| Using your Palm as a Windows Drive |
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| Sunday, 14 November 2004 | |
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If you like the convenience of dragging and dropping files between your Palm and a Windows desktop with a USB port, we found a nice 3rd party utility. Card Export II treats your memory card like another drive. In our case, it made putting our podcasts on the Palm easier.
As readers know, I listen to a lot of audio content with my T3. Typically, my routine has been to place my SD card into a card reader. Depending on the file type, I usually drag the files from my desktop to the SD card. The process isn't hard, but I often forget to remove the card from the reader. I won't tell you how often I've walked out the door with the SD card still in the card reader. Card Export II simplifies this process for me. Rather than relying on the card reader, I either place my Palm in the cradle or use my USB cable. I open the Card Export II program on my Palm and click the Connect to Desktop button.  After connecting, I can see the contents of my Palm SD card on my desktop. I can easily drag and drop files between the desktop and Palm device.  Using this program, I've been able to streamline routines such as audio downloading. For example, each night I place my T3 in the cradle and connect to my desktop using Card Export II. At 3:47AM, iPodder downloads my latest podcasts from the web and writes the files to the SD card that is in my T3. Come morning, I simply pull my Palm from the cradle and head out the door. In this scenario, I've removed the external card reader. I've also benefited from this program while offsite. At one business where I consult, the System Administrator has done a good job of locking down the system. For example, I can't connect my notebook to their network to retrieve work files. To remedy this situation, I connect my retractable BoxWave HotSync cable to the USB port on their PC and move the files over to my Palm. This process is much easier than packing an external floppy drive, docking station or card reader. Although we were favorably impressed during our testing, we did run into the occasional glitch, but not enough to discourage us from recommending the program. For example, there were several times we needed to reset our Tungsten T3. Since we've periodically run into problem with Audible and Real Player, it's hard to say if this program contributed to the problem. Each time we met one of these problems, Crash would come to our rescue and seamlessly recover. About the only disadvantage to our method of leaving the Palm continually connected is background tasks wouldn't run. For example, we have a timed backup routine and noticed it would not complete until we disconnected from the desktop. Again, once you know the limitations, you can work around them. URL: http://www.softick.com/cardexport2/ |
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| Last Updated ( Saturday, 29 July 2006 ) |
