Yes, DTA is a one-way street (and it took me trial-and-error to figure out the Pre's relationship between Palm Desktop, Outlook, and Google Calendar). If you think about it, it can ONLY be a one-way street. It does not behoove Palm and it would go against all business sense for them to make it two-way. Palm would've not only had to create the best smartphone OS in the world (done), but then, in time for shipping, find a way for the old Palm OS to talk to the new WebOS seamlessly. That doesn't make any sense moving forward.

You've got to admit, we're somewhat in the minority. Those millions of iPhone users out there, they didn't and don't give a damn about Palm OS apps. That's the market Palm needs to address to stay alive, so it's very possible they may lose some legacy Palm OS users along the way. Remember, they were dead anyways.

Anyhoo, I'm not sure that I'd phrase it as "opening a port to the desktop", but I guess metaphorically that's correct. Bottom line is, here's what Classic allows you to do (you can probably extract this from their website):

1. To install a Palm OS app, you simply plug your Pre into your computer as a USB drive and copy the .PRC and associated .PDB file(s) into the ClassicApps/Install directory (on the Pre). Note: Datebook, Contacts, Tasks, and Memos are built-in to every Palm device, including Classic's emulation of it, so you only copy the .PDB files for these 4 built-in apps (besides, the .PRC files for these 4 apps are not available out there).

2. Third-party non-ROM-built-in Palm OS apps (i.e., apps not including Datebook, Contacts, Tasks, and Memo) sometimes have a directory of their own containing database files located in the ClassicApps/PALM folder on the Pre. I say "sometimes" because I haven't really tried a whole lot of third-party apps. Obviously, RFBackup does this, but when I loaded FileZ just to see how Classic works, there's no associated ClassicApps/PALM/FileZ folder, but that's probably because FileZ doesn't have any .PDB files (?).

So, RFBackup backs up all of the Palm OS's files into the ClassicApps/PALM/RFBackup after you run RFBackup in Classic and tap on the "Backup" button. And yes, you can drag and drop this backup file to wherever you want on your computer after hooking up the Pre as a USB drive.

However, these backup files are the .PDB files, so they won't do you much good on the Palm Desktop on your computer. Palm Desktop can deal with its own proprietary archive files such as .DBA for Datebook and .ABA for Address Book (Contacts), and I think .DAT files, but not .PDB, which is what your Palm DEVICE can read.

What you could theoretically do is, keep your old Palm device (mine's a Centro), use another free Palm OS file manager app called FileZ and an SD card to copy the .PDB file directly back onto the Centro, then do a Hotsync to your Palm Desktop from Centro to your computer -- if you ABSOLUTELY need to use Palm Desktop (you don't, unless you've become entirely dependent on it for some reason -- even when I had the Centro, I practically never entered data via Palm Desktop and Palm Desktop really only served as a backup to my Centro). Otherwise, I'm not quite sure where you're going with wanting to copy that backup to your Program Files directory.

You use the .PDB backup file to copy into the ClassicApps/Install directory, should your Pre crash or get stolen. In fact, Palm Desktop should heretofore not be part of the equation anymore.

To address your issue of being secure and permanent, quite frankly, I think you are missing the point. It's akin to the Pre's ability to play music by either syncing thru iTunes (which I think is lame because iTunes is a crappy, bloated, unintuitive piece of software -- my wife owns an iPhone and she can't figure it out and neither can I), or by simply dragging and dropping via USB hookup to the Pre's "Downloads" folder.

I mean, "security" has nothing to do with the issue at hand. You are dragging and dropping a file. What more do you need?

For "permanence", I don't understand why you are concerned that Palm would even care about legacy Palm OS apps or Classic itself. It's pretty clear already that they've turned the page on Palm OS. So you're saying Palm is going to waste their time and deny a handful of people's right to drag and drop a file that is a backup of something running on 3rd-party Pre software (MotionApps Classic)?

Incidentally, Palm issued a statement after Apple threatened to take away syncing ability to iTunes, saying that the easy workaround if Apple were to do that, would be the Pre's USB drive option. Palm is ENCOURAGING you to use the Pre's USB drive ability.

The only other concern might be MotionApps not wanting you to do this. But why wouldn't they want you to do this? They WANT you to buy Classic. It's in their best interest to keep the scant number of Classic customers they might have, happy. I'd seriously be shocked if they decided to do away with the ClassicApps/PALM folder.

In fact, I think it's the opposite. On their website it says that many customers are clamoring for the ability to have an emulated Hotsync function. My guess is, they're working on that right now. Heck, maybe they should just exploit this workaround using RFBackup as their emulated Hotsync. I'm not a programmer, but I'm sure it's not hard to emulate.

After all, all we're doing is dragging and dropping files, thanks to RFBackup, the ClassicApps/PALM folder, and the ability for the Pre to act as a USB drive (a clever move by Palm).

If Palm does not succeed with the Pre, it will simply be the fault of (again) poor marketing. All of these amazing little things about the Pre, you don't find out until you actually use it and sit back and appreciate it for a second.

I think I already mentioned the ultra-sweet Touchstone. There's also little keyboard shortcut tricks I found by googling around. My favorite is in the Pre's browser, you can press the orange key plus spacebar while you tap a link and a new browser "card" will appear to open that link! You know, sometimes you're reading CNN and there's like 3 headlines you wanna read, but you don't wanna have to keep hitting the back button to go back to the list (and resize the page). The way the iPhone is built, the iPhone can NEVER do this!

So as a happy Palm OS-to-Pre user, it's in MY best interest to spread the knowledge, lest I be stuck with another poorly-supported PIM device a la the Centro, the Samsung i500 before that, the Kyocera 6125 before that, and all the Palm Pilots before that! I feel like I've finally come out ahead with the Pre.

Again, if anyone needs help migrating and not wanting to let go of legacy Palm OS PIM apps, just ask.

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