Borrowed one of these of a mate and I always thought they had little hard disks in them similar to an iPOD for example.

Not realising the consequences, I installed TomTom Navigator on this iPAQ and accidentally left it switched on overnight. Low and behold the following morning the battery had ran out.

When I recharged and fired it up, everything I had installed had gone. Do I take it email settings are held in battery powered ram ?! Why the hell don't they just use an little hard disk so when the battery dies, all the data doesn't die with it?

I notice my mate has a 256MB compact flash card plugged into its expansion port. This begs the question, can the TomTom app be installed onto this card, so that when the main battery dies, stuff on the flash card won't die with it ?

 

You can buy a compact flash hard disk, but your lucky if you get an hour out of the battery....even with light use !!

all the data you store on a compact flash card will be safe, but most programs will need to be re-installed after a battery failure, so You best off investing in a piece of software called Sprite pocket backup, as this is the only was you can ensure you do not loose any data.

I have had to restore mine 3 times now, and i didnt loose a thing.

 

There is an internal backup battery which keeps things ticking along but it won't last much more than a few hours. I am lucky enough to have never lost mine completely (after 18 months of use) but there's nothing like an activesync regularly just in case!
I use a 512MB SD Card but only to store TomTom maps and some MP3s. I have backed up to it once or twice but find it easier to do via the PC.

Why no internal hard drive?? Probably because it will add £100+ to the price. You get what you pay for basically.

Enjoy TomTom. It's one of the best purchases I ever made!

 

There is a small internal battery that lasts a few hours on standby on most PDA's, so you can replace your battery etc. You can also usually set a back up amount in the main battery to be reserved when the unit dies to allow the unit to stay "off" without loosing data. Check the internal battery and settings on the main battery, and never leave the PDA for long periods witout charging, even if turned off

 

There are some coming out shortly (may be out) with HDDs

 

I use Sprite backup and always turn bluetooth off, it uses lots of power.....
Make sure Sprite is set to back up the SD card, as well as the main memory.

 

I was amazed when I realised they weren't hard disk or flash card based. My mate warned me about the battery running down, but it was on standby for a night and that was enough to empty it!