Hating technology today

A little while back I dropped my Treo and smashed the screen. Palm don’t fix these things, they sell you a reconditioned one, so I duly sync’d all my data and got my replacement.

Somehow I managed to reload all my data onto the new one using the standard cable. (All done via my office machine.) But the next time I came to sync I found that the cable wouldn’t physically fit into the phone. Can’t figure out why, but one of the plugs is bigger than the hole. Way bizzarre, but definitely for real. Palm offered to replace the PDA again, but I don’t sync very often and the longer I leave it the greater the disparity between what’s on my phone and what’s on the computer. (They sent me a replacement cable, but it was the same as the first.)

Worse still, I’ve moved on from the offce job. My home computer has been in storage for six months and the USB ports are now very unreliable. I bought a slightly different cable which does fit the hole but can’t get it to sync. I don’t know if the problem is the cable, the USB ports, or the connectors on the PDA.

My computer is 2 1/2 years old and has never had a re-install either. One of the fans has stopped working, the HDD’s are full, etc. In other words it needs a big upgrade.

I tried getting a Bluetooth dongle and using that to sync the phone, and actually succeeded on one occasion (after about two weeks of trying on and off) but it hasn’t worked since.

So, I can’t get my Treo replaced until after I get the computer fixed. (Or maybe the Treo is just fucked and doesn’t want to share information?)

But how do I save all the data on my HDD’s if the USBs don’t work properly?

Also, assuming I manage to get an external drive working, is there any way to save my mail records? Not just the address book, but certain correspondence that I need to preserve. I’m using Thunderbird.

It is possible to add a second HDD, as I need more storage anyway, and either dump everything onto it before re-installing, or make it the primary and re-install onto that one instead? Or what? This is driving me nuts. (Aaargh!)

[quote]It is possible to add a second HDD, as I need more storage anyway, and either dump everything onto it before re-installing, or make it the primary and re-install onto that one instead? Or what?[/quote]Both of those are possible. If you’re thinking of reinstalling, I would make the new one your main disk (new ones are faster) and leave your old ones for back-up or extra storage.

For the USB problem with your PC, you could buy a USB card from any 3C store (about NT$200), open the case of the computer and simply plug the USB card into a PCI slot.

[quote=“Loretta”]A little while back I dropped my Treo and smashed the screen. Palm don’t fix these things, they sell you a reconditioned one, so I duly sync’d all my data and got my replacement.

Somehow I managed to reload all my data onto the new one using the standard cable. (All done via my office machine.) But the next time I came to sync I found that the cable wouldn’t physically fit into the phone. Can’t figure out why, but one of the plugs is bigger than the hole. Way bizzarre, but definitely for real. Palm offered to replace the PDA again, but I don’t sync very often and the longer I leave it the greater the disparity between what’s on my phone and what’s on the computer. (They sent me a replacement cable, but it was the same as the first.)[/quote]What Treo is it? I’m assuming that the new one is exactly the same model as the first. If it’s a Treo 600, we can try my spare USB/charging cable to see if it fits, and you can borrow it at least for a day or two.

I think I read that the plug on the 650 is different, but if you have one of those, we could still try my cable I guess.

Thanks, guys. It’s a Treo 650 and my next phone will do nothing more than make calls and send SMS.

what’s a treo?

jd-luddite

[quote=“jdsmith”]what’s a treo?

jd-luddite[/quote]It’s an amazing thing that carries your whole life in a tiny little box, and organises it too.

It’s a Palm OS smartphone so runs a lot of neat programs in addition to the basic phone/messaging/calendar/to do list/contacts/world time/email/www/Office document handling. I’m just about to get my second one which will be two models up from the current one (upgrading from Treo 600 to 680).