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Palm: IR Hotsync to Your LaptopSep 14 '01 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line If you like beaming things with your palm, you will love this howto. This works, I even uninstalled everything and followed my epinion steps to make sure.
If you have a Palm Pilot and you have a laptop, you may want to read this review with intense interest. I want to start off by saying that I am not an expert when it comes to palm pilots, but I was pretty excited when I started hotsyncing my palm with my laptop via the IR port. I have also included information for those who are novices in the PDA realm. Terminology & Background - for newbies This is for those who are not familiar with all of this palm stuff. I want to do some preliminary explanation before going technical. Definitions PDA - Personal Digital Assistant. Usually a light weight hand held pen-based computer. Cradle - A stand a PDA fits into to both charge the palm and to perform data transfers. A cable from the cradle usually connects to your computer through a port such as a 9 pin serial port. Hotsyncing - The method used by palm pilots to transfer data to and from the computer. IR Port - Short for Infrared Port. This is a port on your laptop that uses the range of invisible radiation wavelengths from about 750 nanometers to transfer data without wires (another form of wireless communication). A palm pilot is a PDA that people use to get organized. It can handle your email, address book, memos, to do list, date book, calc, etc. They come in all shapes and sizes, with and without color. I have an older model, the Palm V. This has no color and only 2mb of memory. The amount of programs you install on your palm are all dependent on how much memory you have on your palm. What programs you install on your palm are dependent on what type of palm and what Palm Operating System you have on your palm. Every palm comes with what they call a cradle. This is used to connect your computer to the palm. For example, if want to install a bible and reader on your palm, you must have some form of connection to your computer to your palm pilot. The cradle and IR port can do the data transfer for you through a method known as hotsyncing. This is just Palm's fancy way of telling your palm pilot to connect to your computer and synchronize your devices. Basically this means updating your palm or computer so that they both have matching information. So if you type a new appointment into computer's desktop manager and do a hotsync, your palm will be updated with the new information that you entered into your computer. On to the Technical Side This is the HowTo part of my review. So if you are not interested on exactly how to do this, you may want to skip this part. First let me start off by telling you what we are trying to accomplish and why you might want to do this. The details outlined in this section will let you transfer data from your palm pilot to your laptop (and vice versa) without cables. That is of course if you have an IR Port. Why would you want to do this? If you have a palm pilot and you want the data backed up to your laptop for whatever reason. You could accomplish this using your cradle, but you would have to take your cradle wherever you go to perform the data transfer while you are on the road. Using your IR Port to do the transfer will eliminate the need to have to carry something else in your laptop bag. -- Requirements: - Laptop with IR Port enabled with Win95 (requires additional information that can be found at Palm's website)/Win98SE/WinME - Palm Pilot (steps outlined here were tested on a Palm V) - Your computer must support the IrCOMM implementation of the IrDA standards - Palm OS software v.3.3 if it is any lower you must upgrade. You can upgrade to this at the address below for free: http://www.palm.com/support/downloads/os_add.html - Desktop Manager software 4.0.1. Upgrade free at: http://www.palm.com/support/downloads/win_desktop.html - HotSync Manager 3.11 using the HotSyncUpdater_ENG.exe package Note: If you do not have an m500, do not upgrade to HotSync Manager 4.0 http://www.palm.com/support/downloads -- How To Enable the IR Port: The best source of information is the user manual that came with your computer. I am going to outline the steps I performed to do this on my Dell Inspirion 8000 Laptop running Windows ME. 1.) While system is booting up, enter your system bios settings. For a dell running Windows ME, the Dell splash screen tells you to hold down the "F2" key. Immediately hit the "F2" key when you see this message. 2.) Once in the bios, find the page that has IR settings. Read the entire page of every screen if you are having problems locating your IR settings. For this particular Dell Inspirion 8000 (depends on the motherboard on), it is the 3rd screen found by pressing the Alt+P keys twice. Second option from the top lists Infrared Data Port. This setting was set to "Disable," I changed this to COM4. Write this setting down because you will have to remember it for later use. The Third option from the top gave me the option of "Fast IR" and "Slow IR". I chose the "Fast IR" 3.) Save and exit your settings to reboot your computer. You may need your Windows CDs to complete the installation of the drivers. -- How To Configure the HotSync Manager: To configure the HotSync Manager, make sure you upgraded to the appropriate version and follow the steps below: 1.) If your HotSync manager is not already started, go to Start, Palm Desktop, Hotsync Manager. This should add the hotsync icon near your clock at the bottom right side of your desktop. 2.) Right click on the hotsync icon and make sure there is a check mark by the "Local" option. If there is not, click on it and it should put one there. Select "Setup" (If you had to put a check mark next to Local, you will have to right click the hotsync icon once again before choosing setup). Go to the "Local" tab. Now select the serial port you had set in your bios (if you remember, mine was set to COM4). If you don't know what this is, you may want to go back to your bios settings and find out what port it is set at. Make your selection and for the speed, I chose "As Fast As Possible" 3.) Click OK to save your changes -- How To Perform an IR HotSync: 1.) Make sure your laptop is turned on and Hotsync Manager is running 2.) Turn on your Palm Pilot 3.) On your palm, go to the Application Launcher and tap "HotSync" 4.) Tap "Local" 5.) Tap the drop down menu and select, "IR to PC/Handheld" 6.) Line up your Palm's IR port with your laptop's IR port 7.) Tap the HotSync Icon 8.) Wait till you see, "Connecting with the desktop using IR to a PC/Handheld" appears on the palm 9.) When a connection is established, you should see a pop up window appear on your laptop saying, "Connecting with handheld" 10.) You should get additional information letting you know what is being transferred. Your done. (If you have any problems, you may want to go back through the steps to make sure you didn't leave anything out) Conclusion If you have a desktop computer that your cradle is connected to and you really don't care to have the information duplicated on your laptop, this might not be for you. However, I have a pretty extensive address book and I take a lot of notes with my palm and would like to have it backed up. Since I am not in front of my home computer as much as I am at work, I would rather do a hotsync to my laptop before doing one on my desktop. Plus it is pretty cool to beam stuff with my palm. As long as your palm is running the Palm OS, this howto should work for you as well. Hope this review helps you.  |
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