TIP: Turn OFF your Palm Backup

[trim81]

As with everyone here, I agree that the Palm Pre is LAGGY and slow..(even with the overclock patches)

By nature, the Palm Backup service backs up your palmdatabase.db3 file. And this file is tied to text messages, call logs, phonebook, etc

Laggyness occurs as soon as you delete a text message, or call log..which pushes back to the Palm Server. <--my theory is Palm throttles the push therefore it renders the Palm Pre SLOW for 5-10 minutes for the resync/push

What I did was: I turned this OFF.

I have all my contacts stored on Google Contacts, which is the most important backup I need..and regarding the programs, If I ever get a replacement Pre, I will just re-install it.

Turning Backup OFF so far makes my Pre zippy.

WHat is your take on turning backup OFF?

[HardBeatZ]

Not to argue with your theory or anything, but the device only backs up once a day unless you do a manual backup. So you can make all the changes you want and the device never backs that up unless you manually do it or the device hits your backup interval, which is usually around an hour's time. You can see what time your device backs up in the backup application and it should say it is backing up roughly the same time every day. That is the only time that application actually runs and consumes any memory.

[mjkjr]

Originally Posted by HardBeatZ

Not to argue with your theory or anything, but the device only backs up once a day unless you do a manual backup. So you can make all the changes you want and the device never backs that up unless you manually do it or the device hits your backup interval, which is usually around an hour's time. You can see what time your device backs up in the backup application and it should say it is backing up roughly the same time every day. That is the only time that application actually runs and consumes any memory.

+1

I agree, my phone backs up once a day and thats it.

[sf_basilix]

if you want to make the phone zipper - don't have it scan for emails as often. I set mine to manual and just press the refresh button when I want to see my mail. It's not like I need to know the second a mail message comes in anyway... but ymmv

[trim81]

@HardBeatz Can't argue with you, as you ARE the tech. Thanks for the info.

Could you explain why as soon as a text message thread is deleted, it makes the Palm Pre laggy and non responsive for about 5-10 minutes?

(I am not talking about single thread text messaging, more so like the 20+ text message thread)

[HardBeatZ]

Originally Posted by trim81

@HardBeatz Can't argue with you, as you ARE the tech. Thanks for the info.

Could you explain why as soon as a text message thread is deleted, it makes the Palm Pre laggy and non responsive for about 5-10 minutes?

(I am not talking about single thread text messaging, more so like the 20+ text message thread)

It's hard to say, I actually went through on my device not to long ago and wiped out all text messages (I've had my device since launch and haven't done any clean up) and really didn't notice any lag.

I guess the real question is if you are the only one having the problem? Other users experience similar things??

[sf_basilix]

I haven't experienced that yet - although I've not had enough txt messages as the OP to delete. I'm just wondering though - aren't these txt messages stored in a database format? With the database parsing through the entries and deleting specific ones, I'm sure that would put a toll on the database - hence the phone. I am by no means a palm developer (yet), but just thinking out loud here - if the database is populated with many tables and these are loaded into memory, I would suspect that loading the table for txt messages would only increase the load on an already heavily burdened database.

So while it may show that the messages are deleted, it could still be deleting them from the table/database in the background. I'm wondering if your database may be corrupt or something else is hogging resources on your phone....

[sf_basilix]

@HardBeatZ: is there a CLI command that Palm has made to go through the database and check for errors and/or clean it up? Just curious as I know you are with Palm....

[HardBeatZ]

I know we do database "cleanups" on our end. Is there a command that anyone can run to check for errors, I don't know for sure couldn't really say :/

[Mikey47]

Originally Posted by trim81

By nature, the Palm Backup service backs up your palmdatabase.db3 file. And this file is tied to text messages, call logs, phonebook, etc

And what about all your accounts? (email, calendar, facebook, etc.)? Not sure if these are in the palmdatabase.db3 file or not...

[MLJones8]

Originally Posted by HardBeatZ

Not to argue with your theory or anything, but the device only backs up once a day unless you do a manual backup. So you can make all the changes you want and the device never backs that up unless you manually do it or the device hits your backup interval, which is usually around an hour's time. You can see what time your device backs up in the backup application and it should say it is backing up roughly the same time every day. That is the only time that application actually runs and consumes any memory.

Now that the OP topic has been shutdown....

Is it possible to change this backup time? I'd much rather have my Pre do the backup in the middle of the night while on the charger rather than at 6PM when I'm running low.

[lakaw]

I find that the notices make my Pre temporarily laggy.

[HardBeatZ]

Originally Posted by trim81

@HardBeatz Can't argue with you, as you ARE the tech. Thanks for the info.

Could you explain why as soon as a text message thread is deleted, it makes the Palm Pre laggy and non responsive for about 5-10 minutes?

(I am not talking about single thread text messaging, more so like the 20+ text message thread)

Originally Posted by MLJones8

Now that the OP topic has been shutdown....

Is it possible to change this backup time? I'd much rather have my Pre do the backup in the middle of the night while on the charger rather than at 6PM when I'm running low.

Your question is a two part answer. CAN you change your time. Yes, can you choose your time, not really. The reason being is the we don't want to put to much work on a server at a set interval because everyone chose that time (not everyone literally of course) to backup.

So how do I change my time you ask, well you can partial erase your device and sign into your profile, every time you sign into your profile you are "assigned" a backup interval this is a one hour time frame that your device will backup.

[trim81]

To answer - yes the email accounts/facebook accounts, etc etc are tied to the Palm Backup as well.

All I know is, I turned the Palm Backup OFF on 3 of our Pres here and productivity has gone up. (not a placebo effect either)

I only tested this thoery this am until now (about ~12 hours or so), but I have been deleting texts and making phone calls (and seraching contacts) right after the text deletion, all zippy.

+I must say though, I am okay with hacking the phone, and am fairly content with webos Doctoring....so in the end, re-registering and reprogramming the phone is OKAY for me.

I prefer to take a productivity standpoint over a laggy pre/ and I figure its not everyday I will have to access the palm backup server...

(and before doctoring/ I can flip the backup switch on first if needed)

[MLJones8]

Originally Posted by HardBeatZ

Your question is a two part answer. CAN you change your time. Yes, can you choose your time, not really. The reason being is the we don't want to put to much work on a server at a set interval because everyone chose that time (not everyone literally of course) to backup.

So how do I change my time you ask, well you can partial erase your device and sign into your profile, every time you sign into your profile you are "assigned" a backup interval this is a one hour time frame that your device will backup.

Thanks,
But is the 'assigned' one hour time frame within the one hour of signing into my palm profile? Or is this hour assigned randomly?

[HardBeatZ]

Originally Posted by MLJones8

Thanks,
But is the 'assigned' one hour time frame within the one hour of signing into my palm profile? Or is this hour assigned randomly?

It's assigned randomly. I haven't personally seen how it assigns time frames, but my guess / thought / reasoning is that is going to assign the time frame that currently has the lowest number of users assigned to it.

[sf_basilix]

@trim81:

I'm just curious, how many applications do you have installed on your Pre? Also, how many cards, if any, do you keep open? How many emails, txt messages, etc do you have stored on the phone?

Just trying to get an idea of what's going on in your Pre....

[KJ78]

Originally Posted by MLJones8

Now that the OP topic has been shutdown....

Is it possible to change this backup time? I'd much rather have my Pre do the backup in the middle of the night while on the charger rather than at 6PM when I'm running low.

i don't disagree but i'm guessing most people want their backup at night. palm probably wants the backups spread out throughout the day to better manage their servers.

[blatherdrift]

yeah im willing to bet that the people who see this lag are really heavy users. People with tons and tons and tons of parsed logs between five services or some crap.

If guys like that are laggy all the time i wouldnt be surprised. Cloud computing might not be best for them on a mobile platform.

[trim81]

@sf Well yes, I have quite a bit going on on my Pre. 5 emails pushed, with 2-3 background running programs at a given time (Twee/Weather Dashboard) -So I understand where you are getting at with the heavy using bit.

HOWEVER, there is a twist. I turned backup off on my brother's pre whom only have 1 email account,, a light user..but uses the phone alot for business text and calling (more of a phone user than a smartphone pda user), and so far he is liking the pre more.

This may or may not be a placebo effect, but the initial thought of this thread is to get the forum member's thoughts on turning the backup OFF...

I can only see the real benefit of losing the phone and resyncing your accounts easily for a replacement...

but honestly, how hard is it to re-setup your email accounts/facebook accounts from a fresh doctored phone? it takes maybe about 20-30 minutes

--To me, and this is just me, contacts and calendar (most important) are ALREADY pushed to the google account, so there is really no real importance of a Palm Backup...

If a Dev can come up with a patch/mod that can control the backup time/increments pushed to the Palm Backup server, that would be sweet.