The Tungsten PDA

On many occasions, when we need direct access to the contents of the RAM of our team, we found that only with the software that comes bundled, we do not have a program that allows us to do so in an efficient manner. My recommendation has always been installing Filez (local mirror), a file manager free, simple but powerful, and ultimately very useful. However, we have never spoken in depth of this program, and all you can do so at the suggestion of David Espino, is what we will see today.

The first version of Filez dates from November 1999. Tom Bulatewicz, a student at the University of Rochester, created this file manager, due to the absence of a free system for the Palm. Given the author's interest in free software, the program became GPL in July 2000, leaving the source code freely available. The popularity of this program has been impressive, reaching win the prize "Program of the Year" from Softonic in 2004. In its day PalmAddict did a short interview to Tom, that you can find here.

Filez lets you view, copy, move, delete or mandar by email, infrared, SMS or bluetooth, all kinds of files, equally if they are in main memory or an expansion card. It also allows more details concerning our device, and edit files preferences of the team.

Filez is an excellent browser files

Its main utility, logically, is navigating the RAM and expansion cards. Once in this section of rograma, we'll see the files in the typical tree structure. We can select a file or an entire directory, simply doing tap on his behalf, and because it indicates the arrow before it will turn black. In the upper right corner is a box called ROMs, whose state does that, in addition to the files in RAM, display or not the files that are stored in the ROM computer (and therefore read only). The files in ROM will be differentiated because they have an icon shaped like a chip. Another icon that can appear is a padlock, which means that the files are in use by the operating system, and may not be suppressed. If we remove them, we will have to resort to trick the already talked to delete files locked.

The Filter button located down the center, allows you to choose which files show, according to one of its parameters (its name, creator, type, etc.) begin, contain or end in a particular string. Finally, in addition to file names in the window displays always another column, which by default displays the file size, but doing tap into the iconito shaped leaf, we can also toggle between all other parameters file, to sort the list in terms of these (for example, is very useful to sort by date modified, to see what files have been modified since the last of a certain date). As you see, the power in getting a view of only those files that interest us, and also ordered by a specific criterion, it is very big.

Working with a file

After selecting a file by clicking the Details button opens a window where you can change your name, type, creator and version, which are data with which Palmer may associate such programs and data files, order remove them at a time when uninstalled. We can also modify attributes, as in any other operating system, and even change the dates that report when it was created, modified or saved in a backup, for the last time. In this window, by clicking mandar we can send the file as comentábamos via Bluetooth, infrared, email or SMS.

In this view of driver files, we still have some options available through the menu: create a directory, mandar the current view, text mode, a note of Memo, display units hidden, like the builtin some teams, and course preferences, where we can set some details, such as the colors of hearings.

Report on the internal and external memory

The second usefulness of this program is to display information from our device. In the main screen shows and free RAM memory and expansion cards, the level of battery and the operating system version. We can say that the show as a percentage, as a progress bar, or as a number, just doing tap into each input. But the details are doing tap into Information. Within find the name of our team, and its manufacturer's serial number, the exact size of the ROM and RAM, the name under which we Hotsync, and the last date of sync, and the nature and levels of current battery, threshold warning and critical threshold (below which will shut down the PDA). If we have an expansion card, also will show us information about it, elected on the list of the top right corner.

Browse and viewing preferences team

Finally, Filez can edit the preferences of our team and some programs. These are stored in two files: SavedPreferences and UnSavedPreferences. The first is so called because it saved on your PC to make a hotsync, while the second did not. The data are stored in records listed by name and creator. If we can see them push view but not edit them. It also can be exported to a Memo, as before, through the Export button List. This means to access preferences and delete some records is very useful to do things like correct mistakes (remember the mistake of Card Export), or return the configuration of a program to its original state. But if you delete something that we should not, we can also spoil things, so I better not touch it if we do not know what we are doing. One way to be able to edit preferences, if someone needs it ever, is using the Resco File Explorer, specifically the Control Panel. Although if we want to recover these files after a destructive reset, nothing better than a backup program as NVBackup.

And I hope to not forget useless in the dark over Filez. As you can see, is the Swiss army knife palm, and also free, which will give us complete freedom to manage our files and preferences for where we need to do more advanced work.

By: Mark Gonzalez Troyas in Analysis
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