Palm sync problems - long sync time on TX -- fixed in 4.0.3
Well, getting the Palm to sync with the new version of LB was a major pain at first. Sync would proceed normally to the "synchronizing calendar" stage, then hang. I left it running for *3 hours* at one point to see if it would finish, but it never did.
I finally noticed the "install Palm software" in the "hotsync" menu in the main LB app. Once I had the new version of the Palm software installed, everything finally synced. (Note to anyone else out there who doesn't believe in reading instructions: be sure you install the new Palm software before you try to sync!) But even now, each sync is taking at least 20-30 MINUTES to complete.
I'm not *too* unhappy about the sync speed at this point. I understand that there is a LOT of info going back and forth. Heck, I even noticed that DB6 even got my new categories synced from iCal, which I think is extremely interesting (and very useful). But 30 minutes does seem excessive.
I have 58 MB of RAM available on my TX, so there *should* be enough memory available, but I am wondering if the new LB is an extreme memory hog. I have gotten a couple of unexpected resets on the Palm while fiddling around with the new stuff, which makes me wonder if the Palm ran out of memory.
I like the new features very much, so don't get me wrong. It looks like the new version will be very nice to work with. Just a few bugs hanging around!
-- amazondoc --
Confused, bemused, and disorganized, but trying to reform!
Comments
RE: Palm sync problems
I realize this post should go over in the Palm forum rather than here. My apologies!
RE: Palm sync problems
Good point... I'll move this thread over to the Palm area.
--Catherine--*
Catherine E. White
President
www.llamagraphics.com
Creators of Life Balance software
for Palm OS, Macintosh and Windows.
RE: Palm sync problems
Hi there "amazondoc,"
Thanks again for your positive comments. We hope to resolve any remaining issues quickly, so we really appreciate your cooperation and clarity.
One thing you might check.
Life Balance is now doing backup snapshots before and after the Palm syncs.
If you have a huge amount of calendar data, you might try turning that off to see if the sync time improves. You won't have the benefit of the data safety, but that might be a reasonable tradeoff if sync times are slow and you are doing good backups in other ways.
We found that support issues often originated at sync time for one reason or another (not always Life Balance related) and that having some extra backups would keep our customers out of trouble.
But, it is optional.
If turning off the snapshot feature doesn't bring hotsync back up to speed, we can look for another explanation.
Knowing how many records we're talking about is also useful so that we can gauge if your data set is unusually large or complicated.
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
Catherine E. White
President
www.llamagraphics.com
Creators of Life Balance software
for Palm OS, Macintosh and Windows.
RE: Palm sync problems
Hey there Amazon...
Something went wrong when I tried to unqueue and post your message. Sorry...
I'll try to summarize the highlights!
You thought that it was possible that the backups might be slowing things down, and you were going to give that suggestion a try since you have backups on an SD Card, and you feel that data safety is okay.
Thanks for the info about the size of the file. 1.3 M is not unheard of. (mine is like that, though not so many calendar events as tasks.)
Let us know later how that goes.
--Catherine--*
Catherine E. White
President
www.llamagraphics.com
Creators of Life Balance software
for Palm OS, Macintosh and Windows.
RE: Palm sync problems
Hey again --
Unfortunately, turning off the backup snapshots didn't solve the problem. I timed the last backup -- with no changes since the previous backup! -- at 42 minutes. Arg.
I even did an experiment to be sure that LB really is the culprit in my slow syncs. I set the LB conduit to "do nothing" and did another sync. With no LB activity, the sync completes in TWO minutes.
Is there anything else I can try?
-- amazondoc --
Confused, bemused, and disorganized, but trying to reform!
RE: Palm sync problems
Thanks for getting back to us on that. The extra information is helpful.
We will look into why that is being so slow. For the moment, stand by and give us a chance to look into it here.
Actually, since you have the backup snapshots, could you please compress one of the snapshots and send it into samalone at llamagraphics?
That way we are sure we will see the same thing under the debugger.
Best wishes, and more soon,
--Catherine--*
Catherine E. White
President
www.llamagraphics.com
Creators of Life Balance software
for Palm OS, Macintosh and Windows.
RE: Palm sync problems
Looks like the slow sync speed issue is only happening with Palm Desktop (maybe only certain configurations for Palm Desktop, not sure about that yet.) When we sync using Missing Sync, the sync speed was fine.
Profiling revealed a way for us to workaround that pretty easily so it will be vastly improved in 4.0.3.
More soon, and thanks so much for your report!
--Catherine--*
Catherine E. White
President
www.llamagraphics.com
Creators of Life Balance software
for Palm OS, Macintosh and Windows.
RE: Palm sync problems
Thanks --
I'm downloading 4.0.3 right now. I'll report back!
-- amazondoc --
Confused, bemused, and disorganized, but trying to reform!
Palm TX, Pismo running OS 10.4.11, LB 4.0.2, Palm Desktop 4.2.1
RE: Palm sync problems
Whew --
4.0.3 took care of that problem. Now sync time is about 2 minutes. Thanks!
-- amazondoc --
Confused, bemused, and disorganized, but trying to reform!
Palm TX, Pismo running OS 10.4.11, LB 4.0.2, Palm Desktop 4.2.1
RE: Palm sync problems
Much better! Good to know!
Best wishes,
--Catherine--*
Catherine E. White
President
www.llamagraphics.com
Creators of Life Balance software
for Palm OS, Macintosh and Windows.