Palm and Treo Hacks

Make Upgrades Less Painful

Upgrading your PC or switching to a new Palm is fairly easy, but there are some things you need to keep in mind when you migrate your data.

Before you migrate to a new PC or Palm, make sure you’ve got everything synced up. On your current Palm, you need to check all of your applications to make sure that all the data you want to save is set to synchronize. The built-in applications automatically sync all of their data, but some third-party applications allow you to select which data to sync. For example, ShadowPlan lets you select whether or not to sync for each list, and Balance-Log [Hack #12] lets you select how long to keep data.

After you have checked the sync preferences, go ahead and do a HotSync to bring both your Palm device and your PC up to date.

New Palm Device

If you are switching to a new Palm device, then make sure it has been fully charged. Run through the basic setup—date, time, time zone, digitizer, and HotSync name. Use the same HotSync name that you used for your old device. Many applications use a registration scheme which is tied to the HotSync username—even changing the capitalization of the name can cause these applications to think they aren’t registered.

Install the desktop software that came with your Palm device. This will insure that your Palm device and your desktop are current with each other. Install the new desktop software into the same location as your old desktop software. If you are upgrading to a Treo, then you may be ...