Hope that helps. Have fun and stay young at heart!

Trouble with a time traveling Palm device
My Palm IIIx keeps reverting back to yesterday's date. I keep having to go into Preferences to change it back to today, especially after a weekend.

Any idea why?
Denise Amrich

Senior Technical Editor Claire Pieterek responds
Denise, there seems to be an undocumented bug in the Palm OS. I've seen much discussion of this topic on the newsgroups, but I couldn't find anything more than anecdotal evidence.

Fortunately, there's an easy and inexpensive way to resolve this problem. It's called DayLossFix, and it's available from http://www.rgps.com. For any Palm device user with an amnesia-prone handheld, DayLossFix is more than worth the $5 registration fee.

I emailed DayLossFix's author, Ronald Goulding, to see if he could fill me in about this problem. This is what he had to say:

I don't know exactly what bug exists in the Palm OS that causes the problem. Everyone that complained about the problem stated that it occurs when they don't use the Palm device for several days.

I suspect the programmer that posted the message guessing that the Palm OS must mark a flag as the time rolls past midnight for some other part of the code to later advance the date and that if the device is not used for more than a 24 hour period, then the flag cannot indicate that the day rolled twice so the day is lost. That sounds feasible.

Okay, so you're asking, "How can you have programmed a fix for a problem that you don't fully understand?" I fixed it by getting rid of the condition that causes it. I silently wake the device and put it back to sleep once a day to assure that the day is not lost.

I hope that answers your question, Denise.