Palm Centro: Documents To Go Registration

My Palm Tungsten had a nice feature called Documents To Go that allowed Excel spreadsheets (and Word, et al) to be modified and synchronized with a Windows desktop. When I found that Sprints version of the Palm Centro came bundled with the product, I was very please. Everything worked flawlessly, until about a month ago.

The Centro displayed a notification that there was a new version of Documents To Go, and I should click "OK" to be automatically upgraded over the air. Being a good user, I clicked "OK". The upgrade bumped me up to V10, then prompted for the Registration Number or Activation Key. Of course, I had neither, so by handheld dropped to the eval mode. So sad.

Contacted vendor DataViz. Waste of time. Contacted Sprint. One very smart lady suggested I redownload the software from the Sprint website and reinstall. Good idea! Unfortunately, it wanted a Registration Number or Activation Key, also. Called Sprint again. Waste of time. They didn't have the keys.

At first I though I'd delete the application and install the Tungsten version.

1. Press the Home key.
2. Press the Menu key, and select Delete...
3. Scroll to "Documents" and click Delete.

I decided to factory default the box and start over. And a funny thing happened-- It didn't work, yet it fixed the problem. Here's what I did:

*** WARNING *** HotSync First ***
1. Remove back of handheld.
2. Pull data card.
3. Press and hold the red power button on the front of the phone.
4. When the screen goes black, continue to hold the power button, and remove the battery.
5. Say the "Mary Had a Little Lamb" ryhme.
6. Insert the battery.

When the handheld booted, I expected it to have lost all my info, but it was still there. Further, when I went to Documents To Go, it was back in the registered mode. It seems the reset as listed above replaced the factory default binaries, but left my data. Yeah!

The moral of the story: Document your registration number:

1. Press the Home key.
2. Goto Main, select Documents.
3. Press the Menu key, and select Options.
4. Scroll to Registration Info...

Palm Centro: HotSync

I spent nearly an hour trying to resolve this silly glitch...

While trying to HotSync, I kept getting the message:

Unable to initiate HotSync operation because the port is in use by another application.

No matter what I did, it wouldn't connect to my laptop. Turns out, Bluetooth was disabled on the Centro. I enabled Bluetooth, and the HotSync worked.

What made this so painful was the fact that on the Tungstun, if you tried an operation that required Bluetooth, it would tell you that Bluetooth was off, and ask to turn it on. Minor change, big headache.

Palm Centro: Airplane Mode

On the front of the unit, there is a green answer button and a red power button. The power button has several functions:

1. When the unit drops to power save mode, it (or the four function buttons) will wake the unit up.
2. When awake, if the button is held for three seconds, it will boot the phone into the Airplane Mode. (The antenna icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen will disappear.)
3. When in the Airplane Mode, if the button is held three seconds, it will boot the phone into the On Air Mode.
4. In any active mode, tap the red button to black the screen. You can't turn the device off. Not possible. You have to pull the battery.

Palm Centro: Set Username

Finally moved on from my Palm Tungston to the Palm Centro. Whoa! Way cool. Now we get to figure this puppy out.

First hurdle: Change the username on the device to sync with the existing Palm desktop. This will load the Tungston's data on the Centro. Not an easy task.

1. Enter Memopad:
    Press the Home key
    Select Main catagory
    Click icon
2. Select New.
3. As the only line on the new memo, enter:
    Type "Shortcut . 5"
    *** For Shortcut, press and hold Alt, select character
    *** Don't type the spaces
4. Hotsync.