Looking at the Palm m130...got a question re: flash ROM vs RAM (1 Viewer)

[Gordon Moore]

This device only has 2mb flash rom vs the 4mb of the Sony PEG-SJ20.

The Sony has 16MB RAM and the m130 has 8MB.

Is having a low flash ROM bad?

Why?

The RAM is for loading programs, documents etc... how is the falsh rom used and for what?

Sorry if this comes off as a dumb question but I'm not too familiar with PDA's and PPC's and I'm looking to jump in.

Thanks for any help!

 

[Steve J]

Flash ROM allows you to "flash" the ROM---as in to erase it and place new data on it. On handhelds, ROM is used to store the OS. So flash ROM devices let you flash a new version of an OS.

In the specific case of the m130, however, it already has the latest Palm OS for that device---4.1. The newest versions of Palm OS (5.0 and 5.1) will only run on handhelds with an ARM processor. m130 has an older Dragonball processor.

 

[Camp]

In addition to the OS the ROM also stores several of the built-in applications (the datebook for example).

I'd strongly recommend the low-end Sony over the Palms. The Sony screens (even in the b&w varients) are much better than their palm counterparts.