed, the Palm software does not appear to like being moved. I tried, and on the next run, HotSynch complained that it couldn't find the conduit manager. I moved it back, and all was fine. Finally, I can't seem to get the "Instant Palm Desktop" option to work. It's enabled and I've restarted, but there's nothing showing up in the menu bar.

I wasn't expecting to see this app until sometime after MacWorld, so having a public beta (which generally works fine!) is a nice surprise. The fact that it works with my "frankensteinian" connection is even more surprising!

[NOTE: The following URL has appeared on three separate mailing lists now, so I don't think it counts as a secret ... so I'm reposting it here. If you're having trouble with the download, it's available on this iDisk.]

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