 | MemorySafe by NorthStar Mobile is a little dongle that plugs into your Palm's serial port and allows you, using software installed on your Palm from a provided CD, to effectively perform a HotSync to the dongle rather than your computer. MemorySafe is available for the Palm m100, Palm III series, Palm V series and the Palm VII series of PDA’s. There is no MemorySafe available for the m505 series Palms as they have their own method of external backup using the new SD slot. This method of backing up your Palm can be enormously beneficial to those who need to back up their Palm and are not at their computer when they need to do it. You can back up or restore either everything on your Palm or just whatever you want to back up. The MemorySafe dongle plugs into the serial port of your Palm. The software on the CD will guide you through the process. I used the version available for the Palm III’s as I have a Palm IIIc. I would have liked to have seen the dongle plug in a little farther than it does. This is only for you own feeling of its being fully inserted, rather than any technical reason. The only caveat I would issue is to warn the user that the back up can take a while to do, 20 minutes in the case of my 6.5 meg loaded 8 meg Palm IIIc and that can be a drain on the batteries of the Palm. So you may be well advised to back everything and then make sure your batteries are fresh. A couple of problems one minor, the other disconcerting at first with the software that comes on the CD. When selecting what software to back up, you cannot quickly go down the list of items by writing in the first letter of the name of the file to select a file. I noticed when restoring software from the MemorySafe module, the size of the file being restored was less than the amount that was backed up by about 200K. The example I used for this was a database program with all the data files I have created. After the backup, I chose restore and all the files were restored to the Palm, but I was not sure when I went to restore that this would be the case. A small cloth bag is enclosed with the module, manual, CD and registration card to store the MemorySafe in – a nice touch. I would recommend MemorySafe for anyone who needs to back up their palm more often than it is convenient to Hotsync to their computer. |