Upgrading PalmOS PDA (and PlecoDict)

I recently purchased a Treo 650 and I want to install everything from "scratch" as opposed to installing my Treo 650 hotsync software over my existing Treo 600 hotsync software. The reason I'm doing it from "scratch" is because I don't want any existing Treo 600 applications and settings to automatically transfer over to my new Treo 650. I believe a clean installation is the best way to go with this type of thing because when I installed my Treo 600 software, I basically installed it over the existing Handspring Visor Prism software and that was installed over my Handspring Visor Deluxe software which was installed over my Palm III software. With each PDA that I used, I basically installed and deleted applications and I'm sure that there are remnants of settings/configurations and program fragments that I don't even use from my days of using my Palm III.

In terms of PlecoDict, what do I need to transfer over from my Treo 600 before I perform a hard reset on it and sell it to someone? Most of PlecoDict is currently installed on my old Treo 600's 2GB SD memory card. Can I just plug my Treo 600's 2GD memory card into my Treo 650 and start using PlecoDict or are there installation steps that I have to do?

I'm going to be installing the Palm Treo 650 hotsync software onto a new computer so I won't inherit any old programs/settings/fragments from my old installations.


Thanks.

Simply moving the memory card won't be enough, unfortunately - there are several PlecoDict data files that can only be run from internal memory (and that are installed in the internal memory of your Treo 600), and your flashcard and custom dictionary entry files are also stored in internal as opposed to external memory. But you certainly could use the card to move those files over; download and install the very handy free utility FileZ and use that to move any PlecoDict files in your Treo 600's internal memory over to your memory card (their names will all begin with "Pleco"), then install that same utility on your 650 and use it to copy the files to the 650 - that should get everything moved over. But please do make sure that everything copies over correctly before erasing or resetting your 600.

mikelove said:

Simply moving the memory card won't be enough, unfortunately - there are several PlecoDict data files that can only be run from internal memory (and that are installed in the internal memory of your Treo 600), and your flashcard and custom dictionary entry files are also stored in internal as opposed to external memory. But you certainly could use the card to move those files over; download and install the very handy free utility FileZ and use that to move any PlecoDict files in your Treo 600's internal memory over to your memory card (their names will all begin with "Pleco"), then install that same utility on your 650 and use it to copy the files to the 650 - that should get everything moved over. But please do make sure that everything copies over correctly before erasing or resetting your 600.

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Thanks Mike.

After spending almost the entire day reinstalling all my existing applications one at a time from my old Treo 600 to my new Treo 650, I got everything to work.

In regards to PlecoDict, what I did was I copied all the old files that started with Pleco* from my old "c:\program files\handspring\username\backup directory onto my new Treo 650. After doing this, I started PlecoDict but it said that it was unregistered. I hotsynched my key file and everything worked.

Something seemed "off" with the fonts and I remembered that I should download the higher resolution fonts onto my SD memory card. I downloaded all the fonts including the optional add-in 96 pixel font and everything worked fine. I looked up a few words and everything looked very nice with my higher resolution screen. I looked at my flashcards and they were all there. I then tried a few of them and they worked fine.

Are there any issues to leaving the low resolution fonts on my SD memory card? I remember reading that I need to keep the 48 pixel font on my SD card even if I have the 96 pixel font because the magnifier feature for the flashcards uses the 48 pixel font. Am I correct?


Thanks.

There's no problem with leaving the old low-res fonts on the memory card; it'll take up maybe 100 extra miliseconds or so on startup for PlecoDict to load them, establish that they're lower-quality than the high-res fonts, and decide not to use them, but it shouldn't make any difference at all once the software's running.

And yes, you do need the 48-pixel font for the flashcard magnification mode.

Thanks Mike.

After using PlecoDict on my new Treo 650, I'm amazed by the resolution of the fonts and the faster start-up time when compared to my old Treo 600. PlecoDict just got a lot better and easier to use with my Treo 650 considering that I now no longer have to magnify every few characters which I had to do on my old standard resolution (160x160) Treo 600.

I'm at the point of no return for my old Treo 600 since I wiped out all the existing information by doing a hard reset and I just sold it today. However, I'm sure that PlecoDict works properly and all my flashcards work (even though I didn't try them all). If they don't work, I still have my original text file for the flashcards that I created so I'm not worried.

My only questions/comments concerns the Chinese characters on the higher resolution device (320x320) like the Treo 650. I noticed the screen captures in the PlecoDict manual also show this so I doubt that it can be configured/changed.

Is there a reason why the Chinese characters are so much lighter than the English fonts in PlecoDict on a higher resolution device? This didn't seem to be the case with my old Treo 600.

The answer to my next question is probably "no" but can this be configured using the current version of PlecoDict? If not, can this be looked at for version 2.0?


Thanks.

The Chinese characters are lighter than the English ones mainly because they're from a different font. For the English text, we used the same font that Palm does, and for various reasons Palm designed their high-resolution fonts to resemble their low-resolution fonts as closely as possible in terms of width, darkness, etc, which results in a pretty dark / thick / coarse-looking font (but one that is very easy to read from a distance). For Chinese, since there is no standard font we chose one that showed as much detail as possible, and naturally that resulted in lighter-looking characters, since Chinese characters have many more strokes and details than English ones. It's doubtful we'll change this in 2.0, unfortunately - it probably won't change until there's a new Palm OS version with different-looking fonts.