FIGURE C

LaunchPad and AppMan allow easy menu access to the tab organization

functions.

Application data...is it safe?
Before you spend hours getting your data into that freshly installed application, I'll bet you're wondering how the PalmPilot handles backing up data for it. Well, you can rest easy, the HotSync process has provisions to back up your data for you, even if it isn't contained within one of the built-in applications.

Before I get into specifics about the HotSync process, let me briefly explain what's going on behind the scenes. Every application on the PalmPilot stores its data in its own "database". Each database on the PalmPilot has a flag that determines whether or not that database will be backed up by the HotSync process. This flag is commonly referred to as the "backup bit." The backup bit is set by the application in question, and most applications will turn it "on" when they perceive that their data has been changed. Interestingly enough, even applications have backup bits; they just aren't normally set (more on this later).

Files are placed in a subdirectory of your PILOT directory (this is also where your Pilot Desktop program resides). In Windows, if you've installed your PILOT directory at the root level, the PILOT directory would be at C:PILOT. On the Macintosh, the same folder is called Pilot Desktop 1.0.

Within the PILOT directory (or the Pilot Desktop 1.0 directory) is a directory/folder that looks like a contracted version of your last name and first initial. For example, if your user name is David Gewirtz, the folder is GewirtD and if it's Denise Amrich, the folder is AmrichD. This is the "user" folder. For simplicity, in this article, we'll call it "username", so whenever you see a sequence like C:PILOTUSERNAMEBACKUP, you'll know to substitute your user folder. So, for example, on Denise' machine, it would be C:PILOTAMRICHDBACKUP.

When the HotSync process is initiated (normally by pressing the button on the cradle), all of the databases that have their backup bit set will be backed up to the desktop computer, during the backup portion of the process. Most of these will be created as .pdb files and will reside in the X:pilotusernamebackup directory ("drivename:Pilot Desktop 1.0:username:backup" on Macintosh). Each time the HotSync process is run, these files are updated for all databases that have their backup bit set. Earlier versions of HotSync had a few problems and would only backup databases once and/or limited the number of databases backed up. The latest version of HotSync has corrected these problems.

Errors and resets
Many of the applications that you'll be installing on your PalmPilot will be applications that haven't been tested with every combination of hardware and (especially) software that is available for the PalmPilot. Because of this, someone that installs a considerable amount of applications on their PalmPilot is bound to have problems here and there.